WASHINGTON – The Kosovo peace talks appeared close to collapse yesterday and NATO airstrikes against Serbia could come “quite soon,” U.S. officials warned.
“Based on the last few days, we would not anticipate any further progress,” chief U.S. negotiator Christopher Hill said of the Paris powwow aimed at ending the Serb slaughter of ethnic Albanians in the Yugoslav province of Kosovo.
In Washington, Defense Undersecretary Walter Slocombe told a House committee he hopes Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic “comes to his senses, but we’re ready if he doesn’t. There is broad consensus that, if necessary – and it may be quite soon – NATO is prepared to use military force,” Slocombe said.
In Paris, a British diplomat told the Associated Press that once the talks collapse, officials would make one more appeal to Milosevic before delivering a specific deadline for airstrikes.
Milosevic is balking at signing a peace deal that would give self-rule to the ethnic Albanians – which the Albanians have agreed to, although it does not give them the full independence they want – and would be enforced by 28,000 peacekeeping troops, including 4,000 from the United States.
In the past year, 2,000 people have been killed in the fighting, mostly Albanians.
NATO commander U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark warned that Milosevic appears poised to break the ceasefire with “a very large-scale” attack, citing a new troop buildup around Kosovo.
The Pentagon said the Yugoslav army has doubled its troops on the edge of Kosovo in the past two weeks and has moved battle tanks into the province.
State Department spokesman James Foley said that if the Serbs “don’t negotiate, we don’t expect the talks to continue much longer.”
About 400 Allied aircraft, including about 250 American planes, are in the area in case a NATO strike is triggered.
At the White House, President Clinton’s deputy national security aide, James Steinberg, said: “We don’t want to short-circuit this [talks] process, but we also are not going to continue a process if there’s no point going forward.”