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News

A good war?
Human rights groups battle over whether NATO's Kosovo mission can be defended on humanitarian grounds.
By Tamara Straus
[05/19/99]

Israel's political make-over
Experts discuss Ehud Barak's sweeping victory.
By Daryl Lindsey
[05/19/99]

Fireworks over Rabin Square
At the site of a tragic assassination, Barak supporters celebrate a return to the peace process
By Flore de Preneuf
[05/18/99]

From Bibi to Barak
One town's shift shows why Israelis voted for change.
By Flore de Preneuf
[05/18/99]

"Hardball" strikes out
Chris Matthews mistakenly identifies a Clinton friend on the air as the "jogger" who frightened Kathleen Willey.

[05/18/99]

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"Practically, we've already beaten NATO. The fact that it has not beaten us in three days or three weeks means that it has suffered defeat," said Vojislav Seselj, the most hard-line figure in the Serbian government and Milosevic's deputy prime minister, in an interview with Belgrade's Blic newspaper Tuesday. NATO "won't beat us in three months, nor three years, nor 300 years for that matter. This means [NATO] has met with defeat, because anything short of its absolute triumph means its defeat. If we manage to defend our country, it will have been total victory for us."

Also on Tuesday, Yugoslav foreign ministry spokesman Nebojsa Vujovic told a Belgrade press conference "We are open for a dialogue on the principles" of the so-called G-8 plan, which was proposed almost two weeks ago by the world's leading powers, including, significantly, Russia. The G-8 plan calls for a withdrawal of Serbian police and paramilitary forces from Kosovo, the return of Kosovo Albanian deportees to the province, the deployment of an armed international force to provide protection in Kosovo and political autonomy for the Kosovo Albanians. "We need some clarification of some of those principles," he added.

Ljubisa Ristic, leader of the political party allied with Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic (the Yugoslav United Left, JUL), told the Belgrade newspaper Blic that Serbia is prepared to accept the G-8 principles, but that those principles needed to be "worked out" at the United Nations.

The whiff of a possible deal comes amid reports that Serbian troops are building up on Kosovo's borders in preparation for what Belgrade fears could be a NATO invasion. Meanwhile, in remarks in Washington Tuesday, President Clinton reiterated that NATO "will not take any option off the table," including ground troops, while emphasizing his conviction that NATO should "stay with the strategy we have" of airstrikes backed by diplomacy.

But while the West publicly debates deploying ground troops to Kosovo, the reluctance to do so among several NATO governments, including the United States and Germany, is well known. Meanwhile, Milosevic may have other reasons for looking for a way out now. There have been reports of stepped-up desertions by Serbian soldiers, and parents of Serbian army conscripts staged an anti-war protest Tuesday in Krusevac. Local Serbian media reports say anti-Milosevic, pro-democracy protests have been held in several Serbian towns. Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin's trip to Belgrade Wednesday to discuss possible peace terms could provide Milosevic with the opening he needs to move toward negotiations on the G-8 proposal.

Milosevic has made other conciliatory gestures of late. On Monday, he permitted representatives of the United Nations to come to Belgrade to explore the possibility of providing humanitarian assistance to Kosovo and Yugoslavia, for the first time since NATO airstrikes began on March 24. Some Kosovo Albanians forcibly deported from their homes by Serbian forces in the past two weeks have arrived in Macedonia and Albania showing the early stages of starvation. Some of these recent deportees say their access to dwindling food supplies in the province has been increasingly limited.

"Milosevic is trying to sell the country on negotiations. It now seems he's basically accepted the G-8 plan," said Bratislav Grubacic, a Belgrade political analyst and editor of VIP news, in a telephone interview Wednesday. But Grubacic warns that the G-8 principles as stated are vague and leave Milosevic plenty of negotiating space. "The G-8 plan is very weak. Milosevic can negotiate within the framework on many issues. He can try to make it relatively acceptable to Serbia."

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