Note: Place names rendered primarily in Serbian spelling--------------------------------------------------------
"We're having reports now that as many as 4,000 Albanian KosovarAlbanians have been executed in a mass fashion. There may be tens of thousands more." US Secretary of Defense William Cohen NBC's Meet the Press, May 2 « Washington
"Virtually no Kosovar Albanians, virtually none, are living today where they were living two years ago."
NATO spokesman Jamie Shea
April 30 - Brussels
"Refugees told UNHCR that they were leaving Prizren since it was their 'last chance' and spoke of Serbian troops and heavy armor moving in and around Prizren. Prizren's ethnic Albanian population was reportedly terrified with
many men going into hiding." UNHCR Update on Kosovo
May 1 « Geneva
" Our military intervention can and has slowed down the efforts of President Milosevic, instruments for his ethnic cleansing, namely the VJ, the MUP and the
paramilitaries, but we cannot stop such a thing entirely
from the air. Milosevic's mass deportation campaign appears achievable [Milosevic may be able to] completely force ethnic Albanians out... If he really wants to get them out and he uses the same brutal tactics he may have a chance to do this."
NATO military chairman General Klaus Naumann
Quoted by Reuters, May 4 « Brussels
"For those living outdoors, we don't know how they've survived this long. In fact, we don't really know if they have survived." World Food Program spokesman Trevor Rowe
Quoted by Newsweek, May 3 « Geneva
"I've been asked a number of times whether we would talk to Milosevic. I think that one can separate his... alleged actions from the necessity at some stage that one might have to speak to him. 'Negotiate' is a different word."
US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
April 30 « Washington
"Clinton is a better communicator than anyone else. Once Clinton decides [compromise is] what he's going to do, he'll sell it. If Nixon could sell the fall of Saigon as peace with honor, Clinton can sell this." Unnamed US official
Quoted in the New York Times, April 29 « Washington
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I. MORE MASSACRES, RAPES, EXPULSIONS REPORTED
* The Daily Telegraph (London) reported yesterday that a team of British SAS commandos "have compiled a dossier of execution sites and mass graves in Kosovo suggesting that 'ethnic cleansing' by Serb forces is far worse than feared... members of the elite regiment... who have just finished a tour of duty behind the lines, described the situation as much more serious than anything they saw
in Bosnia. 'Some of them are saying it is like a holocaust out there,' said one well-placed KLA source. 'To put it bluntly, the Serbs have gone on a total
killing spree.' "
* Reuters reported today that "many [refugees fleeing Kosovo and arriving today in Morina, Albania] were shaking with fear, bringing with them fresh tales of
horror. Mevlyde Istrefi, 34, said residents of her village of Shale e Bajgores were driven out two days ago by police with dogs, tanks and armoured vehicles.
'We were stopped in the village of Ceceli. They took every man from the tractors and executed them in front of their parents. If someone remained alive, they stepped on them. One young man was first wounded when they shot
him. When they saw he was still alive, they drove over him in an armored personnel carrier... They rode over him once and then backed up over him again.' " Associated Press reported today that "some put the death toll at
about 100 or higher, while others said they saw dozens of bodies on the roadside, in cars and in a stream."
* Reuters also today reported another refugee in Albania "said he had seen his 35 year old brother murdered before his eyes.... 'Alongside the road to Vushtri I saw at least 50 dead bodies... If you want a witness to these murders, I would like to be called,' he said. The reports of new killings came a week after refugees fleeing villages surrounding the west Kosovo town of Djakovica, known as Gjakova in Albanian, told of massacres there. 'It looks the same as Djakovica. Again we are being told that the men were pulled off of the tractors. Again we are beginning to see consistent reports of killings," [UNHCR spokesman in Kukes Ray] Wilkinson said. "Djakovica was a killing field.... This could be worse.' "
* The Boston Globe noted yesterday that "ethnic Albanians reported that Serb militiamen killed at least 32 people in the Kosovo village of Slovinje... Refugees said they were forced to dig graves for the bodies before being
expelled from their homes."
