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| ANALYZING THE PLAN | |
 June 3, 1999 
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Yugoslav President Milosevic has accepted an international proposal to end the conflict in Yugoslavia. For some perspective, Jim Lehrer talks to Zbigniew Brzezinski, General George Joulwan and Warren Zimmerman.
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MARGARET WARNER: And we get three additional perspectives on today's developments from Zbigniew Brzezinski, who was national security adviser to President Carter; General George Joulwan, who was NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe from 1993 to 1997 -- he commanded NATO forces when they moved into Bosnia in 1995 to implement the Dayton Peace Accord; and Warren Zimmermann, who was U.S. Ambassador to Yugoslavia during the Bush administration. Welcome, gentlemen. Dr. Brzezinski, is this a good deal? |
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| A good deal? | ||||||||||||||||||||
 ZBIGNIEW
BRZEZINSKI: It's too soon to say that it's a good deal. Everything will
depend on implementation, but bear in mind what brought us here: One,
allied unity, for which the Clinton administration deserves a lot of credit
for maintaining; two, heavy bombing, which we only started about a month
ago; and three, the growing possibility that we would deploy ground forces
into combat. During implementation, the bombing probably will stop. The
threat of ground troops being deployed for combat will recede and allied
unity may be strained. So we have to be extremely watchful during implementation,
insist on the tightest control, I believe deploy troops into Kosovo concurrently
with the withdrawal of the Serbs and maintain the bombing until the very
last moment.
MARGARET WARNER: How do you see it, General?
MARGARET WARNER: Ambassador Zimmermann, Secretary Cohen agreed essentially with Jim when Jim asked him, if this deal is for real, is it exactly what the U.S. and NATO wanted? Is it? I mean, acknowledging we have to be cautious but just as the deal that we've all read, would that be a victory for NATO?
MARGARET WARNER: So you're saying the way to make sure of this is not to stop the bombing, what, until -- ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Not until he starts really withdrawing. And I would also prefer the deployment simultaneously of some NATO forces into Kosovo, for example, occupy Pristina Airport and the area around it. MARGARET WARNER: So you'd have the Serb troops backing off, you'd have NATO troops coming in. ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: And advance units moving in at the same time -- and not stop the bombing simply once he has agreed to all of the alleged details because during implementation, we'll probably not be bombing. Resuming the bombing would be very difficult.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Yeah, and the unity of the allies would be strained and he'd be playing on differences. And there are also issues in the agreement, which I want to echo warrants concern, which bother me, for example. There is a provision in the agreement for the return of Serbian personnel to maintain presence at key border crossing points. Do we really expect the Kosovars to come back and pass through Serbian checkpoints? I think that's incredible. So what are they going to be doing there? I think there are these details which are bothersome, but if the administration's definition of the agreement sticks, it is a success. But to make it a success, we have to preserve what is bringing us so close to a success. |
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| How will it work? | ||||||||||||||||||||
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MARGARET WARNER: All right. So go back to how we stop the bombing and what the relationship is between that and the withdrawal. How do you think it should work? GENERAL GEORGE JOULWAN: Well, first of all, I would agree that we've got 12,000 to 15,000 NATO forces in Macedonia right now. They can move very quickly into Kosovo. And I would say it must be simultaneous withdrawal. You must verify. I counted the number of heavy weapons that were pulled out of the Sarajevo exclusion zone in order to stop the bombing in September of '95. You need that verification. And you need to get troops in there very quickly. But they can move in very quickly. The rapid-reaction corps is in Macedonia now and can move quite quickly if the political will is there to do that. WARREN ZIMMERMANN: Speaking as a diplomat, I have to say that the only serious lever that NATO has is the use of force or the credible threat of force, and I think both of my partners on this program are absolutely right to stick on that because if we give that up out of euphoria or out of disunity, we won't ever get it back.
GENERAL GEORGE JOULWAN: Those sort of targeting details need to be left to the experts, but I -- MARGARET WARNER: You're an expert. GENERAL GEORGE JOULWAN: But my feeling will be they will still stick to strategic targets. But let me caution here-- and I'll leave it up to the diplomats and politicians-- but I think you're going to see some pressure from our European friends to stop the bombing sooner, rather than later, and I think we need to watch that very closely and feel that pressure from not only the NATO nations but also now from the E.U. And that needs to be balanced in all of this. And the United States, I think, has got to hold tough here as we go through it till we get the details that we want because Milosevic will see the cracks and he'll exploit those cracks. |
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| Milosevic's motives and the role of the U.N. | ||||||||||||||||||||
 MARGARET
WARNER: You were on the show, Ambassador, the end of April, and we were
talking about Milosevic, and you said you thought he had wrapped himself
up in the Kosovo issue so completely, that he really almost maybe couldn't
compromise and he might just go down and take his whole country with him.
