FEUILLETON Rambouillet - ultimatum for the bombing (13): Rubin pairs Thaci's ties and suit jackets

Writing for Kosovo Online: Dragan Bisenic

The international community was represented by three co-chairpersons of the conference whose authority could not be doubted: the United States was represented by the experienced associate of Holbrooke, Christopher Hill (who at that time was serving as the US Ambassador to Skopje), the European Union was represented by the Ambassador of Austria in Belgrade, Wolfgang Petritsch, and Russia by Viktor Chernomyrdin. Similarly to the peace conference on Bosnia and Herzegovina held at the US airbase "Wright-Patterson" in Dayton, Ohio, and the negotiations in Rambouillet were conducted according to the principle of proximity talks, i.e., the two delegations did not meet directly while messages between them were conveyed by intermediaries who thus gained significant influence throughout the conference.

Rambouillet was known not only as the castle where the French-German reconciliation took place but also for the "Rambouillet" sheep breed, which produces one of the highest quality wools in the world. Better-informed journalists therefore expected from the beginning of the negotiations "who would shear whom" there. Serbian and Albanian delegates were accommodated on two different floors. Communication was conducted through intermediaries, who claimed that "running up and down the stairs was simpler for them than flying from Pristina to Belgrade".

Although Europeans and Russians initiated the idea of a conference on Kosovo and Metohija, and consensus between Washington and Moscow was reached during the meeting between the US Secretary of State and the Russian Foreign Minister, its framework was determined by Madeleine Albright, the US Secretary of State, during her first visit to Rambouillet. At a press conference, Albright stated that there were only three possible outcomes of the negotiations: first, if Serbs say "no" to the offered document and Albanians say "yes", NATO will bomb the Serbs; if both sides say "yes", 28,000 NATO soldiers will be deployed in Kosovo and Metohija; if the Serbs say "yes" and Albanians "no", the United States will cease to support the KLA.

In such circumstances, almost the entire first week of negotiations passed in outsmarting the two delegations with the aim of inducing one to say "no" and bear the consequences of the conference's failure. Western diplomats spread optimism about the conclusion of the negotiations by stating that chance encounters between Serbs and Albanians were courteous and that it was only a matter of time before direct dialogue began.

"We happened to run into each other," says Luan Koka, a member of the Serbian delegation. "The encounters were civilized. We knew who was in which position, and that was not discussed. I stood once with Thaci. He saw that my name was Luan, he addressed me in Albanian, I replied to him in two or three sentences, and that was all".

On February 11, 1999, President Clinton and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder met at the White House. The US President sounded optimistic. "I want to thank you for your commitment to forces for Kosovo. Rambouillet seems to be going well, although it is still early. If we reach an agreement there, then we will engage NATO forces. It helped that the Russians came with us to Bosnia. I hope Milosevic and the Kosovars can come to an agreement and avoid NATO airstrikes," the US President said. He mentioned the upcoming NATO Summit, where the anniversary was to be celebrated, and new members were to be admitted. "We have a problem with Chirac because of UN mandates, missions outside NATO's responsibility zone without prior explicit UN approval. We must not allow our hands to be tied in case something happens that we need to react to," Clinton stated.

Clinton reiterated that there had been "several good days in Rambouillet" and assured Schroder that he would "accept a peace agreement with NATO only if he believed the alternative was air force". "An agreement is the better option," Clinton concluded.

Schroder reported that Germany was "ready for military action in Kosovo", but noted that approval from the Bundestag was required, which he was confident would be obtained, although it would be "difficult without a UN Security Council resolution". If Rambouillet goes well and Slobodan Milosevic accepts ground troops, then we would try to obtain UN blessing, Schroder said.

The foreign ministers of the Contact Group met again on February 14 in Paris, articulating disappointment with the slow progress but agreeing to extend the conference for another week, to conclude on Saturday, February 20, in the afternoon.

Christopher Hill met with Secretary Albright and her spokesperson James Rubin, who essentially appeared as an advisor for Kosovo without much to say. Albright asked him what he thought about the possibility of going to Belgrade to tell Milosevic "to take the negotiations more seriously".

"That was the first time I heard of that idea, although I didn't think it was bad and I would have liked to have come up with it myself," Hill admitted. He said he would consider it but thought it was a good idea.

Just 30 minutes later, Hill, together with Wolfgang Petritsch and the Russian Envoy, "the courteous, intelligent, but somewhat inconsequential Boris Mayorski", sat in front of journalists at the weekly press conference. The venue was a large indoor sports hall in the village of Rambouillet, a basketball and volleyball facility. There were hundreds of journalists. Phil Reeker, who became the spokesperson in Rambouillet, introduced the speakers and invited the "rock star correspondent", Christiane Amanpour of CNN, who was also Jamie Rubin's wife, to ask the first question.