* The Independent (London) reported yesterday that "police are forcing women and children [trying to flee Prizren] to return home while their men are expelled
across the frontier to Albania... [One refugee said] 'at the border, the women and children were turned back « the police said, "now the women and children will be killed by NATO" '... Staffan de Mistura, a senior UN official was at the border [and said] he thought the women of Prizren might be used as human shields."
* Reuters reported May 2 that "those arriving [from Kosovo in Macedonia] on the first train on Monday 'were in the worst shape I've seen because we had people
that were shot...a lot of war wounded...We had people shot, hand grenade injuries,' [Joanna Kotcher of Mercy Corps International] said. 'There were no men at all, only women and children. I know a lot of the women had been raped,' she said, citing reports from refugees." The Independent (London) reported April 30 that "some women [from the villages of Mujlan, Dejle and Draganica,
near the town of Suva Reka]... have told the organization Human Rights Watch and other aid workers, in some detail of the clinical, mechanical way in which they were imprisoned and sexually abused... The women were...locked up in three buildings in Draganica where the younger, prettier ones were singled out for sexual services, sometimes in the middle of the night."
* Reuters April 30 reported that the UNHCR "said Friday it had clear evidence that Serb forces massacred a large group of male refugees in the southwestern Kosovo village of Meja earlier this week [as reported in Kosovo Briefing #69].'There has certainly been a mass killing. I think that is without doubt'... UNHCR spokeswoman Lyndall Sachs told BBC television. BBC television reporter Jeremy Bowen in northern Albania said he had been told by one group of refugees that Serb forces stopped their convoy in Meja Tuesday morning and forced 280 men to get out and stand in a small field. A second group of refugees who passed through Meja later that day reported seeing a big pile of bodies and 1,000 other Kosovo men, still alive, sitting in llines under armed guard. 'Five minutes after we left we heard shooting. It went on for 10, 15 minutes non-stop,' one refugee from the second group told the BBC." Human Rights Watch April 30 confirmed the accounts: "After nineteen separate interviews with eyewitnesses, the organiz
ation finds that at least one hundred, and perhaps as many as three hundred, men between the ages of sixteen and sixty were taken out of a convoy of refugees by Serbian forces and systematically executed. The
precise number of victims is still unknown." The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that witnesses "described bodies piled up in the center of Meja in a 10 foot by 20 foot heap."
* UNHCR reported today that "two women from Djakovica told UNHCR that 10 days ago, members of three families - a total of 19 persons, mainly women and children - were hiding in the basement of a house when they were discovered by Serbian authorities. They were all shot and the house and their bodies were then burned." The Guardian (London) reported May 1 that "there are still
men and boys hiding in basements. The population has shrunk to 20 percent of its original number, and the town is said to be on fire.... Geci, the dentist [and
refugee from Kosovo now in a camp in Kukes, Albania] ...told slowly... of a Serb tank with flamethrower attachment working its way up a nearby street, pouring fire randomly through front doors. Not all of the houses, he said, were empty." The Washington Post reported April 30 "investigators have identified Djakovica as the site of some of the most wholesale atrocities committed by
Serbian police and paramilitary units since the Serbled Yugoslav government began a massive campaign of expulsion and terror against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian population 36 days ago... 'We have numerous, independent accounts of
killings in Djakovica,' said one tribunal official. 'We may be looking at hundreds of dead. And that may be a conservative figure'... One refugee told investigators that he saw bulldozers moving through Djakovica laden with bodies that were dripping blood. The bodies reportedly were buried in a single grave at the city cemetery. Another resident said he saw the body of a young man dangling from a rope on a pole near the police station, while another reported seeing 30 to 40 bodies lying in the street." The Independent (London) reported
April 29 that "raids on villages around Djakovica apparently took place early on Tuesday morning. Serb police « some wearing black balaclavas « rounded up
men over the age of 16 and led them away or lined them up against walls, while the women and elderly men were ordered to make their way to the border."