Why do you think he's done whatever it is he did today, why do you think
he did it?
WARREN ZIMMERMANN: I think he did it certainly partly because he miscalculated on NATO's determination and on NATO's unity. I think he thought that after a couple of days of bombing, NATO would pack it in and would give up, and he was surprised when that didn't turn out to be true. But the other thing I think is, I think he sees something in this agreement that he can chisel us on, and that's why we have to be awfully careful to make sure the details are right. MARGARET WARNER: So you pointed out one thing that it could be -- that the Serb troops can come back in border points. What else looks troublesome? ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: I have this text in front of me. Now, this is not the official text. This is a Reuters translation of what the Yugoslavs have released. MARGARET WARNER: And we should say this is what the Serb parliament approved.
MARGARET WARNER: Or at least we don't know. I mean we don't know if this is what he's accepted. ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: That's right. But for example, it talks about the stationing in Kosovo of an international military presence under a UN mandate. Now, a UN mandate -- I assume -- means Russian concurrence, it means Chinese concurrence. Now, suppose we don't get that concurrence. Is the agreement off? There will be a UN Security Council decision upon provisional administration. Is it subject to the veto again? And on whose side will the Russians be? We call them a mediator, but till now, the Russians-- and it was evident from Chernomyrdin's article in the "Washington Post"-- took a totally pro Yugoslav position. Who will supervise the return of the Kosovars? The Serbian border guards, at the border crossing points? There's talk about a meaningful agreement for a provisional political administration -- agreement between whom, with whom, with the Yugoslav government, will Milosevic be talking about it with us? MARGARET WARNER: Does the UN role - because, as Jim pointed out, both the Yugoslavs and the Russians when they've gone home to their own audiences have pointed to this, well, the U.N.'s going to be reasserting its role here. Does that concern you?
MARGARET WARNER: This was the force in Bosnia. GENERAL GEORGE JOULWAN: In Bosnia-- had a veto over the is use of force and had to at some point go all the way back to Boutros Boutros-Ghali before we could act. It's those sort of details that need to be clarified here. And I think the President's word of clarity is very important here, that we -- before we buy into something, we better make sure we understand what it is we're getting into and the details are important here. MARGARET WARNER: So does that mean, in a way maybe, it would be good to have a UN mandate, which would lay out all of these things, or do you see potential trouble there? WARREN ZIMMERMANN: Well, I think the UN has to be involved, not so much in the military as suspects, which really should be a NATO operation, whatever you call it -- but in the civilian operations -- but that's difficult, too, because the agreement talks about autonomy for Kosovo. If Kosovo is not going to have autonomy, there was no point doing there at all, if the Albanians are going to go back to have the Serbs run Kosovo, that's no good. We haven't fulfilled even the most basic of our conditions. Is that autonomy going to be a hostage to the vetoes -- possible vetoes of the Russians and the Chinese? That has got to all be clarified.
MARGARET WARNER: So -- go ahead. |
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| Balancing the KLA with Moscow. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Can I just add one more point to that? The agreement also talks about a very sensitive and difficult point; namely, the demilitarization-- that's the word-- of the KLA.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Now, when will that happen? Will it happen as the Serbs are leaving? Will it happen after they have left? Suppose the Serbs at some point say, "Well, we're not satisfied; the demilitarization of the KLA is not happening fast enough. We're stopping our withdrawals."We have in the meantime stopped the bombing, we have obviously decided not to deploy ground troops for combat, and time will have passed for that. We'll have lost two of the three leverages, and will then NATO be united and the Russians and the Chinese might be saying, "well, NATO's violating the agreement." So there are a lot, a lot of loopholes. I think that the administration is to be commended for getting this far and for doing late in the game some of the things they needed to do. And I wish it well, but we have to be extremely careful because we're going to lose immediately two-thirds of our leverage and maybe all three elements. MARGARET WARNER: Are you as confident as Secretary Cohen seemed to be when he talked to Jim that the KLA will essentially play ball?
