CONFLICT-YUGOSLAVIA: US Hardens Rhetoric, Eases Conditions

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Apr 16 1999 (IPS) - With NATO now in its fourth week of its bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the administration of President Bill Clinton has toughened its rhetoric, while giving qualified support to German peace proposals.

In a barrage of public appearances Thursday, Clinton and other top officials vowed to intensify the air attacks against military targets in Kosovo and Serbia until Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic complied with NATO’s demands.

Clinton also called for a “democratic transition in Serbia,” suggesting that Washington now favoured Milosevic’s ouster from power.

At the same time, Clinton’s national security adviser, Sandy Berger, labelled the peace plan put forward by Germany at this week’s European Union summit in Brussels “very constructive.”

And the State Department said it would “welcome” a United Nations Security Council role in authorising an international security force in Kosovo.

The various messages on Kosovo put out by the administration came as both houses of Congress grilled top officials for the first time since the bombing campaign began Mar 24. Congress resumed its sessions Tuesday after the Easter recess.

The flurry of activity here came 24 hours after a NATO warplane by mistake, bombed a convoy of Albanian Kosovar refugees, killing at least 75, in what has been the biggest civilian loss of life since the air war began.

US and NATO officials said they regretted the deaths but insisted that the incident would not deter them from carrying out their battle plan against Yugoslavia.

Clinton said the attack was “regrettable, (but) also inevitable in a conflict of this kind…If the requirement is that nothing like this can ever happen, then ‘we’re saying it’s okay with us if Mr. Milosevic displaces over a million Kosovars, (and) kills and rapes thousands upon thousands of them’.”

Speaking before a gathering of newspaper editors in San Francisco, Clinton said that NATO would “maintain and intensify (its) attacks until Mr. Milosevic’s forces leave Kosovo and the refugees return under the protection of an international force, or until his military is weakened to the point when he can no longer keep his vice-like grip on Kosovo.”

He said the bombing would stop only when Belgrade met three conditions:

– Withdrawing its security forces from Kosovo.

– Permitting more than one million displaced Albanian Kosovars to return home.

– Agreeing to the deployment of “an international security force with NATO at the core” to protect “all Kosovars, including the Serb minority there.”

Such an international force “should also include members of NATO’s Partnership for Peace that represent the whole range of ethnic groups in Europe” and Russia, which most analysts here believe may be the only power which can bring Milosevic to a settlement.

In a meeting with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in Oslo earlier this week, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said the composition of a peacekeeping force was one of the most delicate issues to be addressed in negotiating a political settlement.

Milosevic, who has strongly rejected any NATO role in such a force, would have to go along with such a plan, according to Ivanov.

In his 35-minute speech, all of which was devoted to Kosovo, Clinton also said he opposed both the province’s partition between its Serb and Albanian populations – which many foreign-policy analysts here believe is inevitable after the latest round of “ethnic cleansing” – and its independence.

Those who favour partition, he said, “haven’t looked very closely at the map. It is a problem of staggering complexity. …I believe the last thing we need in the Balkans is greater Balkanisation.”

As for independence, “I continue to think it is not the best answer,” he said. “Kosovo lacks the resources and infrastructure to be viable on its own. Moreover, Yugoslavia’s long-suffering neighbours fear that an independent Kosovo would be unstable, and that the instability itself would be contagious.”

At the same time, Clinton suggested that Milosevic’s continued rule over Yugoslavia made regional stability impossible. “The region’s democracies will never be safe with a belligerent tyranny in their midst,” he said.

Berger, who briefed reporters after Clinton’s speech, added, “it’s hard for me to imagine a truly democratic Serbia that Mr. Milosevic, who is a card-carrying totalitarian, would be leading.”

Those were not the only harsh words directed at Milosevic. In her testimony before Congress, Albright accused the Yugoslav leader of “unleash(ing) a rampage of ethnic cleansing and genocide” against the Albanian Kosovars.

Previously, US officials had referred only to “incidents of genocide” carried out by Yugoslav forces.

US officials meanwhile denied reports from Brussels that Washington opposed peace proposals discussed at the EU summit Wednesday.

Those proposals, some of which reportedly were endorsed by EU leaders and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, called for the creation of an “international interim administration” in Kosovo under EU control, a police force consisting of both Albanians and Serbs, elections and the deployment of an UN Security Council- authorised international military force to protect all of the province’s inhabitants.

The proposals reportedly were based on a plan floated by German Foreign Minister Joachim Fischer earlier in the week which included a proposal for a renewable bombing halt if Milosevic began withdrawing forcing from Kosovo, an idea which is strongly rejected here.

“There has to be some manifestation of his intent to comply,” said Berger. “On the other hand, it’s probably not reasonable to believe that the last international peacekeeper would have to arrive before we would stop the bombing.”

At the same time, Berger said the proposals were “a very constructive way” of sequencing moves toward a peace settlement “very much within the conditions that we have set forth.”

The State Department declared it would “welcome a UN Security Council resolution endorsing any political settlement reached, including deployment of an international military presence in Kosovo.”

As for the proposal of an “international interim administration,” – reportedly a French proposal – the State Department said, “it is not clear whether the EU, as opposed to the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), is the best place to lodge this responsibility.

” We will want to discuss this further with all concerned.”

Unlike the European Union, the OSCE includes the United States, Canada, and the states of Central and Eastern Europe and of the former Soviet Union.