FEUILLETON Rambouillet - ultimatum for the bombing (1): Kissinger – a terrible diplomatic document

Writing for Kosovo Online: Dragan Bisenic

Negotiations between the Serbian and Kosovo Albanian delegations, which began on February 6, 1999, therefore 25 years ago, were presented as the last chance for a peaceful resolution of the then conflicts in Kosovo, as viewed by representatives of the US and EU.

At the first press conference, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stated that there were only three possible outcomes of the negotiations: first, if the Serbs say "no" to the offered document and the Albanians say "yes", NATO will bomb the Serbs; if both sides say "yes," 28,000 NATO troops will be deployed in Kosovo; if the Serbs say "yes" and the Albanians "no", the United States will cease to support the KLA.

In such circumstances, almost the entire first week of negotiations was spent in tactical maneuvering between Serbs and Albanians, as to who would induce whom to say "no" and bear the consequences of the conference's failure. After 17 days at the Rambouillet castle near Paris, the negotiations ended without success, and the Contact Group decided to continue on March 15 in Paris.

The second round also ended in failure, after only four days. The delegations of Serbia and Kosovo signed different agreements - the Serbian authorities proposed self-government in Kosovo and Metohija, while the Kosovo Albanians offered an agreement proposed by international mediators.

The last attempt before the bombing was on March 22, when Richard Holbrooke spoke with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, with the intention of signing an agreement on Kosovo and the deployment of NATO troops, but he failed to do so.

It seemed that the negotiations in Rambouillet were clarified enough: NATO wanted 28,000 troops in Kosovo, while at the same time, the Serbian Army and police would withdraw, which Serbia could not agree to. This condition was perceived worldwide as an ultimatum and compared to previous similar ultimatums.

"The text from Rambouillet, which called on Serbia to accept NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, an excuse for the start of the bombing. Rambouillet was not a document that any Serb could accept. It was a terrible diplomatic document that should never have been presented in that form," Henry Kissinger wrote on June 28, 1999.

Since then, the question has been raised whether the negotiations in Rambouillet were just an excuse for the bombing or if they had some real diplomatic significance. Some of the participants from Serbia, in their later testimonies about the course of the negotiations, added a new dimension of mystery, claiming that there was another unofficial and parallel channel for negotiations between Belgrade and Washington and that allegedly everything was agreed upon there, unlike in the official channel, where they experienced failure. This was claimed by Dr. Vladan Kutlesic, who soon after these claims passed away, so there was no opportunity for further elaboration.

In any case, they are an example of a "Thatcherite" understanding of diplomacy where power represents a key factor and instrument in international relations. Some of the direct actors in these events are today in prominent positions in US diplomacy and are actively involved in the new Kosovo phase. In this sense, the shadow of Rambouillet extends to the present day.

Ronald Dannreuther assessed that Rambouillet had been an "unusual conference" where participants had been given unequal options, with only Serbia expected to be bombed.

He notes that the debate still continues whether it was intentionally designed to "trigger" a Serbian reaction leading to the bombing. Everything regarding Kosovo, he says, has opened questions on which there is no consensus: the right to secession and the sovereignty of the state. The decision in favor of humanitarian intervention, he believes, is the most controversial in the post-Cold War period because it raised fundamental and contentious questions about the "nature and form of the emerging international order".

However, Rambouillet was just the "dot on the I" of American policy towards Kosovo that began several years earlier.

The framework of American policy towards Kosovo, or towards Serbia, was defined by President George Bush's "Christmas warning" of December 25, 1992. It was actually a private letter sent through an envoy, but it was not discreet enough to be hidden from the hyper-informed correspondent of the New York Times in Belgrade, David Binder.

Let’s recall, Binder was the one who a year earlier disclosed National Intelligence Estimate CIA 1590, which predicted the country's breakup. Seven days before sending this message, on December 17, in Paris, the US Secretary of State and former Ambassador to Belgrade, Lawrence Eagleburger, and the leader of the Kosovo Albanians, Ibrahim Rugova, met.

Eagleburger explained that he had wanted to reverse the Albanian stance on boycotting the elections and persuade them to support Milan Panic's list. It seems it was different.

Albanian activists in America continuously pressured the State Department with information that Serbia was preparing for war in Kosovo and that such a war would endanger the entire southern flank of NATO because it would inevitably confront two members, Greece and Turkey, who would be on different sides, thus endangering NATO unity.

