Extra British troops to watch over Albanian extremists
By Richard Norton-Taylor
The Guardian - Monday March 20, 2000
Britain is to send 170 troops and two helicopters to Kosovo to help in surveillance work amid growing concern within Nato about attempts by ethnic Albanian hardliners to extend the conflict in the region.

Geoffrey Hoon, the defence secretary, announced yesterday that two Gazelle helicopters would be deployed to the province, along with men from the Phoenix battalion of the Royal Artillery.

The Ministry of Defence said that the Phoenix - an unmanned surveillance vehicle - and the Gazelles would be used to survey the activities of armed Albanians who have been infiltrating the Presevo valley area of southern Serbia, over the border from Kosovo.

They would also be used over the Kosovan town of Mitrovice where groups of Serbs and ethnic Albanians have been attacking K-For peacekeeping troops as well as each other.

"A number of countries are looking at how they can increase their commitment," Mr Hoon told the BBC. "Our contribution will be in this specialist role. Getting more information and intelligence about what is going on is vital to our job there."

He said he was unable to predict how long British troops would be involved in Kosovo, saying that they would have to stay "as long as it takes" to stabilise the security situation. Nato commanders have said K-For troops are likely to be needed in the province for at least four years.

Mr Hoon also admitted that unexploded Nato cluster bombs left over from last year's air campaign had being triggered by Kosovans as they returned to their homes, though he could not confirm numbers of dead or injured. The bombs are considered to be more deadly than landmines.

The independent monitoring group, Human Rights Watch, last month reported that the RAF continued to drop the cluster bombs after the White House issued an executive order stopping US pilots using them. The order followed a raid on the Serbian town of Nis which killed 14 civilians, the New York-based group disclosed.

The Guardian reported last week that Washington was refusing to allow US troops to remove the thousands of unexploded cluster bombs dropped by Nato on Kosovo. As well as falling wide, about 28,000 of the canisters failed to explode.

Each cluster bomb unit, containing up to 200 weapons, opens up at about 2,000ft, unleashing a hail of the bomb canisters that swamp an area the size of four football pitches with lethal shrapnel.

Mr Hoon said yesterday that the MoD was investigating the use of alternative weapons to replace indiscriminate cluster bombs.

US faces war with ex-KLA
Pentagon braced for bloodshed after raids on guerrillas
By Ed Vulliamy in New York and Helena Smith in Pristina
The Guardian - March 19, 2000
US troops should prepare for battle with the former soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army, officials in Washington are warning.

A year after Nato launched a bombing campaign to rescue the KLA, Pentagon commanders have formally alerted the US military that it expects to have to engage its former allies 'this spring'.

This comes as senior officials in the Defence Department continue to fight plans to send further reinforcements into what many consider a potential war zone.

The grim prognosis for the restive province has emerged days before the first anniversary of Nato's bombing raids against Yugoslavia after Slobodan Milosevic's refusal to negotiate over Kosovo.

It arises amid increasing tension between Washington and Nato commanders in Brussels over the peacekeeping operation in Kosovo.

US military officials and Western diplomats based in Pristina, Kosovo's edgy capital, say there is evidence that Albanian insurgents are bent on stirring trouble in southern Serbia, on the province's eastern boundary. They say they must be stopped now if bloodshed across the entire region is to be averted - not least in Macedonia, where conflict could easily trigger a much wider conflagration.

Diplomatic sources in Pristina warn that the extremists, who call themselves the Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB) - named after the three Albanian-inhabited towns in southern Serbia's Presevo valley - should expect more US raids on strongholds of ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the sort conducted last week.

Weapons, ammunition and a supply cache were seized in the raids, aimed at stopping guerrillas from using Kosovo's US-controlled sector as a launching pad for cross-border strikes on Serbia. Analysts believe some 800 men have enrolled with the well-armed UCPMB, formed to 'protect' an estimated 70,000 Albanians living in Serbia within 15 kilometres of the Kosovo border.

'There is scope for great trouble. The next three months will be crucial in determining whether Kosovo is going to be a short-term success or a millstone around the neck of the international community,' said one European Union diplomat. 'We should expect to see more operations by US troops against guerrilla camps in the coming weeks. Frankly Nato is very frustrated that it can't go into Presevo and ensure the peace, that all it can do is seal the border.'