* A US Information Agency fact-sheet released April 30 noted that "numerous refugee reports indicate a new pattern of Serb execution in which Serb forces order ethnic Albanian men to run for a distance, and then either shoot or shell them with heavy weapons. This creates forensic evidence that would allow the Serbs to claim the victims were collateral casualties of military operations."
* Reuters reported May 1 that "Serb forces deported thousands of ethnic Albanians from the city of Prizren Saturday in what the United Nations said was the second day of an operation to depopulate the largest town in southern Kosovo." Refugees said Serb police and soldiers were rounding up people and herding them into buses bound for the border village of Zhur, where most walked the last four miles to the frontier. Associated Press reported April 30 that "thousands of refugees streamed out of Kosovo's second largest city [Prizren] on
Friday in what the U.N. refugee agency said was a Serb expulsion campaign targeting doctors, nurses and other professionals. Entire families lugging suitcases and handbags stuffed with the few belongings they managed to grab walked the final 4 miles after fighting to board buses in the southwestern city of Prizren early Friday morning. 'Half of Prizren left their homes today,' said
Mejrem Ibishi, 21, a student who crossed with her two younger siblings, along with a sister-in-law and her 3 month old daughter. [UNHCR spokesman Kris Janowski]
said Serb police detained a doctor and six nurses at the Prizren hospital Thursday morning, 'bundled them into a vehicle and drove them to the Albanian border'... He said it was the fifth case in which professionals had been
expelled from Prizren in the past four or five days... There were no reports of killings or other atrocities, but several refugees said Serb forces had been taking away young men from teenagers to middle-aged men and dressing them in military uniforms." An USIA fact-sheet released April 30 reported that "In addition to random executions, the Serbs appear to be targeting members of the Kosovar Albanian intelligentsia including lawyers, doctors, and political leaders."
* Human Rights Watch reported April 29 that "the entire village of Hade near Obilic in central-eastern Kosovo, with approximately 1,400 inhabitants, was systematically expelled from Kosovo yesterday. Villagers reported that Serbian security forces executed five male civilians in the village one week ago."
* A USIA fact-sheet on ethnic cleansing said "we have incontrovertible evidence that thousands of homes in at least 500 cities, towns, and villages have been
damaged. We cannot confirm reports of starvation among IDPs in Kosovo, but presumably there are pockets of deprivation, especially among those who have been in the hills for weeks. In addition, refugees are reporting that Serb forces continue to harass them with forced extortion and beatings, and that some have been strafed by Serb aircraft." The fact-sheet also noted that
"refugees have reported that over 500 villages have been burned since late March, and we have confirmed that the following villages have been entirely destroyed or mostly burned."
* Associated Press reported yesterday that "tens of thousands of refugees who fled to the wilderness last month now appear caught in the middle. Accounts from refugees suggest scores of people have been killed since last week by Serb mortar fire and snipers, with some bodies floating down the Dobrotin River. Ethnic Albanian villagers who fled faced Serb gunfire and beatings before being forced to join the exodus toward the Macedonian border, the refugees said.
Dozens of men also have been taken away by Serb authorities to an unknown fate, they reported. 'They just grabbed my father from the tractor,' said Sadete
Abazi, who said he witnessed paramilitary units seizing men from the line of refugees... The refugees also claimed they were harassed and beaten as they were forced to travel 18 miles to Pristina, where they were herded onto trains to the Macedonian border. Many of the refugees suffer from severe malnutrition and exposure related ailments, aid workers said."
II. HUNGER GROWS AMONG THOSE TRAPPED INSIDE KOSOVO
* Reuters today quoted an unnamed NATO official: " 'Our intelligence reports say yesterday was one of our worst days for refugees'... It was not only their numbers rising again towards the level of the masses seen in the first weeks of NATO's air strikes but their shocking condition, the NATO official said.