Ivo Daalder and Michael O'Hanlon explained that the US and European allies realized that Kosovo represented a potential "powder keg" amid an unstable region. With Albanians living in at least four different states (Albania, Greece, Macedonia, and Yugoslavia), anything that would fuel Albanian nationalism could be destabilizing for all of Kosovo's neighbors.

Therefore, it was necessary to prevent a broader conflict in Kosovo at all costs. According to their opinion, this explains why the Bush administration, which pursued a fairly passive Yugoslav policy, decided to issue a very stern warning, which would lead to a military response from the US. This so-called Christmas warning, which the Clinton administration repeated just a month after taking office in 1993.

According to the testimony of Ambassador William Montgomery, who was Eagleburger's chief of staff at the time, Kosovo was more important than was thought at the time: "We were more concerned about Kosovo than about the wars in Bosnia and Croatia. Why? Because potential trouble in Kosovo could easily spill over into other countries, and we absolutely did not want that to happen.

"The Christmas warning" was actually a short and clear statement. "In the event of conflict in Kosovo provoked by Serbia's action, the United States will be prepared to use all necessary means, including military force against the Serbs in Kosovo and in Serbia proper," President George Bush wrote in a letter to Slobodan Milosevic, the then President of Serbia, on December 25, 1992.

Our representative requested a meeting with Milosevic. We told him not to say anything to Milosevic, not even if they were alone, but only to say: "I have a message from the US Government that I need to convey to you," Montgomery recounted.

David Binder reported on this on December 28, and the next day it was carried by all newspapers in the US. He specified that the warning was conveyed "verbally and in writing" and was addressed to Milosevic and the Chief of the General Staff of the Yugoslav Army, General Zivota Panic. When asked about this message, the State Department refused to comment on the allegations, stating that it "does not comment on either diplomatic or presidential correspondence".

The then President of FR Yugoslavia, Dobrica Cosic, was also informed about this letter, which greatly disturbed him. Just two days later, he met with former US Secretary of State and UN Special Envoy who co-chaired the international conference on the former Yugoslavia, Cyrus Vance, whom he informed about this message and expressed great concern about Bush's letter.

Until the negotiations in Dayton, which ended the conflict in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo was in the background. It wasn't until Dayton that the US suddenly, one evening, attempted to reach an agreement on Kosovo simultaneously, which Slobodan Milosevic strongly rejected. But Kosovo was approaching.

In July 1996, Aleksandar Despic, President of the Serbian Academy of Sciences, proposed the start of negotiations on the "peaceful, civilized division and demarcation" of Kosovo and Metohija along ethnic lines, reviving the earlier proposal of former Yugoslav President, academic Dobrica Cosic. Albanian intellectuals from Kosovo and Metohija received this proposal with distrust, while Serbian politicians, both in government and in opposition, mostly remained indifferent to it. Slobodan Milosevic, in a speech delivered in Pristina on June 25, 1997, emphasized that Kosovo and Metohija remained an integral part of Serbia, rejecting the Albanian demand for a return to the state before the constitutional changes of 1989 and rejecting the internationalization of the entire problem. However, some progress in Serbian-Albanian relations was achieved thanks to the discreet diplomacy of Monsignor Vincenzo Paglia from the Vatican's Sant’Egidio College.

I had the opportunity to be a direct witness to most of these attempts: from reaching agreements with Ibrahim Rugova through the mediation of the Vatican organization "Sant’Egidio", to dialogues organized in Washington by the Ethnic Relations Project, to conferences organized by the German foundation "Bertelsmann". Parallel to these, one could say, "unofficial diplomatic efforts", military activities were intensifying. The Kosovo Liberation Army emerged, imposing armed conflict in Kosovo, while NATO was becoming increasingly important until it became the most important and decisive actor.

In June 1998, together with a large group of Belgrade journalists, I attended a one-day NATO aviation exercise called "Determined Falcon" in Aviano. There we met with two generals who would play decisive roles in the bombing of FR Yugoslavia, NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe Wesley Clark and NATO Air Commander Michael Short.

Undoubtedly, the turning point in convening the Rambouillet conference was the events in the village of Racak on January 15, 1999.

To be continued tomorrow: Diplomacy and the development of military action