Yugoslav Army Tightens Noose

The Yugoslav army has seized control of all major roads into Montenegro, blocking imports of raw materials, confiscating much-needed humanitarian aid and preventing Westerners from entering Yugoslavia’s smaller republic, authorities here said Thursday.

“The Yugoslav army has blocked Montenegro completely; tension is increasing, Belgrade is tightening the noose,” the Information Ministry of Montenegro declared in a statement about the army’s gradual extension of control.

Of greatest concern is a new, heavily fortified army checkpoint set up this week in Kumbor, near the border with Croatia, Montenegrin Deputy Prime Minister Dragisa Burzan said Thursday in an interview.

“Some bunkers have been made,” Burzan said. “There are heavy machine guns in the bunkers, on each side of the road, so you really have to stop.”

The pro-Western government of Montenegro, which along with Serbia makes up the rump Yugoslavia, has a strong police force. But army forces controlled by officials in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, also are stationed here, and the two sides have been in an uneasy standoff that some fear could lead to civil war.

Montenegrin authorities will consider next week whether to ask the police to remove the army checkpoint by force, Burzan said.

“The police were ready to do it, they claim, but it would be a very bloody thing to do,” he said. “The problem is, it can move to a huge conflict. That is something you do not do unless you are in a totally desperate situation. . . . [But] we will open at least one of the border crossings suitable for humanitarian aid.”

The growing tension between Yugoslavia’s two republics came amid international efforts to find a peaceful way out of the Balkan nation’s clash with the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. But envoys meeting in Moscow and Bonn ended the day without agreement on peace proposals.

Burzan, the Montenegrin deputy prime minster, said Thursday that Yugoslav army forces and supporters of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic within Montenegro are “very tense and smelling defeat. . . . These people are under horrible strain.”

Responding to the army’s growing aggressiveness in Montenegro but also to what is seen here as Milosevic’s increasing weakness in his standoff with NATO, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic issued a statement Thursday warning that military officers who break Montenegrin law will be punished after Yugoslavia’s conflict with the alliance ends.

“Right after peace is introduced, we will all have to pay our bills--civilians and soldiers,” Djukanovic said. “Montenegro certainly--and I hope the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia too--will not be quiet about anybody’s violent, criminal and illegal behavior. With no exceptions, everybody will be found responsible: The ones who robbed money, cars and other property from citizens.”

The Montenegrin government has a policy of visa-free entry for foreigners and is seeking to bring in humanitarian aid for Kosovo refugees here. But in the last few days, soldiers at the army checkpoints set up a few miles from border crossings have blocked anyone without Belgrade-approved visas, even in cases in which border police have let people pass.

The military also has confiscated numerous shipments of goods intended for relief efforts and is blocking other shipments essential for the republic’s economy, Montenegrin authorities said.

Addressing these issues, Djukanovic declared: “In particular, those who confiscated humanitarian aid--including hospital medical equipment, endangering in that way powerless and hurt people--will be found responsible.”

In another indication of the Montenegrin government’s growing confidence against the pressures from pro-Milosevic forces, Djukanovic criticized army officers here for “tying their professional destiny to the existence of this [Belgrade] regime, whose defeat and end is already visible, even to people who don’t know much.”

Amid the growing stress within the Yugoslav federation, the search for a diplomatic solution to the war shifted Thursday to Moscow, where U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott met with Russia’s special envoy for the Balkans, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin.

Talbott, Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who is representing the European Union, had cobbled together the framework of a peace plan earlier in the week, and Chernomyrdin went to Belgrade on Wednesday to show Milosevic the plan.

Chernomyrdin said he and Milosevic had made “a step forward” but that the Yugoslav president was still unwilling to yield on major matters demanded by NATO.

Before leaving Belgrade, Chernomyrdin reiterated the Russian viewpoint: “For shifts to occur in the settlement of the Kosovo crisis, it is necessary to stop the bombings and solve everything at the negotiating table. . . . The problem should be diverted into a political channel under the aegis of the U.N.”

But at NATO headquarters in Brussels, spokesman Jamie Shea refused to delineate how far the Milosevic government must go toward meeting NATO’s key demands: the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo and the return of ethnic Albanian refugees under the protection of an international peacekeeping force with alliance troops at its core--before the military grouping would consider a pause in its 8-week-old bombing campaign.

“We’re not at that time yet,” Shea said. “The diplomats who are involved in this process have made it clear that although they’ve made excellent progress, there is still a lot of hard work to do.”

Envoys from the Group of 8 countries--Russia and seven Western powers--met for a second day in Bonn, trying to draft a U.N. resolution dictating peace terms to Milosevic that Russia and China would be willing to support in the Security Council. But after 12 hours, talks broke up with divisions remaining about much of the text. The group was to resume work today.

In other developments:

* In the southeastern Serbian town of Krusevac, hundreds of Yugoslav soldiers who reportedly had deserted from posts in Kosovo and returned to their hometowns refused a compromise Thursday that would have absolved them from punishment but sent them back to the beleaguered province, the Montenegrin daily newspaper Vijesti reported. Reservists from Krusevac rejected the offer from Yugoslav 3rd Army commander Gen. Nebojsa Pavkovic; instead, they asked for the war to end. An additional 400 reservists who reportedly deserted earlier this week to the town of Aleksandrovac also said “they have no intention to return to the war,” Vijesti reported.

* Maj. Gen. Charles Wald, a senior planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday that the Kosovo Liberation Army, or KLA, had captured the village of Jablanica in Kosovo. He said the action was significant because it gave the rebels control of the roads in the area where they are operating. Wald said if the Yugoslav army sends large numbers of troops to combat the rebels, NATO would attack the force. The alliance has had difficulty in recent days targeting Yugoslav troops, he said, because they are dispersed and hidden.

* Kosovo rebels claimed Thursday to have killed 33 Serbian soldiers and a Russian fighting alongside the Serbs in battles over the last three days. Kosova Press, the KLA’s news agency, said the fighting occurred along the Albanian-Yugoslav border. The report could not be confirmed. There have been rumors, but no confirmed reports, of Russian sympathizers and mercenaries helping Serbs fight the KLA, which seeks independence for Kosovo.

* The Pentagon confirmed Thursday that AC-130 Spectre gunships have been operating in Kosovo since April 19. The low-flying, turboprop aircraft carry a 25-millimeter and a 40-millimeter cannon. Although chief Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon declined to discuss the tactics used by the planes, he said their use showed that NATO pilots were operating lower than 15,000 feet.

* The U.S. Consulate in Hong Kong said today that China has stopped all U.S. warships from visiting the port in May and June because of “the current situation,” an apparent reference to the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. U.S. warships have routinely paid port visits to Hong Kong since Britain returned the territory to Chinese rule in July 1997.

* U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan visited a refugee tent city Thursday in northern Albania and called for the United Nations to play a key role in resolving the conflict. Annan was surrounded by applauding refugees in Kukes, temporary home to about 100,000 Kosovars--the largest single concentration of the ethnic Albanians who have fled Kosovo since NATO air raids began.

Times staff writers Richard C. Paddock in Moscow and Norman Kempster in Washington, along with Associated Press and Reuters, contributed to this report.