There were signs of starvation among the latest arrivals, the official added."
* Newsweek's May 10 edition reports that "Albanians trapped inside Kosovo now face an insidious new enemy: hunger.... Growing reports of widespread hunger
are what most alarm relief officials. Starvation could kill many more than Slobodan Milosevic's dreaded militias can. The last normal harvest in Kosovo was in 1997. War disrupted last year's and this year's plantings, and Serb
troops regularly destroy granaries. Before the NATO bombing campaign began six weeks ago, 210,000 people were already surviving entirely on relief supplies.
World Food Program food stocks in Kosovo on the eve of the war, 3,000 metric tons of wheat, would only have been enough to feed people for a week.
Malnourished people have begun pitching up on the frontiers. On April 23, a team working for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees hiked 10 hours up to the snowbound village of Lipkova on the Macedonian border. There they found 500 newly arrived refugees who had fled over the mountains because their food had run out and the normal border crossing was closed. 'Many of the children appeared to be unconscious, others were too exhausted to talk or even eat,' the UNHCR reported. The refugees said seven children and two elderly people had died from exposure on the way... Jennifer Leaning of the Boston based group Physicians for Human Rights [said that] 'mass death may be imminent.' "
* The Los Angeles Times May 1 reported that "amid reports that starvation threatens many ethnic Albanians displaced within the Yugoslav region, officials are weighing the feasibility of having ethnic Albanian fighters help local
volunteers and other aid workers carry supplies along backwoods guerrilla routes into Kosovo... In recent days, physicians and other humanitarian aid workers have reported that refugees are emerging from Kosovo in increasingly weak condition. Refugees have described going without food for days or weeks; they have told tales of infants dying of starvation... Some humanitarian groups believe that the group best equipped for distributing such aid is the Mother Teresa Society, a Kosovobased organization that in the past has helped a
variety of outside relief organizations funnel assistance into the province. While this group has struggled to continue its work since Yugoslav forces stepped up their 'ethnic cleansing' campaign last month, its workers know the terrain and the people, relief workers say. Still, everyone involved acknowledges the obstacles. Carrying the supplies would mean traversing dangerous mountains that Yugoslav forces are pounding with artillery... Using
airdrops to deliver food to the refugees would require a large number of cargo planes flying at low altitudes, making the aircraft vulnerable to Serbian antiaircraft artillery and shoulder mounted missiles, NATO officials say. NATO planners have estimated that it would take 50 to 100 C130 cargo planes to carry enough food for 250,000 displaced persons; to feed 800,000 the high end of the
estimated range would probably require more than 300 planes and would so congest the airways as to force a halt to airstrikes, German Gen. Klaus Naumann, NATO's
second ranked general, said this week."
* The Los Angeles Times May 1 noted that "the administration is 'desperate' to avert mass starvation in Kosovo... Famine on that scale could raise political
pressure for a ground invasion... While the administration remains intent on avoiding the use of ground troops, some analysts believe that television news
footage of mass starvation is one of the few developments that could force the Western alliance to shift its position and order an invasion.."
III. NEW REFUGEE WAVE SWAMPING MACEDONIA; CAMP CONDITIONS WORSENING IN ALBANIA
* According to figures released today and over the weekend by the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, more than 20,000 refugees have fled or been forcibly
deported from Kosovo to Macedonia, and more than 15,000 to Albania, since April 30. US Defense Department spokesman Kenneth Bacon said yesterday that "aid workers, UNHCR and others, believe that there could be as many as 100,000 Kosovars coming into Albania in the next week or 10 days, just based on the reports they're getting from other refugees and what they're seeing in terms of
people lined up to come over."
