Group of 8 Approves Resolution on Kosovo

After days of uncertainty, efforts to nail down a peace settlement for Kosovo moved forward Tuesday as diplomats here agreed on a draft U.N. resolution to end the conflict and negotiators in Macedonia resumed talks to work out details of a Yugoslav withdrawal from the province.

Together, the two developments injected new life into the drive for peace in the Balkans and created new optimism that an end to the war might be at hand.

The agreement between eight foreign ministers, including those from Russia and key NATO countries, came after 12 hours of extremely difficult negotiations. The draft resolution basically reaffirmed a 10-point peace plan accepted by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic last week in Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, but with considerable new detail.

It calls for the withdrawal of all Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo “according to a rapid time-table” and sets out the need for an international peace force “with substantial NATO participation.”

The draft resolution also gives the alliance sole command of the peacekeeping force and contains language--initially opposed by Moscow--that demands “full cooperation by all concerned, including the international security presence,” with an international war crimes tribunal that indicted Milosevic last month.

“We’ve taken a decisive step in the direction of peace,” said German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who chaired the talks.

Said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright: “We got what we came for.”

Progress on the peace plan came amid reports from NATO that an airstrike Sunday by a B-52 had killed hundreds of Yugoslav troops in western Kosovo.

In Washington, President Clinton described the Cologne agreement as “a step forward” but said the onus is on Milosevic to act.

“The key now, as it has been from the very beginning of the process, is implementation. A verifiable withdrawal of Serb forces will allow us to suspend the bombing and go forward with the plan. NATO is determined to bring the Kosovars home,” Clinton said.

In New York, the 15 members of the U.N. Security Council began considering the Kosovo peace plan. But China quickly objected to some of its provisions, and the debate was adjourned.

Meanwhile, NATO’s military commander in the Balkans, British Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, met with senior Yugoslav military officers in the Macedonian town of Kumanovo to resume detailed talks on the withdrawal of all Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia’s main republic, Serbia. After several hours, three top members of the Yugoslav delegation left the talks early today to consult with their government. They returned an hour later, and negotiations resumed.

The military talks were suspended after two days early Monday when Yugoslav authorities raised questions about the implementation of the peace plan accepted by Milosevic on Thursday.

Agreement on the military talks would begin a pullout that in turn would set in motion the final steps needed to end the conflict. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization has pledged to suspend its airstrikes once it has seen verifiable proof of a Yugoslav withdrawal. That in turn would permit a Security Council vote on the draft resolution agreed to Tuesday in Cologne and the deployment of a robust NATO-led peacekeeping force of about 48,000 that would restore order and help administer the province.

“It’s a process where we’re putting one foot in front of the other,” Albright said. “We’re putting the pieces into place.”

The breakthroughs toward peace came as details began to emerge of one of the alliance’s most devastating attacks yet on the Yugoslav troops blamed for the campaign of terror and “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo. NATO military sources said a B-52 Stratofortress bomber was diverted from its assigned mission when large numbers of Yugoslav soldiers were spotted in the open Sunday in an area where they have been fighting ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA.

The Air Force plane carpet-bombed the troop concentrations with unguided gravity bombs.

“Hundreds were killed,” a NATO military source said. “We caught a bunch of troops out in the open and got lucky.”

NATO officials made no mention of the strike or the number of casualties at their regular afternoon briefing Tuesday. The previous day, German Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz, a NATO military spokesman, said only that Sunday, “we managed to divert heavy bombers from their original targets to strike Serbian positions along the Yugoslav-Albanian border, shortly after we detected numerous Serb troops in fighting action on the ground.”

In other developments Tuesday:

* More Western troops arrived in Macedonia to serve as peacekeepers in Kosovo, with the number there rising to almost 16,600, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said in Brussels. NATO also stepped up its assistance to international humanitarian aid organizations, estimating that 50% of the more than 850,000 refugees who have left Kosovo since NATO bombing began March 24 will want to return home this summer if foreign peacekeepers are there to protect them.

* In Beijing, another piece in the puzzle of a Kosovo settlement--Chinese support--had yet to fall into place. After a seven-hour visit to the Chinese capital, Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who carried last week’s NATO ultimatum to Milosevic, flew off without shedding much light on what the Chinese had told him.

China stressed that NATO has to cease its air attacks before any Security Council vote and complained that the draft resolution cites Chapter 7 of the U.N.’s charter, which allows the use of military force to halt acts of aggression. The Beijing government also protested a reference to the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the body that has indicted Milosevic.

“The Security Council is not a rubber stamp, and we should have full consultations on the text,” said Shen Guofang, China’s deputy permanent representative to the world body.

* In Moscow, Russian Defense Minister Igor D. Sergeyev ordered his staff to prepare for the deployment of 5,000 to 10,000 troops for the new international peacekeeping force. Officials in Cologne insisted that Russian forces would not serve under NATO leadership. Russia also emphasized that the foreign ministers in Germany had reaffirmed the primacy of the United Nations--not NATO--in resolving the Kosovo crisis, and noted pointedly that the text does not mention the alliance.

President Boris N. Yeltsin broke his six-day silence on the Kosovo deal. A short statement from his press service said the president had “expressed satisfaction” with the agreement during a phone call with Clinton.