Talking to The Observer on Friday, a Pentagon official said the 'personal security' of US troops would be among 'elements that need looking at' before any manpower boost. The official said the Defence Department is operating on the premise that 'an armed conflict situation with the KLA is much more likely now than has been the case'. One official just returned from Kosovo told US Defence Secretary William Cohen on Wednesday that the intervention was at a 'decisive moment' and back at 'ground zero' a year after it began.

The situation of US troops was 'precarious', said the official. 'This has got to cease and desist, and if not, ultimately it is going to lead to confrontation between ethnic Albanians and K-For.'

Other officials told the New York Times that 'troops could not keep the peace between Serbs and Albanians within Kosovo and seal Kosovo's borders'. They added that last week's raid by the US military on KLA command posts and arms caches was a 'first step' to rein in the Kosovo Albanians. 'This was the first time,' said one official, 'that we went after something like an organised military infrastructure as opposed to searching houses where we suspected someone was holding a rifle or two.'

'There is an old American saying that "when the wood creaks, out come the freaks", but there is no way we are going to tolerate any trouble this spring,' said a US officer. 'We are very serious.'

In Washington, however, the tough Pentagon talk is at odds with the cautious optimism of James Rubin, the US Under-Secretary of State who returned from Kosovo to say: 'We do not believe we are drifting towards a conflict with Kosovo Albanian insurgents.' Rubin believed there was a 'deep reservoir of respect, thanks and goodwill towards the United States' among ethnic Albanians.

Rubin did, however, qualify his words with a warning that 'it would be a grave mistake to challenge American troops'.

A senior Pentagon officer countered: 'We have now fired the first shot at the Albanian insurgents and insurgents have a tendency to carry a grudge. If they come to see us as an enemy then [the raid] will be seen as a turning point.'

No need for revision
A year after Nato went to war for Kosovo
The Guardian - Monday March 20, 2000
It was hardly surprising that, when Nato launched the first hot war in its history by bombing Yugoslavia a year ago, it aroused as much passion as reasoned debate across Britain's political spectrum. Heated arguments over the conflict transcended ideological lines, with members of the Conservative right coming down on opposite sides of the fence just as much as luminaries of the left.

In the fluidity of the post-cold war world the war for Kosovo fitted no easy matrix. It was not fought for oil, or against communism. The code name "humanitarian intervention" which its proponents gave it was not, of course, the whole truth. No countries go to war on the basis of altruism. Nevertheless, the strategic and political interests which prompted the west to act, after considerable hesitation, were not clear cut at the time, and have not become much clearer since. Uncertainty over what the United States and the European Union consider to be their strategy in the Balkans, and whether they agree, is still pronounced.

In this confused continuity, the main questions which divided opinion at the start of the war remain just as contested today. Was it necessary? Was it legitimate? We would still say yes to both. By the time of the bombing, 200,000 Albanian civilians were displaced within Kosovo and another 50,000 were refugees outside. Repeated demands by the six-nation contact group, of which Russia was a full member, for Yugoslav security forces to stop their repression in Kosovo had been flouted, as had several resolutions of the United Nations security council. Some form of external restraint was needed. A major difficulty was that the council frequently wills a goal but not the method for reaching it. The west's failure to seek authorisation from the council for military action was understandable but serious, though, paradoxically, the bombing acquired greater legal cover three days after it started when the Russians asked the council to demand an immediate end and were outvoted by 12 to three. But if this meant that Nato's intervention was neither legal nor illegal, it was legitimate in that Yugoslavia's defiance of the UN had launched a humanitarian catastrophe.

The questions, which could only be answered after the military action was over, are whether the war was efficient and successful. This paper repeatedly criticised the bombing strategy and its wide range of non-military targets. We argued for a ground operation. But the civilian casualties caused by the air strikes were relatively low - around 500 deaths according to Human Rights Watch, of which most were not in Belgrade or other Serbian cities but in Kosovo itself. Although this toll will rise because of Nato's unjustifiable reluctance to defuse its own unexploded cluster bombs, the record is not so horrendous as some imply.

The most troubling issue is whether Nato's bombing made things worse. In the short term it did, because Milosevic used it to intensify his ethnic cleansing, resulting in several thousand murders and a huge outpouring of refugees. In the long term it did not, because after 78 days he withdrew his forces and let international peacekeepers come in and restore freedom from fear to the majority of Kosovo's people. That Serbs now feel under pressure, if they have not fled altogether, and that Kosovo faces major problems in rebuilding are issues to which western governments must respond with greater urgency. But they are not a result of the bombing. The man primarily responsible is still in Belgrade.

