Allies, Russia Back Plan to End Kosovo Conflict

Russia joined with leading NATO nations Thursday to back a framework for ending the conflict in Yugoslavia that would include an international security presence to enforce peace in strife-torn Kosovo province.

The Kosovo plan, endorsed during a meeting here of foreign ministers from the Group of 8 industrial countries, marks an important move in the direction of a diplomatic settlement of NATO’s first war. For the first time since alliance bombing of Yugoslavia began six weeks ago, the United States and all of Europe’s major powers--including Russia--agreed to a set of general principles for ending the conflict.

While the agreement generated praise and a sense of relief in allied capitals, senior officials involved in the process cautioned that the accord marks only the first step in a long political journey.

Much of the agreement’s language was left deliberately vague to paper over differences between Russia and the West. The larger challenge of persuading Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept key conditions in the accord, such as the withdrawal of Yugoslav security forces from Kosovo, also has not been addressed.

Still, few disputed that the unity shown in Bonn constitutes genuine progress.

“We agree on the fundamentals,” said Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. “The end of the 20th century cannot allow ethnic cleansing to succeed and aggression to pay dividends in the heart of Europe.”

Although Russian Foreign Minister Igor S. Ivanov cautioned against talk of a breakthrough, he acknowledged that “we can speak about a move forward.”

Traveling in Germany in the course of a brief European trip, President Clinton praised the accord as “a significant step forward.”

“I think there is a real peace process underway,” Clinton said, while warning that the diplomatic effort “has no chance of reaching a satisfactory conclusion unless we maintain allied unity and firmness.”

Yugoslav Reaction to Accord Muted

In Belgrade, the Yugoslav capital, initial reaction to the Bonn accord was muted. State television mentioned the development without commentary in the 27th minute of an hourlong evening newscast.

In addition to the deployment of an international military force in Kosovo, the agreement’s key points include demands that Milosevic stop all military activity in Kosovo; withdraw military, police and paramilitary forces from the region; and allow all refugee and displaced ethnic Albanians to return to their homes.

Thursday’s agreement shifts the focus to the United Nations Security Council, which faces the potentially more difficult task of drafting language for a resolution authorizing deployment of an international security force in Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia’s dominant republic, Serbia.

Drafting an acceptable U.N. resolution won’t be easy: Diplomats say it must contain details on the composition and the command structure of the international force--details deliberately skirted in Thursday’s statement of principles because of differences between NATO allies and Russia.

Senior U.S. officials in Washington said forging a detailed plan for a Kosovo peace force requires additional consultations with Russia and among alliance member countries.

“Getting a signed agreement on the kind of force we want and the implementation detail that’s needed is going to take time,” one official said. “What none of us wants is to take this to the U.N. and end up with massive bickering. That way it makes Milosevic look like he’s won.”

The differences separating Moscow and NATO remain considerable.

The United States and other alliance countries insist that any international peace force in Kosovo must be heavily armed and built around a core of NATO forces. That concept draws little enthusiasm from Russia’s leadership, which remains highly suspicious of the alliance and on friendly terms with Yugoslavia. Similarly, NATO insists that all Yugoslav security forces must leave Kosovo, while Russia supports Belgrade’s proposal to keep several thousand Yugoslav troops in the province. Both issues are left vague in Thursday’s statement.

Resolution Would Isolate Milosevic

If it succeeds, a U.N. resolution for a well-armed Kosovo peacekeeping force could be a major breakthrough for NATO. It would increase Milosevic’s political isolation and boost public support for such a force in allied nations, such as Germany and France, where U.N. involvement is viewed as an essential prerequisite under international law. U.N. participation also could create an opening for Milosevic to accept an international force by claiming that it meets his demand that it not be NATO-led, though some Yugoslav officials have rejected any role for NATO in the force.

Speaking to reporters in Belgrade earlier this week, Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesman Nebojsa Vujovic rejected what he called “an occupation force” for Kosovo but suggested that Milosevic would not rule out an armed peacekeeping force under a U.N. flag.

Officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels, while welcoming the Bonn agreement, declared that the alliance’s aerial bombardment will go on, even intensify, until Milosevic agrees fully to the basic demands of Clinton and other alliance leaders: withdrawing Yugoslav security forces from the province and allowing an armed international security force to administer Kosovo and oversee the return of about 700,000 ethnic Albanians who have fled the province.

In other developments Thursday:

* In Rome, moderate Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova turned up at a tightly controlled news conference a day after being allowed to leave Yugoslavia. It was unclear why Milosevic permitted Rugova to travel, but it was interpreted by some analysts as a concession aimed at softening Western opinion, much like the release Sunday of three captured U.S. soldiers. At the news conference, Rugova said an international peacekeeping force of troops from NATO member nations and other countries is vital for ending the conflict.