* UNHCR reported today that "more than 11,600 refugees arrived in the FYR of Macedonia over the past 24 hours in one of the largest influxes in a single day from Kosovo. The arrivals came mostly by train crammed with people from Pristina and the major towns of Podujevo, Lipljan and Urosevac. About 600 of them came by bus. The arrivals say there may be at least 20,000 people walking from Podujevo south to Pristina to board a train to the FYR of Macedonia."
* Reuters yesterday reported that "Macedonia's refugee crisis moved up a notch on Monday when a series of unexpected train arrivals swamped the main border
crossing with Kosovo, bringing thousands of ethnic Albanians from an area north of the provincial capital Pristina, aid workers said. Three trains arrived at
the main Blace border crossing into Macedonia in less than 24 hours, including the first night train since early April, disgorging refugees at a rate that aid
workers could barely handle. 'Three trains in one day is unprecedented. It looks like they are working overtime to try to clear the area north of Pristina,' Ron Redmond, spokesman for U.N. refugee agency UNHCR, told Reuters.
Like the night train which arrived after midnight, Monday night's trainload came from the area around Podujevo, around 30 km (20 miles) north of Pristina.
Redmond said the third trainload brought to some 9,000 the number of refugees to have arrived at Blace during the day. A further 800 were believed to have crossed at the mountain crossing at Jazince, northwest of the capital Skopje. 'We expect thousands more throughout the night,' said Joanna Kotcher of Mercy Corps International." Reuters April 30 quoted UNHCR spokeswoman Paula Ghedini: "It's a matter of time before we have a serious health hazard. If we have more hot weather, we will have an outbreak of epidemics. The potential for cholera, dysentery, hepatitis are all there."
* Reuters reported yesterday that UNHCR said some 79,700 were now crammed into Macedonia's refugee camps and more than 90,000 others were living with ethnic Albanian kin."
* Reuters reported today that "about 6,000 refugees crossed into northern Albania by early evening, most of them crammed on wagons hauled by tractor, or on foot." British Lieutenant Army General John Reith said yesterday at a NATO briefing that NATO planned to build camps in Albania to house as many as 160,000 more Kosovars fleeing Kosovo.
* The United Nations refugee agency UNHCR is looking at moving 100,000 Kosovo refugees out of camps in the Albanian border town of Kukes to new locations further from the border, a spokesman said on Tuesday. Ray Wilkinson said he believed a decision could be taken in the coming days on whether to close the camps in Kukes. 'We have a situation where this was originally planned to be a temporary transit facility...but it has become a sort of semi permanent place for refugees,' Wilkinson said. 'We are actively discussing moving the camps for
their own protection'... Wilkinson said UNHCR was worried that the Kukes camps were within shelling range of the border and could become a target for Serb artillery. He said moving the settled camps out of Kukes would also make it easier to provide emergency help to new refugees passing through the town. Reuters reported May 1 that "an Albanian village near the border with Kosovo Saturday came under mortar or artillery fire from Yugoslavia, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) said. 'I can tell you that there is shelling going on at Letaj at the moment,' Andrea Angeli, spokesman for the OSCE, told Reuters at 1150 GMT. 'We cannot tell if it is mortar or artillery fire, but it is taking place right now,' he added. Angeli said the report came from an OSCE team which had taken cover near Letaj after going there to investigate reports of two houses being torched overnight.
* Agence France Presse reported yesterday that the local office of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Korca [in southern Albania, near the Macedonia-Albania border] "said there were 12,000 refugees in the region, most
of them expelled from Macedonia."
* Reuters reported April 30 that "more than 100 developing countries Friday introduced a resolution calling for urgent action on Kosovo refugees in the
Balkans, a measure diplomats say Russia and China intend to amend to kill entirely. The resolution, introduced in the Security Council by Gabon on behalf
of some 113 countries, asks all nations to provide help to the refugees and says the United Nations and its agencies should have access to those in need within Kosovo and other parts of Yugoslavia. But diplomats said Russia and China, allies of Belgrade in the council, wanted to include the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia as being responsible for much of the crisis in Kosovo as well as
harm done to civilians within Yugoslavia."