Britain is to send 170 troops and two helicopters to Kosovo to engage in surveillance and intelligence work, amid growing concerns over the stability of the former Yugoslav province.

Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon announced the deployment of two Gazelles and personnel from the Phoenix battalion of the Royal Artillery.

The announcement follows weeks in which extremists in Kosovo have been suspected of using tension between ethnic Albanians and Serbs to spark violence in towns like Mitrovica.

There have also been suspicions that Kosovan independence fighters have been launching raids across the border into Serbia.

Mr Hoon told Breakfast with Frost: "I will be sending two Gazelle helicopters with surveillance equipment, together with 170 personnel of the Phoenix battalion, whose job it will be to provide information and intelligence to KFOR troops.

"A number of countries are looking at how they can increase their commitment. Our contribution will be in this specialist role. Getting more information and intelligence about what is going on is vital to our job there."

Mr Hoon said he was unable to predict how long British troops would be involved in Kosovo, saying that they would have to stay "as long as it takes" to stabilise the security situation.

He acknowledged that there had been problems with Allied cluster bombs left over from last year's campaign being triggered by Kosovans as they return to their homes, but was unable to confirm numbers of dead and injured.

The MoD was investigating the use of alternative weapons, such as the Harrier–launched Maverick anti–tank missile, in order to minimise the need to use the indiscriminate cluster–bomb technology, he said.

He lost the war, surrendered Kosovo and lives the life of an international pariah, but almost one year after Nato's bombing blitz began there is little doubt who remains the key political figure in the Balkans. Despite continued diplomatic and economic isolation, President Slobodan Milosevic still pulls many of the strings in the region.

Even his adversaries admit it. Returning from a visit to the region, Chris Patten, European Commissioner for Foreign Affairs, was in realistic mood as he gave his impressions of five days of travel through south-eastern Europe. One of the things that had struck him most was, he said, "the extent to which Milosevic is a malign influence from one end of the region to the other".

That fact is seen most starkly in Kosovo where Serbia's abilities to stoke ethnic tension in the divided northern city of Mitrovica became apparent during the past month. But Mr Milosevic's influence extends to the economic domain, even in the territory he was forced to abandon to the occupying forces of Nato. For example, EU experts in Pristina estimate that around 20 per cent of Kosovo's faltering electricity supply comes from the Yugoslav grid. Belgrade's historical role as the regional electricity network nexus means it can pull the plug on Kosovo, although – so far – that has happened only once, and briefly, through technical error.

But if Kosovo is the front line with Belgrade, the Milosevic factor applies much more widely throughout the region. After the Nato campaign the allies hoped his regime would be swept away, as demonstrations took hold. That hope has evaporated as Mr Milosevic's opponents have bickered and fallen victim to intimidation.

So the strategy has switched, with the West now devoting more of its efforts to promoting reconciliation and economic prosperity in neighbouring countries. The scope for progress varies and Bosnia-Herzegovina remains scarred by the ethnic meltdown of the 1990s and economically dependent on international aid. But the idea is to foster trade between countries within the region and to use positive examples – nations with pro-market, reforming governments such as Macedonia and Croatia –- as what Mr Patten calls "a beacon" to the others. In this way Serbia will be ringed with democratic, tolerant and multi-ethnic states boasting rising living standards and providing an invitation to the Serbs to throw off their yoke.

But can it work? To the south of Serbia, Slav-dominated Macedonia is the West's showcase success story, a country which, 10 days ago, became the first Balkan nation to sign a Stabilisation and Association Agreement with Brussels, bringing with it the promise of a free trade relationship with the EU.

But even here the policy has its limitations, imposed by that man in Belgrade. In the Macedonian capital, Skopje, the office of the president lies at one end of a grand, ante-chamber of Soviet-style proportions. Inside Boris Trajkovski explains how Macedonia's development has been stunted by the war which cut its links with Yugoslavia, traditionally accounting for 60 per cent of trade. Worse, when the conflict erupted last year Western investors fled, never to return. The mere threat of more instability in the region deters outside investment and Mr Trajkovski concedes that renewed ethnic unrest in southern Serbia could easily spill over into his territory.

Even the EU's ambition to promote trade between countries in the region looks rather lame. Albania has backed away from a free trade agreement and, as Mr Trajkovski put it "only Greece and Bulgaria are real partners".