MARGARET WARNER: Let's go back to the Russian role now on the ground, and you heard what Chernomyrdin said ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Yes. MARGARET WARNER: They're going to be -- Russians are going to answer to -- I can't find my notes here, but they're to take orders from Russians and only from Russians. Secretary Cohen says, "Oh, no, we have the Bosnia model." Explain how the Bosnia model worked and how do you interpret all this? GENERAL GEORGE JOULWAN: What Secretary Perry and I negotiated with Minister of Defense Grachev was where I received as the supreme allied commander a three-star Russian deputy. I had what is called operational control of the force. Tactical control was by the division on the ground -- the U.S. division. That satisfied the unity of command issue. What Chernomyrdin is talking about is something entirely different where they're going to take their direct orders, if I heard him correctly, from Moscow. That is not unity of command. You cannot have a split command within a military organization, at least I would not recommend it.
ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: Well, in a way, we had very good indication of that in the Chernomyrdin article, and it's quite clear from the article that the Russians didn't want NATO - MARGARET WARNER: The op-ed that he wrote - ZBIGNIEW BRZEZINSKI: The op-ed in the "Washington Post" about a week ago. It's quite clear that the Russians didn't want NATO to succeed, first of all, and Russian press has been very open on this. They have viewed this essentially as an exercise of what they call American hegemony. I don't believe that as of today all of a sudden they have an interest in this being a success for NATO and the United States. And this makes me very wary. They may have no choice and they may have to go along with us, but they're going to do everything they can during the implementation phase to reduce this in terms of it being a success and to complicate it if the Serbs and particularly Milosevic, chooses to complicate it. So we have to be extremely careful here and move step by step and be extremely precise about every step. When the Serbian troops begin to leave, I would like to see a simultaneous deployment of NATO forces that's in Pristina, in the airport, in the city, control a major hub of communications so that we're astride the Serbian roads of withdrawal, things of this sort. MARGARET WARNER: How do you read the Russian intentions here? WARREN ZIMMERMANN: I think the Russians are paying us back - the Russian agenda -- which has been a Yugoslav agenda, Serb agenda as Zbig says. I think they're paying us back for the expansion of NATO. They don't like NATO, they don't like the fact that it's expanded in their direction. So a lot of the posturing at the beginning of the war was the Russians doing that. But the other thing is the Russians want to be a player in the global sense, and so they were prepared to do a kind of a mediating role, even though they didn't drop their support for the Serbs. And I think we need to emphasize that aspect of it with the Russians. They're going to be a player in this. They're in and they're not going to get you out. We need to emphasize that aspect of it, but it's going to be tough because their agenda's not the same as ours. MARGARET WARNER: All right, gentlemen, thank you all three very much. |
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GENERAL
GEORGE JOULWAN: Again, I think the devil's in the details. We haven't
heard enough of those details. I would hope that the Joint Chiefs of
Staff are giving the president very clear advice, unity of command,
who's in charge, that's unresolved. What are the rules of engagement
that you're going to have on the ground? All of those things need to
be considered. We did that in Bosnia, it took some time, but it paid
off in the end. And I hope that's happening now. But it's in the details,
and we haven't seen those details yet. 
WARREN
ZIMMERMANN: Well, the way Secretary Cohen described it, it certainly
would be. But I'm a bit apprehensive that at least some of the language
we've seen of this agreement doesn't quite tally with the very firm
and very welcomed comments of Secretary Cohen. For example, what is
the NATO role going to be in the force? Is NATO going to control or
not? The Russians say not, they're not going to take orders from NATO.
Those things, and I think General Joulwan is absolutely right, have
got to be clarified because Milosevic, we all know, anybody who's dealt
with him or watched him operate knows that agreement for him is about
10 percent of your way to an objective. The other 90 percent is implementation,
and if there are any discrepancies in the agreement or any disagreements
in how it's interpreted, he'll drive a truck through them. 
MARGARET
WARNER: You mean diplomatically. 
MARGARET
WARNER: But then, General, what are you bombing? You want the Serb troops
to leave. Are you going to continue bombing Serbia proper, are you going
to bomb areas in Kosovo where the Serb troops aren't? What do you do
as a practical matter? 
GENERAL
GEORGE JOULWAN: It does in one major point, and that is a lesson we
learned in Bosnia, that I would hope this would not lead to some sort
of dual-key arrangement that we had where the UNPROFOR -- 
MARGARET
WARNER: I was just going to ask about that. 
WARREN
ZIMMERMANN: I'm not sure, Margaret. I think it will all depend on, as
the days go by, on whether we can get the kind of clarity in the agreement
that meets the conditions that NATO and the United States have set forth.
If we don't get that, then the KLA is going to tell the refugees, "Don't
go back." And why should they go back if they don't get the conditions
that we asked for -- so there's still a lot to be settled. 
MARGARET
WARNER: So what is your take on what the Russian sort of motivations
and intentions are? And I know I'm asking you to read their minds, but
given their history and given their history in this conflict and -