IV. LITTLE DIPLOMATIC MOVEMENT FROM CHERNOMYRDIN TRIP; U.S. "AVOIDING" GROUND TROOPS, NATO EYEING COMPROMISE
* President Clinton said today that in talks with Russia's special envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin yesterday "I reaffirmed what all the allies have agreed those
requirements are, including withdrawal of Serbian security forces from Kosovo and the deployment of an international security force with NATO at its core.
Only then will the refugees have the confidence to return, which is, after all, what we are working for." ["Serbian security forces" have usually been
understood to mean Serbian police and paramilitary forces. NATO communiques from April 12 and April 23 called for the withdrawal of [Milosevic's] "military, police and para-military forces." President Clinton April 5 said that "[Milosevic] could end the bombing, he could end the suffering of the refugees by withdrawing from Kosovo his military, police and paramilitary forces."]
* US State Department spokesman James Rubin said today: "With respect to our positions, they haven't changed. They remain that we must have a NATO core of an international security force, because in the absence of that NATO core, we won't be able to attract the Kosovar Albanians back, nor would America be prepared to participate in such a force. We've made very clear that we need a complete withdrawal of Serb forces. None of those basic points that we and the Russians have been talking about have changed... in the area of Serb forces, we are saying that there needs to be complete withdrawal. And as you I am sure remember from Rambouillet, there were substantial Serb forces permitted. So it is going to be a process where we are going to try to put forward what we think is necessary to create a secure environment, with a NATO core force, with the complete withdrawal of Serb forces. And we will, obviously, have to work that through with the Kosovar Albanians, if the time comes, the main area where we are focuse
d on trying to resolve our disagreement, is on the international
security force. [The Russians] have agreed that these Serb forces, paramilitary police and police and Special Police, need to be removed. They may have a different position on how you exactly define that, but that is a long way from where they started. So you will have to ask the Russians exactly how they define that." Rubin throughout the briefing did not mention "military" forces, nor did he specifically discuss the state of understanding between Russia and the US government on the withdrawal of Yugoslav Army forces from Kosovo.
* Reuters reported today that OSCE Chairman-in-Office Knut Vollebaek "suggested that NATO might be willing to compromise, for example, on whether all Yugoslav
forces have to withdraw from Kosovo." Agence France Presse reported that in excerpts released May 1 of an interview by Germany's weekly Der Spiegel with NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, "Solana was quoted... as saying that the alliance 'is in the process of achieving the aims of our air campaign' and as such the 'final phase' of the war has begun for NATO. In order now to reach a diplomatic solution to the conflict, NATO was willing to make comprises within 'certain limits'... For instance, Solana was reported as saying, not all Serbian forces would necessarily have to be withdrawn from Kosovo - which NATO has been demanding. Instead, some 'border forces could, perhaps, remain.' [As reported in Kosovo Briefing #69, when NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana was asked following the release of NATO's communique on Kosovo whether NATO would require the "withdrawal of all" Serb forces, he replied: "Yes, all."] The alliance was also willing to find a compromise on the composition of an international peaceke
eping force for Kosovo, Solana said. The troop force should include soldiers from Russia and the Ukraine."
* Reuters reported today that "Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin said Tuesday the key issue remains the type of peacekeeping force that would be deployed in
the Yugoslav province. 'Whether it would be paramilitary, military or civil forces of course it's subject to negotiations," the former Russian prime minister told reporters after meeting U.N. SecretaryGeneral Kofi Annan. 'There must be political will, both in Belgrade and NATO,' he said."
* President Clinton yesterday said that "what I am asking for are the minimal conditions necessary for the Kosovars to be able to go home and live in security with self government; that is, they won't go home unless the Serb
security forces are withdrawn. And they won't go home unless there is a credible international security force in which NATO plays a role." When asked whether US forces had to be in such an international security force, he
responded: "Well, I don't think that a lot of the Kosovars will go home if we are not a part of it."