In Montenegro, which remains technically part of Yugoslavia, the situation is worse still. The government in Podgorica has tried hard to follow the Western route, even though the country traditionally relies on Serbia for 60 per cent of its food. The opening of Montenegro's border with Albania produced a swift response from Belgrade, which placed police check-points on all routes between Serbia and Montenegro, effectively blocking imports.

Montenegro has a spectacular coastline but Mr Milosevic holds the key to the success of the country's tourist industry, a traditional big earner but vulnerable to instability. As the country's Prime Minister, Filip Vujanovic, put it, "by producing tension he prevents tourism and reduces the interest of foreign investors". As part of Yugoslavia (albeit a stubbornly independent one) Montenegro's ability to attract support from the outside world is compromised. Most lenders are forbidden by their own rules from advancing cash to anything but a sovereign state. Montenegro has been discouraged by the West from declaring independence for fear that this would give Belgrade a pretext to invade.

None of which suggests that President Milosevic's position is unassailable or that the West's strategy is wrong. But it does point to the fact that, as long as he stays in office, President Milosevic will be an obstacle to progress.

An indicted war criminal, the Yugoslav president must calculate that his best way of foiling his adversaries is through the de-stabilising use of violence or the threat of it. The result, says President Trajkovski, is a "domino" effect. "As long as Milosevic is in charge in Serbia, there will be no stability in the region".

"My husband is a perfect man... I love him because he loves me... Everything that hurt me in the past, hurt less when I was with him," Mira Markovic, wife of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, wrote in one of the more syrupy of her regular outpourings in a women's magazine in Serbia. A year after the country they run was brought to its knees by Nato bombing, President Milosevic and his wife must rank as one of the most reclusive first couples in the world. They never walk the streets of Belgrade, go to the theatreor movies. Former associates say that they "feel at their best when they are together or in a close circle of few dearest friends". The "friends"are usually chosen by Ms Markovic, who says that "all the others would let him down, except for those I choose for him". The Milosevics' lifestyle reflects both their paranoia and their provincialism. The Serbian public never learned where the pair moved to after their residence in the salubrious Dedinje suburb of Belgrade was hit by Nato rockets last April. People who fell from their grace say that neither of them ever showed much interest in cosmopolitan Belgrade, although they moved to the capital in their student days in the early Sixties. In return, Belgrade has little sympathy for them. Mira's shapeless, dark suits and her old-fashioned hair style are the butt of jokes. Malicious tongues say that the Italian surgeons who performed a face-lift and liposuction on Ms Markovic should be struck off. Slobo and Mira were married 35 years ago, joined not only in matrimony but in the burning ambition of provincial communist cadres. Back in 1968, when she saw a portrait of then Yugoslav President Tito in a shop window in the Adriatic town of Zadar, Mira Markovic told a friend: "One day, Slobo's picture will be placed like this." Nowadays the unscrupulous rule of Yugoslavia's first couple is felt in all walks of life. In the last 10 years, Mr Milosevic has led the country into wars, economic collapse and international isolation. Ms Markovic's Yugoslav Left (Jul) party controls the remaining financial resources with an iron grip. Both Slobo and Mira come from the provincial Serbian town of Pozarevac, 85 kilometres east of Belgrade. High-school sweethearts, both had isolated and unhappy childhoods, probably the basis for their strong devotion to each other. Pozarevac remains the only town they are attached to. Closest friends are invited there for weekends. Belgraders sometimes compare the couple to the former Romanian dictator and his wife, Nicolae and Elena Ceausescu. Many predict that their rulemight end in the "Romanian scenario" – a chaotic uprising of a people who could stomach them no longer.

A year ago, American and NATO warplanes began 78 days of air assaults that halted the murderous assault of Slobodan Milosevic on the Kosovar Albanians. If the United States has learned anything in the nine months of peacekeeping that followed, it should be that once again we are proving to be a lot better at waging war than we are at managing peace. Kosovo today appears to be on the verge of unraveling.

American and NATO peacekeepers skirt danger daily. Reconstruction has been negligible. Mr. Milosevic remains firmly in control in Serbia and, by most reckoning, is stepping up his effort to foment trouble along the border between Serbia and Kosovo. In the latest eruption of violence, ethnic Albanian insurgents have begun attacking Serbs across the border in Serbia.

The administration's response to this deepening crisis? Stern words to the Albanians, urgent pleas to our allies for more troops and money, and a request to Congress for a supplemental $2 billion to continue American peacekeeping business as usual in Kosovo.