Until his departure from Yugoslavia, Western countries feared that Rugova had been a virtual prisoner of Milosevic. The ethnic Albanian leader answered only two questions, and neither concerned the conditions he had been living under in Yugoslavia.

* Bowing to intense international pressure, the Macedonian government reopened its borders less than a day after closing them to newly arriving Kosovo refugees. In a confusing news conference, at least one top Macedonian official said the government would continue to restrict entry by setting a daily quota of new arrivals linked to the number of refugees resettled abroad. But an official with the Interior Ministry, which controls border crossings, said there would be no such limitation nor any future border closings.

U.N. officials welcomed the news but expressed concern about the fate of an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 refugees who were forced back into Yugoslavia during the brief closure. At least one U.N. worker was said to have seen Serbian soldiers beating refugees forced to reenter Yugoslavia.

Macedonian officials had closed the border after complaining that the influx of more than 200,000 Kosovo Albanians has overwhelmed the tiny country’s social and economic resources.

* A day after an Apache helicopter crashed in Albania and killed its two pilots, the U.S. Army said it had ordered a 24-hour stand-down for the gunships. The crash was the second in less than two weeks involving the vaunted antitank helicopters, which have yet to see action in Kosovo.

* The three American POWs released Sunday were “kicked, punched, hit with rifle butts and treated extremely roughly” during their abduction by Serbs on March 31 on the Macedonian-Yugoslav border, said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon. He said the three soldiers, while conducting training exercises, were surrounded by men wearing the uniforms of the Yugoslav army. They were treated roughly in the next few days while they underwent interrogation and suffered some of their injuries at that time as well, Bacon said.

The three were being trained in techniques for fleeing enemy forces in just such a situation. When they were approached by the Yugoslav forces, one of the soldiers was standing at a .50-caliber machine gun mounted in a Humvee. The soldiers also had an M-16 rifle and two sidearms.

But the machine gun was not ready for action, the approaching force was “substantially larger,” and the vehicle had run into a ditch, so the soldiers chose not to resist, Bacon said. The three have been awarded the Purple Heart, the medal given to troops wounded in combat, as well as prisoner of war medals and a NATO commendation.

* NATO’s air armada in Operation Allied Force has swelled to 916 planes, Bacon said, including 639 U.S. aircraft and 277 from other nations. With planes now stationed in Hungary, NATO will be able to strike Yugoslavia from any direction, he said.

* Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian rebel force has increased in size by “several thousand” since the air campaign began March 24, to between 8,000 and 10,000, according to Pentagon estimates. While the rebels are still “outmanned and outgunned” by the Serbs, their numbers have increased as a result of the “ethnic cleansing” campaign carried out by Yugoslav forces against ethnic Albanians in the province, he said.

* Assessing the status of NATO’s air campaign, alliance spokesmen in Brussels said that, during 44 days of air raids and nearly 17,000 sorties, they have managed to pin down Yugoslav forces in Kosovo and cut them off from supply bases and headquarters elsewhere in Serbia. NATO fighters and bombers have attacked more than 300 pieces of Yugoslav military equipment, including tanks, artillery pieces, armored personnel carriers, trucks and other assets. The targets include 200 tanks and artillery pieces, or an estimated 20% of the heavy equipment being used by Yugoslav forces in their “ethnic cleansing” campaign, NATO officials said.

It is not known what percentage of the airstrikes resulted in successful hits.

* In a letter to the president of the U.N. Security Council, Yugoslavia accused NATO of conducting “genocidal” airstrikes and said the destructive power of the explosives dropped on its territory has been equal to about nine Hiroshima atomic bombs. Yugoslavia’s ambassador to the world body, Vladislav Jovanovic, welcomed a U.N. mission to assess humanitarian needs in Serbia, and a UNICEF representative immediately left for Belgrade.

The Bonn meeting, the first by the Group of 8 nations since the bombing campaign began, was held at the majestic Petersberg, the German government guest house in the hills outside Bonn overlooking the Rhine. On Thursday, it was wreathed in fog.

The G-8 consists of Russia and the world’s seven leading industrial nations: the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Japan. Of the eight, all but Russia and Japan are NATO members.

Rubin reported from Bonn, Marshall from Washington and Dahlburg from Brussels. Times staff writers T. Christian Miller in Brazda, Macedonia; Richard Boudreaux in Belgrade; Richard C. Paddock in Moscow; Edwin Chen in Ingelheim, Germany; Janet Wilson at the United Nations; Paul Richter in Washington; and Times researcher Maria De Cristofaro in Rome contributed to this report.

* SPENDING BILL: The House OKd a $13-billion spending bill with GOP add-ons for the Balkan war. A28