* US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott said Sunday on CBS's "Face the Nation" that "we made very clear as an alliance what he can do to end this conflict right away, and that's meet the conditions that NATO has laid out. And those conditions are, first and foremost, that the refugees have to come home in the circumstances that I just described. And that's going to be possible only if he pulls his forces out of Kosovo, and an international force with NATO at its core goes in....the actual modalities [of a peacekeeping force] can be discussed, as long as there will be NATO at the core, and it will have NATO command and control."
* Reuters reported April 30 that "Moscow's Balkan envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin said on Friday he had made progress towards a settlement of the Yugoslav conflict in talks with President Slobodan Milosevic but doubted NATO would take it seriously. Chernomyrdin gave no details when he spoke to Russian reporters at the airport on his departure for Mosocow after more than six hours of talks
with Milosevic their second meeting in just over a week. 'We have worked out some approaches towards the peaceful solution of the Kosovo crisis. There is a solid progress,' Russia's ItarTass news agency quoted Chernomyrdin as saying, adding that he would visit London and Paris next week. Chernomyrdin said he and
Milosevic had discussed the shape of a possible international presence in Kosovo. He refused to say whether the formula included sending in NATO troops... Chernomyrdin flew into Belgrade from Rome, where he said he saw Russian and Western positions on Kosovo drawing closer. 'After the first part of our meetings, our positions have moved closer on the ways and the directions in which we can pursue (a political solution),' he said following talks with Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema on Thursday." In a separate report, Reuters April 30 noted that "Milosevic shows no sign so far of accepting the West's minimum conditions for stopping its air war against Yugoslavia... [An
unnamed British official said] 'as long as Milosevic doesn't accept that there are going to be foreign troops in Kosovo, including NATO forces, to protect the
returning refugees and that all Serb forces will be gone, the Russians will get nowhere.' "
* Yugoslavia's Foreign Ministry spokesman April 30 told CNN that "President Slobodan Milosevic and the Russian Presidential Envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin defined a seven-point plan for the political solution of Kosovo situation. Those points are as follows, that political solutions for the situation in Kosovo is the only possible solution which should be based on a full respect
of territorial integrity and sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the Republic of Serbia, whose Kosovo is integral part. Second point, that direct political talks should be held between the state of Serbia and representatives of all ethnic groups living in Kosovo, that means without proxy. So no mediation, but direct talks. International community us welcome to be a guest or a witness, but they cannot conduct negotiations like they did it in Paris or in Rambouillet. The third point is, the solution be based on the equal treatment of all ethnic communities living in Kosovo without one
ethnic group over the other. The four in unimpeded and free access of humanitarian organizations under the auspices of UNHCR and ICRC. The fifth one that we can talk about adjusting the number and the level of our forces and deployment of our forces in accordance with a peace stand environment. But that requires immediate withdrawal of NATO offensive forces from the boundaries
of Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The sixth point, which cause the confusion, is, in this sense, that we -- and I clearly and loudly am saying -- we could talk about acceptance of international mission under the U.N. auspices. We can talk about modality, about the volume or mandate of this mission. But it is international presence, international mission within the auspices of the United Nations and within the auspices of the Security Council of the United Nations. And the seventh point is that the whole region, including Yugoslavia,
Republic of Serbia and Kosovo, should be reconstructed."
* The New York Times reported April 29 that Viktor Chernomyrdin "said Russia favored a force under a United Nations mandate that would consist substantially of Russian troops." The Times (London) April 30 reported that Britain's Foreign Secretary Robin Cook yesterday "suggested that Russia now accepted NATO's insistence on a heavily armed peacekeeping force in Kosovo, rather than lightly armed observers: 'We are now getting down to the footnotes; the issues of principles have been resolved.' The sticking point is the composition of the
peacekeeping force. Mr. Chernomyrdin has told Western leaders that Belgrade would never accept forces from the countries now bombing the city, but NATO insists this is non-negotiable. Whatever label is put on the force, it must, like the peacekeeping force in Bosnia, be run by NATO."