Is that really the best we can do?

I see three options we can practically consider at this juncture.

We can stay the course, reacting to events as they occur and hoping for the best as we settle into a semi-permanent role of soldiers on patrol and cops on the beat. We can pick a date and simply pull American troops out of Kosovo. Or Congress can give the administration unequivocal direction and a reasonable period of time -- say three months -- to craft a framework for turning the Kosovo peacekeeping operation over to our European allies. Congress can then examine the plan, gauge the progress being

made, and vote either to stay or to go.

It is my firm belief that the United States should take steps to turn the Kosovo peacekeeping operation over to our European allies. NATO undertook the Kosovo mission with an understanding that Europe, not America, would shoulder the peacekeeping and reconstruction duties. The United States, with its outstanding military forces and weaponry, effectively won the war; the European allies were to keep the peace.

But now, as the United Nations interim administration in Kosovo teeters on the brink of bankruptcy, NATO allies are squabbling over the need for military reinforcements, and the international police that were supposed to help bring law and order remain undermanned, underfinanced, and unable to cope.

If Congress agrees to the administration's request for additional financing for Kosovo, it should be with the clear understanding that the money is tied to a plan for establishing an all-European peacekeeping force. The plan should have benchmarks, like numbers of European troops to be added to the forces by particular dates, and Congress should have an opportunity to vote on whether to keep troops in Kosovo if those benchmarks are not being met.

Removal of American troops from Kosovo need not be abrupt and need not mean that the United States is turning its back on the victims of Slobodan Milosevic. We can continue to support humanitarian relief and can provide support in military logistics, communications, intelligence and effective command.

It is just possible that the Europeans will excel at peacekeeping duties in Kosovo if ever they are allowed to emerge from the overwhelming shadow cast by the United States. Unfortunately, we will never know if we do not tie further American investment in Kosovo to a rock-solid plan to turn the peacekeeping operation over to them -- sooner rather than later.

Robert C. Byrd, a Democrat, is the senior Senator from West Virginia.

BRITAIN is sending surveillance teams to Kosovo, equipped with Phoenix spy planes, to monitor sensitive areas in the Serbian province. The reinforcements come after months of British troop withdrawals. However, with tension rising in the southeast on the border between Kosovo and Serbia's Presevo Valley area, as well as the continuing friction in the northern town of Mitrovica, the Government has agreed to send a battery of 170 troops from the Royal Artillery, equipped with about a dozen Phoenix unmanned air vehicles. The spy plane, designed to spot enemy armour, is launched from the back of a lorry, and after its mission has to flip over to land on its back because all the delicate surveillance devices are attached to the belly of the air vehicle. Two Gazelle helicopters with spy cameras are also being sent to operate over Mitrovica.

GREEK leftwingers staged protests yesterday as an advance contingent of 2,000 Nato troops and their allies landed near the Greek city of Salonika bound for Kosovo to join a military exercise named "Dynamic Response". Hundreds of Greek Communist Party (KKE) followers, who are opposed to international peacekeepers in Kosovo, gathered at the city's port, shouting slogans against the increase in Nato's presence in the Balkans for the exercise which is due to run until April 10, carrying it over the first anniversary period of Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia which began on March 24 last year. However, only a handful of protesters were on hand at Litohoro beach near the port when about 40 military vehicles rolled ashore and headed north for Kosovo, a Kosovo Force (Kfor) spokesman said. They were easily held in check by about 200 policemen, eye-witnesses said. Besides 1,000 US Marines, the troops include 900 soldiers from The Netherlands, Poland, Romania and Argentina. The protests came just three weeks before Greek general elections on April 9, and any trouble or violence could have been embarrassing for the Greek Government. Though Athens supports Nato's presence in Kosovo and has contributed its own contingent to Kfor, a majority of Greeks, who have ties to their fellow Orthodox Christian Serbs, were strongly opposed to Nato's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia and the intervention in Kosovo.

