Progress Made in Bid to End Kosovo Conflict

U.S., Russian and European officials, meeting into the night at a mountaintop mansion here overlooking the Rhine, announced Tuesday that they were moving toward a unified position on how to end 10 weeks of warfare in Yugoslavia via diplomacy.

“I don’t think anybody should feel euphoria here--there is no reason for that,” German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told reporters. “Nevertheless, progress has been made.”

The officials and members of their entourages indicated some of the building blocks of an emerging deal: that soldiers from leading NATO members should serve at the heart of a Kosovo peacekeeping force and that a Russian contingent would also participate.

But they cautioned that sticking points remain, including whether any package is acceptable to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

Martti Ahtisaari, the Finnish president and the European Union’s envoy on Kosovo, said there was sufficient progress to warrant his first mission to Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, representing the West. He was scheduled to accompany Russian envoy Viktor S. Chernomyrdin to Belgrade today. Ahtisaari then is expected to report to the 14 other EU leaders Thursday at the group’s summit in Cologne, Germany.

The Finnish leader cautioned at an evening news conference at Petersberg, the German government’s state guest house outside Bonn, that he and the other officials hadn’t been able to “agree 100%.”

“But I think it’s fair to say at this stage we’re prepared to go and see if the Yugoslav government is ready to accept that peace offer,” he said.

The decision by Ahtisaari to accompany Chernomyrdin to Belgrade is a sign that the Finn, a former high-ranking and respected official of the United Nations, sees a realistic chance that Milosevic might be ready to accede to the demands of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization after more than 31,500 sorties flown against his nation by alliance warplanes.

“As well as hard work, the achievement of the goal we’ve described here tonight depends on hard decisions by the government in Belgrade,” Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, the representative of the Clinton administration, told the news conference.

As negotiators worked in Bonn to resolve the conflict, NATO warplanes dropped bombs Tuesday on Albania, hitting bunkers held by Albanian troops and wounding a refugee, in the latest apparent misfire by alliance forces.

Witnesses at the border crossing in Morine, Albania, said NATO planes were circling the border area for about three hours before the bombing and that there were at least five explosions on the Albanian side of the border between 300 yards and about one mile from the frontier.

The blasts sent Albanian troops as well as journalists and villagers fleeing the area.

“I counted at least five bombs about three minutes apart,” said Phil Davison, a reporter for the Independent newspaper, a London daily.

NATO later acknowledged that its planes had struck Albania, which has allowed the alliance to place troops on its soil.

Davison said that a few minutes before the bombing occurred, his driver received a warning from an Albanian army officer to move back from the border because NATO was going to bomb. Reporters took this to mean that the Kosovo side of the border would be bombed, but the first munition landed about 50 yards from them--about 300 yards inside Albania.

Apparently this was not the first NATO bombing of Albanian territory. Davison said that on the way to the border crossing earlier Tuesday, he encountered an unexploded bomb by the road, apparently from the previous night. On the fin was written: “For use on MK-82, Fin Guided Bomb” and an assembly number.

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In other developments Tuesday:

* The International Rescue Committee, a New York-based refugee aid group, planned to begin dropping relief supplies to homeless ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic. An Antonov-26 cargo plane chartered from a Moldovan company and flown by a Moldovan crew is expected to take off from Pescara, Italy, today to drop 5,000 leaflets on refugee concentrations in the province, instructing the ethnic Albanians what to do when they see the airborne pallets carrying food rations. On Thursday morning, the Moldovan planes are expected to drop the first of the pallets. The flights are expected to continue daily.

* The Pentagon said some Kosovo refugees may have to remain in camps through the winter, even if a peace deal is struck before then. “Even if there were a peace agreement tomorrow or next week, it is not reasonable to assume that every refugee would be home instantly,” said Kenneth H. Bacon, the chief Pentagon spokesman. “Some may end up in Macedonia or Albania through the winter.”