NATO officials, meanwhile, said Tuesday that, in order to browbeat Milosevic into keeping the commitments he made Thursday, NATO kept pouring on the air power, boosting the number of strike sorties over Yugoslavia to 287--an increase of more than 50% over the previous day. Targeted were Yugoslav forces in Kosovo and facilities across the rest of Serbia.

“Clearly, the Serbs have not implemented the immediate and verifiable end of violence and repression required by last week’s agreement in Belgrade,” Gen. Charles Guthrie, chief of staff of the British armed forces, told a news briefing in London. “We therefore have been turning up the wick and re-intensifying air attacks against a range of military targets.”

Serbian state television showed towering flames and clouds of smoke above a refinery in the city of Novi Sad after NATO hit its fuel depots. A civilian was killed in the attack, the Yugoslav state news agency, Tanjug, reported.

In western Kosovo, heavy ground fighting between Yugoslav troops and KLA rebels was reported by NATO officials. According to Jertz, the alliance military spokesman, the Yugoslavs are reinforcing units in the west by moving armor from the center of the province.

At the Pentagon, officials said they had seen tentative first signs that Yugoslav forces were preparing to withdraw by pulling together large numbers of vehicles. U.S. military officials also described their own tentative plans for a vanguard force of 3,600 U.S. troops to enter Kosovo in the days ahead.

This “enabling force” will begin with 1,900 Marines from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, now in the Aegean Sea awaiting permission from the Greek government to come ashore at the port of Salonika. After the Marine force enters Kosovo on the road from Skopje, Macedonia, the Army will send 1,700 soldiers, including infantry and an armored company, and eight Apache helicopter gunships.

The forces might be prepared to enter the province within four days of an order to do so, officials said.

The breakthrough in the negotiations among representatives from the Group of 8--Russia, Japan and six leading Western nations--came when the foreign ministers from NATO nations agreed to wording in the draft resolution that would require the alliance commander of the peacekeeping force to send periodic progress reports to the Security Council. That agreement established the tangible link demanded by Moscow between the United Nations and the peacekeeping force while preserving NATO’s full control over its troops that would be deployed to Kosovo.

“These are reports, not reporting,” said a senior U.S. official.

Russia appeared to have gained enough concessions to claim a political victory and back the agreement when specific reference to the alliance’s role was included only in an annex and not in the main resolution.

State Department officials said the arrangement is the same used in the deployment of a 60,000-strong NATO-led peacekeeping force to Bosnia-Herzegovina after a peace deal for that Balkan nation was negotiated in 1995.

Moscow also won a concession when the ministers agreed to a sequence of steps that committed NATO to halt its airstrikes before the Security Council can formally pass the resolution.

“The goal is to end the war in the Balkans,” said Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov. “If we can achieve this as quickly as possible, then we can be satisfied.”

As permanent members of the Security Council, Russia and China can veto any resolution brought before the body. Both have insisted that they will not vote for a resolution until the bombing stops.

Visibly relieved by their achievement, the ministers shook hands and cracked jokes after a news conference, while Albright traded kisses with Ivanov and French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine. Tuesday’s meeting also included representatives of the other Group of 8 members: Germany, Canada, Italy, Britain and Japan.

Speaking with reporters here, Albright declared that it is now Milosevic who stands in the way of a final settlement.

“The regime in Belgrade should stop shilly-shallying around,” she said. “Each day of denial leads only to another day’s destruction and another day of delay in preparing for the return of refugees and displaced to their homes. Unless he’s totally tone deaf, he should be getting the message that it’s time to withdraw.”

In an obvious attempt to nudge Milosevic, Albright said earlier Tuesday that she had won commitments from three Kosovo Albanian leaders that the KLA will not fire on Yugoslav units leaving the province.

After the meeting, one of those leaders, Hashim Thaci, confirmed that the KLA will show restraint.

“The KLA very soon will declare that it will refrain from attacking any retreating Serb forces,” he told reporters. He said he expected a formal announcement to come from the ethnic Albanians’ provisional government inside Kosovo.

U.S. officials said they believe that fears of KLA units filling any vacuum created by withdrawing Yugoslav forces are what convinced both Milosevic and Russia to accept the idea of a strong NATO-led peacekeeping force.

*

Marshall reported from Cologne and Dahlburg from Brussels. Times staff writers Maura Reynolds in Moscow, John J. Goldman at the United Nations, Valerie Reitman in Kumanovo and Paul Richter in Washington contributed to this report.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

The Path to Peace in KosovoAfter approval Tuesday by the Group of 8 nations--Russia, Japan and six Western industrial powers--of a draft United Nations resolution for ending the war in Yugoslavia, a series of steps is expected. The first two have already begun.

1. The U.N. Security Council started debate Tuesday on the resolution and may hold a straw vote of members to signal where they stand on the measure.

2. Yugoslav and North Atlantic Treaty Organization officials resumed talks Tuesday in Macedonia aimed at finalizing terms for the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo.

3. Once those terms are agreed upon, the Yugoslav military begins its pullout of forces.

4. NATO verifies that the pullout has begun and suspends its bombing campaign, which began March 24.

5. The Security Council formally adopts the text of the resolution.

6. International peacekeepers enter Kosovo.

Source: Times staff