French defence minister defends European role in Kosovo

Britain sends more soldiers, helicopters to troubled Kosovo

Russia may attend Kosovo Contact Group meeting

MOSCOW, March 19 (AFP) - Russia believes Kosovo is again is a serious situation and does not exclude the possibility of a meeting of the six-nation contact group on Yugolsavia, Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Sunday. "Even though we haven't been happy with the contact group's work, it is now essential to put into action all means possible to solve the situation in Kosovo," Ivanov told a press conference. "Everything should be done to maintain peace," he said, "the situation there is currently very serious." Russian diplomatic sources recently indicated that Russia could participate in a meeting of the contact group's foreign ministers, due to take place in Paris on March 28. But Russia wants to know where the contact group stands on such a meeting before taking any decisions. The contact group, which consists of the United States, Russia, France, Germany, Britain and Italy, helped set a unified international position during the break-up of Yugoslavia. It last met in February 1999 during the failed Kosovo peace talks near Paris. But since the NATO air war on Yugoslavia last year, Russia has kept its distance. On Friday, Russia blasted the failure of the NATO-led peace force KFOR for failing to protect non-Albanians in Kosovo from ethnic cleansing of "catastrophic proportions." Russia warned that the West would have to shoulder the blame if Kosovo split from Yugoslavia. "The task of the peacekeeping force, that is to say ensuring security in the region and the return of refugees, is not being met," Defence Minister Igor Sergeyev told a session of the State Duma lower house of parliament. "Instead, we have a genocide and ethnic cleansing of the non-Albanian population which have reached the level of a humanitarian catastrophe," he said.

The meetings were an attempt to get Serb and Albanian delegations to sign up to an agreement giving Kosovo substantial self-government.
But they collapsed over President Milosevic's refusal to allow a Nato-led force to guarantee the process, prompting the final brief countdown to Nato air strikes on Yugoslavia.

The summoning of the peace conference at the ancient Chateau of Rambouillet near Paris was triggered in part by the Racak massacre of 40 Albanian villagers by Serb police in January 1999.
Five exasperated western powers and Russia gave the two sides three weeks to reach agreement.
The American Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, warned that simply showing up at Rambouillet "is not going to be good enough".
"We have sent the parties an unmistakeable message - get serious," she said.
'Rare' chance
A few days later, the French President, Jacques Chirac, told the opening session of the conference that it was one of those rare moments when history was in the hands of a few, in this case those who were about to sit down around the negotiating table.

Except that they were not about to.
The European Union negotiator, Wolfgang Petritsch, told me how he and his American and Russian colleagues shuffled between Serbs and Albanians inside the Chateau of Rambouillet.
"It was clear from the outset that although direct negotiations and direct talks would have been the preferred thing, it was practically impossible," he said.
Asked if he meant that had the opposing parties been brought together, the talks would have just collapsed, Mr Petritsch said: "Yes. There would not have been a realistic chance for one sane sentence."
'Killer clause'
Outside the chateau, Kosovo Albanians chanted slogans in support of the guerrillas of the KLA - and for independence, which was not on offer.

The Serbs at first looked more likely than the Albanians to agree to a plan for self-government. But they dug in their heels on the Nato-led implementation force.
The military text allowed Nato forces freedom of movement not only in Kosovo but throughout Serbia.
The political-military analyst, Michael Mccgwire, formerly at the Brookings Institution in Washington, believes Nato inserted this clause deliberately to make sure the peace conference failed.
"It was ... almost certain it was going to fail as a result of the insistence that it would be Nato doing everything, and that this command structure would run right the way back to Nato headquarters," he said.
"But in case ... Milosevic did not say this is impossible, they then put in this other thing, which I would say was a killer clause, to make sure that the agreement just was not acceptable."

But, for the co-chairman of the peace talks - the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, that is nonsense - there was never any intention of Nato troops occupying Serbian territory outside Kosovo.
"Nobody seriously imagined for one minute that was going to happen, the Serb negotiators didn't imagine that was going to happen," he said.
"If that particular technical annexe was something that bothered them, we would have been very happy to have considered constructive amendments from them. They never even raised it.
"The reason they refused to agree to the peace package was that they were not willing to agree to the autonomy for Kosovo, or for that autonomy to be guaranteed by an international military presence at all."
Russian role
The negotiations were complicated by the Russians' refusal to take part in discussion of the military text, though they did not stop it happening.
For the Russian negotiator, Boris Mayorsky, it was a sensitive point.
"It is suggested that the role of Russia in these negotiations is to convince Yugoslavia that they should accept Nato presence as implementation of the agreements we are working on.