* The Pentagon reported intense fighting in southeastern Albania as Kosovo rebels sought to open a second supply route into the province. Bacon said there had been “fairly ferocious fighting” and many casualties. He said it was still unclear how the battle would turn out.

In Germany, Chancellor Schroeder--whose country currently holds the six-month revolving European Union presidency--on Tuesday also said one issue to be discussed by the negotiators during late-night sessions at Petersberg would be whether assent by Milosevic to a peace plan would suffice to halt NATO’s escalating airstrikes, or whether the estimated 40,000 Yugoslav soldiers and Serbian special police in Kosovo would have to be pulled out first.

In Yugoslavia, Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic, commander of army forces in Kosovo, claimed a political solution of the conflict is now in sight but that key differences remain on two issues, according to Belgrade’s independent Beta news agency.

Addressing Serbian officials in the Kosovo capital of Pristina, the general was quoted as saying: “We have accepted all the G-8 [seven Western industrialized nations plus Russia] principles, modified only on two key points, regarding withdrawal [from Kosovo] of the army and the police and presence of international peace forces.

“That’s where the crucial diplomatic battle is being fought,” he added.

On the face of it, the alterations reportedly made by Yugoslavia in the principles adopted by the Group of 8 countries May 6 at Petersberg would be enough to scuttle the deal. The NATO nations have demanded the withdrawal of all Milosevic’s troops and police from Kosovo, though Western diplomats say a number could return later to guard Serbian Orthodox shrines.

And the Yugoslavs have flatly opposed allowing soldiers from those Western nations now carrying out the airstrikes--including the United States, France, Britain and Germany--from serving as peacekeepers in Kosovo. That would leave participation by minor or fledgling NATO members, such as Greece and Poland.

Tanjug, the official Yugoslav news agency, reported that the leadership in Belgrade accepted the gist of the Group of 8 principles after a meeting between Milosevic and his senior officials Monday. But Western leaders reacted warily, citing Milosevic’s broken promises.

In Washington, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said NATO will suspend its bombing campaign only if Milosevic agrees to all of the alliance’s conditions, including an international peacekeeping force with NATO at its core.

Visiting Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini, considered one of the more dovish top officials from the 19 NATO countries, agreed.

“We need evidence. We cannot abide only by a general acceptance of principles,” Dini said.

Chernomyrdin, who has made four trips to Belgrade to meet with Milosevic, admitted the possibility that a fifth expedition may be no more successful.

“If not, we will continue to look for a solution to master this violent conflict,” he said Tuesday.

Chernomyrdin, personal envoy of Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin, announced at the news conference that “Russia has already taken the decision to participate in the force with its own contingent. That’s why it’s very important to build a relationship with the alliance.”

A Russian diplomat who requested anonymity said the Kremlin accepted that only NATO could furnish the firepower and the logistical and organization savvy for a Kosovo peacekeeping force, which the alliance has estimated will require as many as 50,000 soldiers.

Meanwhile, Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz, a NATO military spokesman, told a briefing at NATO headquarters in Brussels that “with aircraft sortie and strike rates growing, we inflict more and more damage on [the] Serb military machine, a machine which is the basis of the dictatorship of Milosevic.”

As of Monday, Jertz said, allied warplanes had struck 120 tanks, 314 artillery pieces and 203 armored personnel carriers--numbers the German air force general said were a good deal more than 30% of all Yugoslav heavy equipment in Kosovo.

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Dahlburg reported from Bonn and Boudreaux from Belgrade. Times staff writers Marjorie Miller in Tirana, Albania, and Norman Kempster, Paul Richter and Melissa Healy in Washington contributed to this report.

On the Web

Extended coverage of the crisis in Yugoslavia is available at The Times’ Web site at https://www.latimes.com/yugo. Coverage includes hourly updates, all Times stories since NATO launched its attack, video clips, information on how to help the refugees, a primer on the conflict and access to our discussion group.