U.S. Envoy Makes Last-Ditch Effort for Kosovo Peace

Carrying the threat of imminent NATO airstrikes, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke pressed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Monday to accept a Kosovo peace deal, but there was no indication of a breakthrough, and the strife-torn province remained aflame.

After completing about four hours of talks with Milosevic, Holbrooke spent another four hours at the U.S. Embassy here in the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, much of that time in consultation with top officials in Washington. It remained unclear early today whether he would meet with Milosevic again.

“Ultimately, the decision as to what happens will be made by the decisions and the actions of the Yugoslav leadership,” Holbrooke told reporters before meeting with Milosevic. “It’s a serious situation, and we are not here today with any prognosis of how it is likely to end.”

In Washington, President Clinton said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will have no choice but to act unless Milosevic reverses course.

“If President Milosevic continues to choose aggression over peace, NATO’s military plans must continue to move forward,” Clinton said after meetings with his foreign policy advisors and telephone conversations with allied leaders.

He said that all members of NATO, joined by almost all other European powers including Russia, share the objective of ending more than a year of bloodshed in Kosovo by giving broad autonomy to the ethnic Albanians who make up 90% of the population of the southern province of Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic.

“I hope that can be achieved by peaceful means,” Clinton said. “If not, we have to be prepared to act.”

On Capitol Hill, however, the Senate began debating legislation designed to cut off funding for military action in Kosovo unless Congress specifically approves. A vote could be taken as soon as this afternoon.

On the Senate floor, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) argued that Clinton has no legal authority to commit U.S. planes to a NATO bombing squadron without specific approval from Congress.

“We are taking sides in a civil war where I think the U.S. security interest is not clear,” she said. “It is incumbent for the president to come to Congress before he takes any military action in Kosovo. What if an American plane is shot down? What if there is an American POW? What then? Before we go bombing sovereign nations, we ought to have a plan.”

But Sen. John W. Warner (R-Va.), chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, called on Congress to approve military action.

“I’m convinced [Clinton] is going to join with other NATO members to give that order” to begin bombing, Warner said. “This body has to . . . say these men and women are about to fly, and the Congress of the United States should be on record supporting them.”

The Yugoslav army and Serbian military police, meanwhile, continued an offensive in Kosovo that has driven thousands of ethnic Albanians from their homes. The official Tanjug news agency carried an army statement Monday declaring: “As soon as terrorist provocations and NATO threats cease, the Yugoslav army will withdraw to barracks, it will release reservists and return to regular peaceful tasks.”

Terrorists struck Kosovo’s provincial capital, Pristina, on Monday for the second straight night, increasing fears that NATO airstrikes could set off a wave of revenge killings.

An explosion at a cafe and bar in central Pristina killed a 30-year-old ethnic Albanian man and wounded two other victims about 7:30 p.m. About half an hour later, a 22-year-old woman was killed, and two other people wounded, when gunmen opened fire with automatic rifles at another cafe and bar, which is popular with ethnic Albanians.

The attacks followed the killing of four well-armed Serbian police, who were sprayed with automatic weapons fire Sunday evening. The gunmen escaped, but police blamed ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

In Brussels, site of NATO headquarters, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin told reporters that Holbrooke, who has long experience negotiating with the Yugoslav president, “will be the best judge of whether Milosevic is talking turkey, or not, or whether he’s stalling, and we’re not going to accept stalling tactics.”

Milosevic, according to Associated Press, criticized the Americans and their allies for the NATO threats and their handling of the peace negotiations.

“Your people should be ashamed, because you are getting ready to use force against a small European nation because it protects its territory against separatism and its people against terrorism,” Milosevic was quoted as saying in a letter to the French and British foreign ministers.

About 400 NATO planes are in position in the region to strike Yugoslav military targets if Belgrade refuses to sign the international peace plan for Kosovo and agree to enforcement by a 28,000-member NATO-led peacekeeping force. Any NATO attack would probably begin with cruise missiles aimed to disable Yugoslavia’s air defense network.

Clinton declined to set a deadline for the start of bombing against Serbian positions. But Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Monday that action was imminent unless Milosevic backed down quickly.

Albright said the decision to send Holbrooke to Belgrade indicated Washington “has gone the last mile” for peace. Tellingly, she used the past tense to describe diplomatic efforts to defuse the crisis.

“Time has run out,” she told a brief State Department news conference.

Last week, U.S. officials suggested that the Clinton administration would be reluctant to give the “go” order while Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny M. Primakov was paying an official visit to Washington. Primakov, whose government opposes the use of force although it supports the U.S.-drafted peace proposal, is scheduled to arrive in the American capital today.

But Albright said Primakov’s trip would not be allowed to delay NATO action.

Before flying to Belgrade, Holbrooke had met in Brussels with NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana, NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark and foreign ministers Hubert Vedrine of France, Robin Cook of Britain and Joschka Fischer of Germany.

“We think that this is the moment of truth,” Solana declared. “NATO is ready to act” if Holbrooke’s effort fails, he said.

Clark said that “if required,” NATO “will strike in a swift and severe fashion.”

Holbrooke’s talks with Milosevic began at 7 p.m. at the presidential palace in Belgrade.

But shortly after the U.S. envoy landed at Belgrade airport, Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic reiterated his government’s defiance of NATO’s demands.

“Bombs thrown any place in Serbia would kill any prospect for a political, democratic solution,” Jovanovic said. “They will kill any negotiations. . . . They will encourage separatism and terrorism elsewhere in the region.”

Milosevic’s agreement to receive Holbrooke showed that Belgrade wants peace, but there should be no ultimatums, Jovanovic said.

“Yugoslavia cannot be threatened nor obliged by force to sign something she does not want to,” he said. “There is no way to bring anything good with pressures and threats against Yugoslavia.”

Jovanovic also continued to reject any stationing of NATO-led troops in Kosovo to enforce a peace deal.

“If anybody touches Yugoslavia, [they] will be met by defense with all resources that we have,” Jovanovic said. “There should not be any doubt in that respect. We do not invite any foreign troops to our territory, nor shall we be inviting them in the future, because we are a sovereign territory.”

In his remarks to reporters, Clinton stressed the stakes for the U.S. in preventing the Kosovo crisis from spreading.

“Serbia’s mounting aggression must be stopped,” the president said. “Since the adjournment of the peace talks in Paris less than a week ago, an estimated 30,000 more Kosovars have fled their homes. The number now exceeds more than a quarter of a million people, one out of every eight people in Kosovo. Many of them now are in neighboring Albania, Macedonia and Montenegro, all of which could be quickly drawn into this conflict. So could other nations in the region, including Bosnia, where allied determination ended a terrible war, and our allies Greece and Turkey.

“We have learned a lot of lessons in the last 50 years,” he said. “One of them surely is that we have a stake in European freedom and security and stability.”

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Holley reported from Belgrade and Kempster from Washington. Times staff writer Paul Watson in Pristina contributed to this report.