"Now let me tell you this, that nothing of the kind is happening in the course of these negotiations."
So were the Russians pro-Serb, the Americans and Europeans pro-Albanian? Not true, says Wolfgang Petritsch.
"I was present when the Yugoslavs really hit at Boris Mayorsky because he was very fair and also very strong on the Yugoslavs when they were impossible.
"On the other hand, I must tell you, Chris Hill and I, we were very tough on the Albanians, because there was one major and crucial issue - that we were asking for the total dismantlement and demilitarisation of the KLA."
In the end, of course, the Albanians signed. They had to, the Americans said quite openly, so that the Serbs could be blamed for the breakdown and moves towards military action begun.
It was not, in the end, a peace conference with much room for real negotiation.
The Serbs would not accept a Nato force; Nato on its 50th anniversary wanted to show it mattered - and only one outcome was possible.

There have been further demonstrations in Serbia against the seizure by the authorities of opposition broadcast transmitters.
In the central town of Kraljevo, several thousand people gathered for the second night running to demand the return of a transmitter the authorities seized on Friday.
There have also been protests in the town of Pirot where the local transmitters were seized in Thursday.
In the past week the authorities have moved against seven non-government stations, saying they were operating illegally. Earlier on Sunday, opposition parties in the central town of Cacak said they have set up a committee to protect the local media against closure.

About twelve hundred United States marines have landed in northern Greece on their way to join a NATO exercise in Kosovo.
The marines were met by over a hundred protestors from the Greek Communist party as they landed from US warships on a beach near the port of Thessaloniki.
The demonstrators threw stones and driftwood and briefly blocked the path of the first convoy of marines before they were peacefully dispersed by police.
The US marines are taking part in a training exercise called Dynamic Response 2000 in Kosovo with about nine-hundred troops from Argentina, The Netherlands, Poland and Romania.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, has renewed calls for Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina to co-operate on returning hundreds-of-thousands of war refugees to their homes.
Mrs Ogata was speaking after talks in the Bosnian Serb Republic, which with the Muslim-Croat Federation makes up Bosnia-Hercegovina.
She said quick action was needed, and she demanded harmonisation of property laws to remove obstacles to the refugees' return.
The Bosnian Serb Republic and the newly elected government in Croatia last month agreed to help thousands of each others' refugees to return home.
But a BBC Correspondent in the region says the biggest refugees problem is in Serbia, which Mrs Ogata is visiting as part of her regional tour.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, Sadako Ogata, has called on the governments of Croatia and the two regions of Bosnia Hercegovina to work together to accelerate the return of refugees.
Mrs Ogata said that only 25,000 Muslim and Croat refugees had returned to their homes in the Bosnian Serb republic since the signing of the Dayton peace accords of 1995, that brought an end to the war in Bosnia.
An estimated 800,000 Muslims, Serbs and Croats remain displaced in various parts of the country.
"I think the time is right for quick action to promote and realise return," she told a news conference in the Bosnian Serb town of Laktasi.
While acknowledging that there were still many obstacles, Mrs Ogata praised an agreement reached earlier this month between the new Croatian Government and the Bosnian Serb republic on the return of 2,000 people currently displaced within Bosnia and Croatia.
Property laws
At the same time, she urged the three regions involved in the process of refugee returns to harmonise their property laws in order to give impetus to the process.

She said this was a "key element" in the process.
In Kosovo, another senior UNHCR official has warned that the continuing movement of refugees caused by nearly a decade of war in the former Yugoslavia is undermining stability in south-eastern Europe.
Dennis McNamara, Balkans envoy of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), referred to the huge flow of ethnic Albanians and Serbs in and out of Kosovo in the past eight months as the most recent spasm afflicting the region.
"The tragedy is, we got nearly a million [ethnic Albanian] people back, and a quarter of a million new ones [Serbs and other minorities] left," he told a news conference in the Kosovo capital, Pristina.
Too early
"That is a tragedy ... we don't need and the people don't need and the region doesn't need - and it is continuing."
Earlier, Mr McNamara said it was too early for the 240,000 non-Albanians who fled Kosovo to return because their safety could not be guaranteed.
He said a small number of Serbs and gypsies had already returned, but the UNHCR did not encourage it, given the present security environment.
"We are not for that return if it means taking people in armoured cars into militarily protected enclaves," he said.

2ND ROUNDUP: Thousands rally against media crackdown in Serbia

WORLD NEWS - EUROPE: Greeks stone US troops NEWS DIGEST:

KRALJEVO, Yugoslavia, March 19 (Reuters) - Protests continued in two Serbian towns on Sunday against shutdowns of local media by the Yugoslav authorities.

