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| COMPLIANCE IN KOSOVO? | |
 October 27, 1998 
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In light of Serbia's troop withdrawals from Kosovo, the United States and its NATO allies called off air strikes against Serbian targets. Margaret Warner leads a discussion of the latest news from Kosovo. Elizabeth Farnsworth continues the report with a Newsmaker interview with Special Envoy Richard Holbrooke.
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MARGARET WARNER: For reaction now we're joined by Robert Hunter, U.S. Ambassador to NATO in President Clinton's first term, and now a senior fellow at Rand, a research organization; James Hooper, a retired foreign service officer and now director of the Balkan Action Council, a study and advocacy group that focuses on the former Yugoslavia; and Gary Dempsey, a foreign policy analyst at the CATO Institute. He was last in Kosovo in June. Mr. Hooper, you heard the administration saying Milosevic is in substantial compliance. NATO's decided not to launch air strikes for now. Is this a good outcome?
MARGARET WARNER: A bad day, Mr. Dempsey? GARY DEMPSEY, CATO Institute: Well, I think this agreement really buys time for both sides. It buys time for Milosevic, because the presence of 2000 observers on the ground basically protects him against a carrying out of the NATO air strike anytime in the immediate future, and it buys time for the KLA simply because over the winter - if there are these threats in place - they will have time to regroup and collect new recruits. I fully expect that they will launch an offensive in the spring. I expect that the authorities in Belgrade will crack down, and we will have 2000 unarmed observers caught in the cross-fire. This human trip fire will surely bring in NATO. In effect, this agreement has created a trap. We put ourselves in a trap, and I expect it to snap closed in four or five months. MARGARET WARNER: A trap? ROBERT HUNTER, Former U.S. Ambassador, NATO: NATO has no choice but to be involved. This is right next door to where the allies live. It's the result of a series of promises, including we made -the famous Christmas pledge made by President Bush in 1992 - and frankly, the credibility of the alliance has been on the line. If you can't do something this close that's this egregious, then what else are you going to be able to do? |
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Call it success?
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MARGARET WARNER: Do you think it was successful? I mean, is the outcome today a good outcome?
MARGARET WARNER: But let me go back to today just for a minute, because the President said, look, this achieved our objectives. We stopped the carnage, and we prevented at least through this winter a humanitarian crisis with all these refugees stuck up in the woods. Do those - were those limited objectives at least reached, Mr. Hooper? JAMES HOOPER: Well, even that, they haven't prevented the carnage. There was the killing of an 11-year-old boy yesterday, Sunday - reported in yesterday's Washington Post. There was a verifier who was there for the funeral of this. There was additional sniping by Serb snipers at the mourners there at the funeral and the grave diggers. A verifier was called upon to interpose his vehicle between them to allow the funeral to continue. He called headquarters to see if he could get permission. He was not authorized to do so. He drove away. So I think what you see - and this is a cameo - is that the verifiers are not going to provide the kind of security that Kosovo Albanians need to return to their homes. And I think that's going to cause considerable - a continuation of the considerable humanitarian problems that we've seen so far. MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree with that? You've been on the ground there.
MARGARET WARNER: But I mean, for now, do you - do you at least buy what the President said, that it has a verdict - at least a humanitarian crisis for now? GARY DEMPSEY: In the immediate future, yes. ROBERT HUNTER: We bought time and the time has to be used wisely, diplomatically, and also getting the allies to the point where they will understand that next year no more temporizing, no more backing and filling. If, indeed, the fighting starts again, and it's Milosevic doing it, then NATO has to be prepared to act. At the same time, they have to try to give enough of a deal to the Albanians so the KLA, the liberation army, doesn't have a chance itself to get the fighting going again. MARGARET WARNER: What about the KLA? What's to prevent the KLA from moving back into position and reasserting itself in territory that the Serbs abandoned and the Serbs in turn moving back to reassert their position? GARY DEMPSEY: I think this is happening already, as they mentioned in the setup piece, that the Albanians are retaking a number of police posts, a number of the Serbs are burning them on their way out so that they can't. But I would predict by the spring a lot of the territory will be retaken by the KLA. They will have new recruits, and they'll have plans. JAMES HOOPER: Margaret, the way to undermine the KLA is to come up with a political settlement to offer the Kosovo Albanians that is strong enough to build a moderate center. That means for a start an interim agreement that at least offers the Kosovo Albanians a return to the autonomy that they enjoyed in 1989 before it was taken away by Mr. Milosevic. The agreement that the United States has offered to them - no Kosovo Albanian leader has accepted. It is far short - far short of the 1989 autonomy agreement. It is going to radicalize Kosovo Albanian society, and it is a gift, in fact, to the KLA. We should be working the other way to build up the moderates in Kosovo. |
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MARGARET WARNER: Well, now, what about what the President said today, that this is supposed to set the scene for some real negotiations between Milosevic and the Kosovans? JAMES HOOPER: I don't think there's going to be negotiations that are serious at all. Mr. Milosevic has only shown that he's prepared to negotiate in good faith and constructively if he sees - if he's forced to the negotiating table. Again, what we've seen is because of the lack of NATO - NATO's unwillingness to use force. I think Mr. Milosevic feels that he's taken the measure of NATO. I don't think he's going to negotiate seriously.
