FEUILLETON Rambouillet - ultimatum for the bombing (15): Milutinovic offers that Serbia join NATO

Writing for Kosovo Online: Dragan Bisenic

After a quarter of a century since its conclusion, even these indirect negotiations have not remained without secrets. Nikola Sainovic testified about one of them.

"In Paris, Christopher Hill, Milutinovic, and I are meeting. Milutinovic announces the 'special offer from Belgrade,' that FR Yugoslavia enters NATO, provided it enters entirely. Hill says, 'Milan, that's not the topic.' The signing is scheduled. We refuse to sign over Kosovo and Metohija and submit our text with amendments and additions; that is not the subject of discussion. The Albanians, the USA, and the EU sign, Russia does not. The OSCE mission withdraws without any explanation, not even claiming its security is threatened or that we hinder its work... Nothing. They leave on March 20, 1999".

In one interview, Ambassador Christopher Hill confirmed that he had discussed this with Miltunovic. When asked if the "urban legend" was accurate, Hill replied, "The US Ambassador also explained a kind of an urban legend according to which Milan Milutinovic said to him during the Rambouillet talks - Chris, let's join NATO".

"No, he never said it like that. What he said was something like this, 'We know you're having trouble finding new locations to station NATO and US troops because Europeans no longer want you. That's why you're interested in Kosovo, we're aware of that. So maybe let's work on it'. It was one of those jaw-dropping moments in diplomacy. When you can't believe what you just heard. But, in any case, I didn't believe he believed in it, and I'm pretty sure he didn't either," Hill said.

The former US negotiator does not provide further details on why this offer did not receive a response from the US side and what was not valid in it.

There is another version of this matter. The then editor-in-chief and Director of "Politika," Hadzi Dragan Antic, is preparing his book on Rambouillet with many unknown documents, testimonies, and photographs. Antic told me in a conversation that Milutinovic had discussed Serbia's entry into NATO with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright at the Intercontinental Hotel in Paris. "I don't want to talk much about everything before the book is published, but I attended the conversation between Milan Milutinovic and Madeleine Albright and I have photos from it. The conversation lasted two hours. Firstly, Milutinovic offered to provide NATO with a military base on commercial terms. When she did not accept that, Milutinovic offered NATO membership to FR Yugoslavia. She responded, 'It's too late for that'".

Nikola Sainovic recounted in an early interview that the NATO membership offer had been actually repeated several times. The first time was back in the summer of 1998 through Christopher Hill. When the talks in Paris ended, where the Yugoslav delegation was informed that bombing would follow, Sainovic states that "of course, chaos ensued". "No one believed they would go that far. The last alternative was that Milosevic offered Serbia to join NATO, in return for preserving territorial integrity. More precisely, Kosovo would be granted maximum autonomy. We offered this through Christopher Hill, back in the summer of 1998".

In The Hague documentation, there is a recorded response where Hill talks about the conversation with Milutinovic, who conveyed that proposal to him. "Mr. Milutinovic, that's not the topic. 
The train has already left the station, and you can't jump on the curve". Later, it was said that we offered bases to the Americans. No, we didn't, we offered the whole of Serbia to save Kosovo, but it was futile. That conversation was repeated in Rambouillet, but we got the same answer," Sainovic explained.

Sainovic also mentioned an incident that occurred in the Serbian delegation but did not provide any details and did not attach importance to it. Since he mentioned that it was about a paper proposing "parallel institutions," it matches the version presented by Vladan Kutlesic in his interview on this topic. Kutlesic gave a much more detailed description and numerous details that have not appeared elsewhere in testimonies about Rambouillet.

"A year before Rambouillet, in Belgrade, in absolute secrecy, we began talks with the Americans about Kosovo. Only four people knew about it. In a very good and constructive atmosphere, in February 1998, Jim O'Brien, special advisor to Madeleine Albright and one of her most trusted people, came. He stayed in Belgrade continuously from February to May 1998, and the two of us worked on the text that was supposed to resolve the status of Kosovo. We worked slowly, with no deadlines. I must say he was a top-notch lawyer. During that period, he only briefly went to the US for about fifteen days because his daughter was born, after which he returned. By July 1st, we had only completed the beginning of the agreement and discussed the outlines of the final text. Our work was aimed at expanding Kosovo's autonomy. Then came the annual vacations, Jim returned to the US with an agreement to continue in August. However, that never happened because something happened on the ground that I still don't know, but something that ruined the good atmosphere between us and the Americans and halted the work. Since then, there has been no cooperation, and the job stopped until Rambouillet," Kutlesic said in an interview with Nedeljnik.

So, he and O'Brien were working on the legal agreement while, at the same time, in Belgrade, also in secrecy, Milan Milutinovic and Christopher Hill were working on the military-police action in Kosovo.

"Sometimes we would arrive early and I would hear what they were talking about. I can claim and sign that Hill, with great affection, understanding, and advisory, addressed Milutinovic on how to conduct the action in Kosovo, but at the same time, he imposed limitations contained in the OSCE rules on internal conflicts. And then I hear, I can quote what I heard, 'Milan, green must not be on the field, only blue'.

It meant that the army must not be there, only the police. 'If there's not enough blue, paint green into blue'. 'No aviation, helicopters are allowed', 'tanks are not allowed, armored personnel carriers are, nothing over 80 mm'. These were the OSCE rules that the Americans demanded to be respected," Kutlesic recounted.

To be continued tomorrow: What Kutlesic and O'Brien were doing