CONFLICT-KOSOVO: US Beats War Drums Louder

By Jim Lobe Reprint | | Print |

Jim Lobe

WASHINGTON, Jun 2 1999 (IPS) - Key European envoys huddled with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade Wednesday while top US officials here talked about new steps to escalate the war if the Yugoslav leader does not soon sue for peace.

President Bill Clinton would sit down for the first time with his top military brass Thursday to discuss the feasibility of a ground invasion of Yugoslavia later this summer, according to newspaper reports.

Clinton himself announced that Washington was sending an additional 68 warplanes to participate in NATO’s 70-day-old air campaign against Yugoslavia and planned to nearly double the number of US troops committed to a NATO peace-keeping force in Kosovo.

Citing Milosevic’s indictment last week by the UN war crimes tribunal in the Hague, Clinton said the United States had “a moral responsibility to oppose crimes against humanity” and vowed that “(Milosevic’s) 10-year (ethnic) cleansing campaign will end once and for all.”

His remarks came as the pace of both diplomacy and military planning over Kosovo slipped into top gear.

On Wednesday, European mediators from Russia and Finland flew to Belgrade for crucial talks with Milosevic on terms for ending NATO’s air war.

Administration officials here said the trip by Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari and former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, while unlikely to result in an immediate agreement, could significantly advance prospects for an end to the war.

In recent days, top Yugoslav officials have stated repeatedly that they accepted the basic principles for a peace accord, laid out by the Group of Eight foreign ministers – representing the six major NATO powers, Japan, and Russia – at a meeting in Bonn on May 6.

Although hedged with conditions, that acceptance was reaffirmed in writing by Milosevic himself in a letter to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder 24 hours ago. Germany will chair a G-8 foreign ministers’ meeting in Cologne next weekend which will then be followed by a G-8 summit, June 18-20.

The G-8’s basic principles, as agreed last month, were quite broad – particularly compared with the peace demands of NATO leaders made at various times during the Kosovo crisis.

For example, the G-8 statement called for the withdrawal of Yugoslavia withdraw police, military, and paramilitary from Kosovo without specifying numbers or percentages. Belgrade has stated its willingness to reduce its forces to normal, “peacetime” levels of about 36,000 soldiers and police.

NATO, on the other hand, has insisted that all Yugoslav forces be withdrawn, with the possibility that several hundred could return as border guards or security forces to protect Serbian religious or historical shrines.

Russia reportedly has moved toward accepting this position.

But even more problematic is a clause in the G-8 statement that called for the deployment of “international civil and security presences” in Kosovo to oversee the return of an estimated 1.2 million Albanian Kosovars to their homes, keep the peace, and guarantee the province’s autonomy.

Yugoslavia, backed by Moscow, has insisted that any international force be subordinate to the United Nations command and that troops from NATO countries actively engaged in the bombing campaign – notably the United tates, Britain, and France – be excluded.

NATO, on the other hand, has insisted that its forces constitute the “core” of any peacekeeping operation and that no country be excluded from participation.

Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari, who is the European Union’s envoy, held urgent meetings with Schroeder and US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott in Berlin Tuesday to agree on what could be presented to Milosevic.

While not all points were agreed among the four principals, there was sufficient consensus to justify a trip to Belgrade at this time, according to officials.

“We’ve reached a largely common position,” Ahtisaari told reporters after the meeting.

US government officials said they also had urged Ahtisaari to go to Belgrade convey NATO demands directly to Milosevic. They said there was some concern that Chernomyrdin may have soft- pedalled NATO’s positions in previous meetings with the Yugoslav president.

While Ahtisaari could be counted on to be blunt about NATO’s demands, these officials said, Milosevic was equally likely to be attentive to other moves designed to convey Washington’s determination.

It is in that context that reports of a meeting between the US president and his top military commanders Thursday to discuss the feasibility of a ground war was leaked to the New York Times.

Military leaders here and in NATO headquarters in Brussels have been increasingly outspoken about the possibility that the air war by itself may not achieve the alliance’s war aims, at least before next October.

The weather in Yugoslavia would then limit the effectiveness of the air war and the onset of winter would make caring for hundreds of thousands of refugees much more expensive.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair has been urging NATO to begin plans for a ground war to evict Yugoslav troops from Kosovo. Such an effort, according to most military analysts, would take three months to prepare and require about 150,000 troops.

That left very little time to begin deploying troops. Some analysts here said that NATO could not delay a decision beyond the end of this month if it wanted to keep the option alive.

Any ground assault would be controversial for many NATO countries, including the United States where support for that option has fallen to below 50 percent, according to public-opinion polls.

As a result, the White House continued insisting the air war was working and that there were no plans for a ground invasion. But Clinton has come under growing pressure from a coalition of both hawkish Republicans and liberal Democrats to at least prepare for such a war.

These forces have been strengthened in the past week by Milosevic’s indictment for war crimes.

On Tuesday, NATO announced that it now intended sending 48,000 troops into Kosovo as part of any peace-keeping force if an accord with Milosevic was reached.

That would be 20,000 more than originally planned under the Rambouillet accords earlier this year and Clinton revealed Wednesday that the United States would contribute 7,000 troops – 3,000 more than he had pledged earlier.

The total NATO force would be be deployed in Macedonia and Albania where they could be integrated into a larger invasion force, according to military observers.