"This question is for Ambassador Hill. Ambassador, have you considered going to Belgrade to meet with Milosevic?" "I realized that this idea was gaining importance," Hill concluded.

On February 16, he flew to Belgrade with Petritsch on a US military plane. He knew that Milosevic had long lost any trust that the process could lead to an outcome acceptable to Serbs. He publicly rejected any NATO role, a "sine qua non" for any "imaginable solution" insisted upon by the US side. Milosevic didn't want to see the inclusion of the word "temporary" because it seemed to him like the agreement on Eastern Slavonia during the first week of Dayton, which led to the imposition of Croatian sovereignty in that region. "Temporary" was simply a means to "give the Serbs in Kosovo time to escape".

Hill noticed that Milosevic's willingness to talk that winter quickly waned. When he first insisted on seeing his new foreign minister, it was a clear sign that the channel through Milosevic was nearing its end. Hill objected to meeting with Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic altogether, suggesting to Milosevic that it didn't seem to him that things were going anywhere, and then he threw in a disdainful remark that "without being too harsh on the foreign minister, I wondered if he was intellectually up to such questions". For a second, Milosevic showed a sign of his old self. "You know, the Serbs are very proud that their foreign minister is a real Serbian peasant," Hill noted.

Rubin was the one who believed that Thaci was the true leader of the Albanian delegation and that Albright should focus on talks and contacts with him. "Jamie started paying attention exclusively to Thaci, going so far as to recommend which suit jacket and tie he should choose," Hill recorded somewhat mockingly, specifying that he had never, in all his time working with foreigners, told them how to match a shirt and tie, although he admitted that Rubin turned out to be right in the end.

In an interview with TV Happy, Nikola Sainovic stated that the delegation of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) in Rambouillet had agreed to every form of autonomy for Kosovo. "Our red line was the sovereignty of the state and the position of the Serbs. We could not step out of that trap in Rambouillet. I managed to leave only for one night with permission. We wanted the agreement to be modeled after Dayton. To what extent this went in those negotiations, one night we came up with the idea to create a parallel system for courts, healthcare, education... The Albanians didn't accept it, but they didn't reject it either.

At dawn, the Americans launched a counterattack and came up with a new paper on military presence. It was obvious that if the Albanians started to accept any of our ideas, there would immediately be a halt, and the discussion would shift to the topic of military presence. That night when our inner delegation came up with this solution of parallel systems, one of the political representatives of the Serbs from Kosovo got scared that we were giving in and selling Kosovo, so he reported it to Belgrade. Then there were some harsh words. In the morning, Milutinovic and Minic came and saw what was going on. But that morning, the whole issue disappeared from the table as I said," Sainovic described.

Sainovic further described the atmosphere in the negotiations. "In the following days, we received the entire document which had dozens of pages detailing the functioning of municipalities and provincial bodies that could be discussed, but the devil slept in the last two pages. There was first 'Annex B: Status of multinational military forces for implementation'. This chapter describes in detail that NATO forces are coming into the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. That the territory, airspace, territorial waters, ports (Kosovo has neither sea nor ports), airports, infrastructure, and media frequency range are made available to them. 'NATO military personnel may possess and carry weapons if permitted by their command. NATO personnel are not subject to any accountability to the authorities of the FRY... In carrying out its responsibilities in accordance with this chapter, NATO is authorized to detain individuals to be brought before appropriate officials as soon as possible".

Here there is no limitation that these measures apply only to the territory of Kosovo; the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is always mentioned, meaning the entire country, and that's not all: "Three years after the entry into force of this agreement, an international meeting will be held to determine the mechanism for a final solution for Kosovo, based on the will of the people, the opinions of relevant authorities, and the efforts of each party in relation to the implementation of this agreement, and the Helsinki Final Document. So, for three years, we should be in a situation with elements of occupation, and then a conference will be held to decide in accordance with the will of the people. Whose people? We asked it to say – in accordance with the will of the citizens of Serbia, of course, that was rejected. So, with one signature, we were supposed to accept both occupation and the mechanism for declaring Kosovo's independence. We said that was impossible. While we were minding our own business, we found out that there was a problem within the Albanian delegation because they expected only independence as the sole result of the negotiations. Thaci demands that it be written that an independence referendum will be held in Kosovo. After much persuasion, the Americans give them only a separate letter guaranteeing that what is written means exactly that," Sainovic stated.

To be continued tomorrow: Albright assures Thaci of the seriousness of the bombing