* Reuters reported April 30 that Germany's Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder said "said on Friday that NATO had to be at the core of any international peacekeeping force for Kosovo in order to protect the refugees in the
region: 'That is unavoidable.. They have to be able to protect the refugees, not just want to protect them. And that is only possible, based on all that we know, if the core of such a peace force is from NATO. Naturally
Russia and others should contribute. And of course it should be under the auspices of the United Nations. But the core has to be NATO.' The Daily Telegraph (London) reported that Germany's Prime Minister Gerhard Schroeder
April 29 "spelt out what he called 'three non-negotiable conditions' on Kosovo that contrasted with the Kremlin's approach. He said there had to be an end to 'killing'; the refugees should be able to return home and be protected by 'an international military force, with NATO troops at its core'; and 'Yugoslav units, including paramilitaries and special police, must withdraw.. This is the only way we can talk about a temporary suspension in the air strikes, after there are verifiable signs of a start of a withdrawal.' "
* The Independent (London) reported April 30 that "the signs are Belgrade is not prepared to go much beyond a lightly armed, effectively civilian force « a 'KVM with side-arms,' it is being called... There would be next to no NATO participation." The Independent also noted that Boris Milosevic, President Milosevic's brother and Yugoslavia's ambassador to Russia, "almost taunted the
West yesterday by listing candidate countries alongside Russia to take part. He suggested: 'Let's say India, Belarus, perhaps Cyprus; Namibia, Algeria, perhaps
other Arab and Latin American countries, Argentina, Cuba.' He flatly excluded any NATO member which had taken part in the bombing." The Financial Times
reported April 29 that "one Russian diplomat in Belgrade said he believed that Milosevic could still be persuaded to accept a UN-led military force excluding NATO member-states taking part in the air campaign."
* The New York Times reported April 29 that "the use of Russia turned into an option, Administration and European officials said, as the military outlook of the Kosovo conflict became less certain... the military alternative, an invasion by land, appeared less and less likely after the Administration choked off discussion of ground troops at the summit meeting. Among the factors that the White House is considering are polls that show that less than 50% of the American public supports ground troops in Kosovo if that will mean American casualties.. Administration officials seemed confident that if the path of compromise was chosen, Mr. Clinton would find a way to justify it.. While a diplomatic solution is looking better and better, at this point it still seems
a long shot, Administration officials said."
* The Financial Times reported April 30 that Milosevic "sought yesterday to pre-empt an international peace settlement by focusing attention on a purported agreement with Ibrahim Rugova, the ethnic Albanian leader believed to be under house arrest in Kosovo. Serbian TV reported that Mr. Milosevic had called an agreement made on Wednesday between Rugova and Serbia's President Milan Milutinovic a 'first victory on the road to peace' after six weeks of conflict over the Serb province. The Milutinovic-Rugova statement called for an end to NATO bombing and for Kosovo to be given 'wide self-rule' within Serbia."
V. US, NATO ALLIES RELUCTANT TO AID TRIBUNAL INDICTMENT OF MILOSEVIC?
* The New York Times April 30 reported that International Criminal Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour "wants the US Government to provide more information about Mr. Milosevic's role in the campaign in Kosovo. American
officials respond that there is enough in the public record to indict Mr. Milosevic and that has been supplemented by information from the US Government.. Above all, what is needed [former State Department war crimes analyst on Bosnia in 1992 and 1993 Jon] Western said, is the 'commitment from the President himself, and that has not been forthcoming.' Within the Administration, there are strong advocates for indicting Mr. Milosevic, while others argue that an indictment would not be a good idea, because it might be necessary to negotiate with him to end the war. For that reason, some NATO allies are also opposed to seeing him indicted, a NATO official said today."