Some 5,000 people rallied for the second successive day in freezing cold and snow in the central Serbian town of Kraljevo to demand the return of a transmitter seized by federal authorities from the local television station on Friday.

"Kraljevo can say that it is the first to raise its voice in this benumbed Serbia," Zvonko Obradovic, head of the opposition-run local government, told the crowd.

Obradovic appealed for help from other towns in Serbia, especially those run by the opposition.

Federal telecommunicatioins inspectors dismantled the Kraljevo television's main mountaintop transmitter late on Friday, drastically reducing its potential audience.

The Yugoslav Telecommunications Ministry said the station did not have a valid permit for the transmitter on Mount Goc.

Earlier this week, inspectors shut down local television stations in Pirot and Pozega in southern and western Serbia respectively.

Despite near freezing temperatures, hundreds of people showed up for a fourth night of protests in Pirot.

There were no incidents at the rallies and police kept a low profile.

The telecommunications ministry says 168 radio and 67 television stations across Yugoslavia are operating without licences.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (Reuters) - The continued ebb and flow of refugees and displaced persons caused by nearly a decade of war in the former Yugoslavia is undermining stability in southeastern Europe, a U.N. refugee official said on Sunday.

Dennis McNamara, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) special envoy for the Balkans, cited the massive flow of ethnic Albanians and Serbs in and out of Kosovo over the past eight months as the most recent spasm afflicting the region.

``The tragedy is we got nearly a million (ethnic Albanian) people back and a quarter of a million new ones (Serbs and other minorities) left,'' McNamara told reporters in Pristina.

``That is a tragedy, that is a refugee cycle that we don't need and the people don't need and the region doesn't need, and it is continuing.''

``It is a destabilizing factor and it makes it difficult to see how, in regional terms, a stability pact for southeastern Europe, which is predicated on population stability, can go very far until we can deal with that refugee problem.''

Yugoslavia's slow, violent disintegration during the 1990s stampeded millions of people from their homes as first Slovenia, then Croatia and Bosnia won wars of independence from Belgrade.

Macedonia gained freedom from Yugoslavia peacefully.

KOSOVO UPHEAVAL

Ethnic violence in Kosovo then triggered 78 days of NATO air strikes last year that resulted in internationally-supervised autonomy for the Yugoslav province.

When the air war began Milosevic's security forces drove more than 850,000 ethnic Albanians from their homes. The majority ended up in camps in Macedonia, Albania and Montenegro.

The end of the air campaign and the arrival in Kosovo of NATO-led international peacekeeping forces known as KFOR marked the start of intense persecution of Serbs and other minorities by returning ethnic Albanians.

Most non-Albanians -- including Serbs, Roma (gypsies), Turks and Muslim Slavs -- have now fled Kosovo.

The few remaining minority enclaves -- the best publicized being those in the northern city of Mitrovica -- are under intense pressure despite KFOR protection.

Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's dream of a Greater Serbia has turned to ashes, and the wars he launched on behalf of Serbs have left Serbia with Europe's biggest refugee problem.

UNHCR reckons that Belgrade now has half a million refugees and probably a quarter million displaced persons on its hands.

McNamara worries that intense international political pressure to return refugees and displaced persons to their homes may swamp UNHCR concerns for safe, voluntary and durable returns.

SWITZERLAND, GERMANY WANT KOSOVO REFUGEES OUT

Swiss and German officials are keen to repatriate tens of thousands of ethnic Albanians back to Kosovo this year.

UNHCR warns that if the movements are not carefully planned ethnic tensions will worsen in an area already plagued by acute housing shortages and Europe's highest unemployment rate.

An example of the way returns become politicized and are engineered despite UNHCR concerns was the recent movement of ethnic Albanians back to three tower blocks in northern Mitrovica, from which they recently had fled.

KFOR troops and U.N. administrators already were under critical scrutiny for presiding over the de facto partition of Mitrovica along ethnic lines.

Determined to show positive movement, KFOR took willing ethnic Albanians back to flats on the north bank of the Ibar river even though they must be guarded inside a barbed wire perimeter and transported south in armored personnel carriers.

``We certainly do not agree to taking people back in armored cars ... surrounded by soldiers and putting them in barbed-wire enclaves,'' McNamara observed.

``We're all for return of former refugees and displaced populations, that's the best thing that can happen. But we're not for that return if it is not safe and if it is not sustainable.''