GARY DEMPSEY: I think that's true, but I think that has ramifications for Bosnia in the sense that you have an enclave of people within a sovereign country wanting to break away. I don't know how that will resonate with the - with the Serbs and the Croats for that matter in Bosnia if they can point to an example in Serbia and say, well, why did the international community let Kosovo go, yet, they are requiring that we stay within Bosnia. MARGARET WARNER: NATO today made a point of saying that it was keeping the threat of force alive. The activation order has not been rescinded. Do you see that threat as real? Do you think Milosevic sees that threat as real?
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Too little talk.
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MARGARET WARNER: Do you think he sees the threat as real at this point? ROBERT HUNTER: I don't think so. MARGARET WARNER: You don't? ROBERT HUNTER: There's been too much talk and not enough do over time. The real thing is to get to the point where he will understand that, and that means having a credible policy on the ground with the verifiers, with the surveillance. It means having a real negotiating posture, working with Amb. Chris Hill and others, and then our working on the allies, so they'll understand the next time we can't do this kind of back and forth. If NATO is going to go into this again, it has to be ready to do it and show Milosevic. Now, maybe he'll get the message; maybe he won't. So far, I'm afraid, he has judged quite accurately that the alliance really would rather not use force.
MARGARET WARNER: So you wouldn't want this threat to derail? GARY DEMPSEY: That's correct. ROBERT HUNTER: That's been one of the problems. The Russians opposed it. We have a problem. And the allies really didn't like it. It's a question of playing into the hands of the other people, but some time you've got to stand up a show a threat is real because Milosevic only understands force. MARGARET WARNER: All right. Thank you, all three of you very much. |
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JAMES
HOOPER, Former State Department Official: I think it's a bad day for
NATO. What happened here is when NATO threatens force, it has to be
prepared to use force, if it's called on that. This is the third time
that Mr. Milosevic has called NATO's bluff, beginning with the attack
on February 28th of this year. Secondly, in June, he has driven over
a half million Kosovar Albanians from their homes, destroyed 490 villages,
upwards of 18,000 homes, killed over 1,000 people. What Mr. Milosevic
has agreed to is to withdraw a part of his forces in Kosovo. NATO has
even - and he's allowed to keep almost 20,000 military police there,
even those that he has said he would withdraw he has not withdrawn and
NATO has allowed him to get away with this. So I think this is a bad
day for NATO's credibility. 
ROBERT
HUNTER: The basic thing is Milosevic is now moving in the right direction.
Why did it - I suspect people will debate it for a long period of time,
particularly since NATO did temporize - did wait month after month while
talking brave, did give him an extra 10 days to say pretty please, do
it. The real thing is what President Clinton said. We have to stay on
case, and make sure that over the next few months the verifiers are
in, the surveillance gets done, the movement towards elections, all
of these things that have been agreed that Milosevic does, rather than
just wait for spring, and then get back in the killing business. The
credibility of NATO is going to be judged tomorrow, not today. 
GARY
DEMPSEY: Yes. I think that this agreement will simply postpone the conflict.
I think that in the spring, as I mentioned before, you will see a resurgent
KLA, and I think that the carnage will continue. And at that point I
think NATO will be forced to intervene. 
ROBERT
HUNTER: I think the jury is still out on that, as Jim is saying. The
allies really didn't want to use force here. And part of the success
of Amb. Holbrooke was getting enough so the allies could take a formal
decision but then not see it happen. Of course, Milosevic made sure
that point was made. The real question is what we do now to help make
a real deal. And we have to be prepared. It may be a deal in the end
in which there is an independent Kosovo. We have to be ready for that.
JAMES
HOOPER: Of course he doesn't. He said the same thing about the Christmas
warning by President Bush. That was in force. It was on the table. It
was not removed from the table, and Milosevic launched his - launched
this conflict on February 28th of this year. He destroyed several villages.
He stopped. He waited to see what Washington was going to do. All they
saw was rhetoric - some meetings by the six-nation contact group - but
no military action and so he upped the ante and escalated the violence.
GARY
DEMPSEY: I think we should address the root of the problem, and that
is Slobodan Milosevic. I think that the West should take steps to support
the opposition, independent media inside of Serbia, and in Montenegro
support -- his rival, Milo Dekonovic, the president of Montenegro Unfortunately,
I think that actually launching an air strike, cruise missiles and warplanes
against Serbia will have the opposite effect. It will give Milosevic
a rationale, a justification to impose martial law, and we won't see
a post-Milosevic democratic Yugoslavia for years.