U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ended more than 10 hours of talks on the Kosovo crisis early Monday, a U.S. diplomat said, with no apparent resolution.
The diplomat described the talks, which began Sunday afternoon and ended at about 1:30 a.m. Monday, as having been “extremely difficult.” No other official information was immediately available.
But a Serb source close to the talks said “some progress” had been made and added that the talks were likely to resume later Monday.
Sources close to the Yugoslav side said one of the sticking points was Serbian resistance to a proposal for a new Kosovo police force to be composed along ethnic lines in the Serbian province where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs 9-1.
The Serbs want the new police force to be 50 percent Serb and 50 percent ethnic Albanian, the sources said.
Holbrooke, who brokered the Dayton peace agreement that ended the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, is racing against the clock to clinch a deal to avert NATO airstrikes intended to stop a Serbian offensive in Kosovo.
In Washington, National Security Adviser Samuel “Sandy” Berger told CNN on Sunday that Milosevic “is not in compliance as of this point.”
Allied ambassadors meeting later Monday in Brussels were likely to authorize the airstrikes, but the decision would not automatically trigger immediate bombing.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is continuing military preparations. Six U.S. B-52 bombers arrived in Britain on Sunday, and a contingent of A-10 anti-tank planes flew from Germany to Italy.
The positioning of more U.S. planes within range and preparing them for attacks were clearly designed to convince Milosevic of Washington’s resolve to force compliance.
But Yugoslavia’s defense minister, Pavle Bulatovic, warned neighboring countries that a NATO attack could plunge the entire region into conflict.
“Bombs cannot bring peace. Bombs can only bring conflicts, war and instability, not only in Kosovo but in a wider Balkan region,” Bulatovic told recruits at an army barracks in northern Yugoslavia. “It would be in nobody’s interest to make the Balkans a powder keg again.”
The Americans and Europeans are calling on Milosevic to halt the crackdown he launched Feb. 28 against the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army. The West also is demanding an immediate cease-fire, a withdrawal of special troops in the province, allowing refugees to return home, and the opening of talks with ethnic Albanians on Kosovo’s future.
