Spasiba! You’re welcome!

At the moment when Slobodan Milosevic was flying to Moscow and Serbia was threatened with bombing, the NATO exercise of threatening was brought to a close in Macedonia and Albania. On the occasion of the Day of the Yugoslav Army, several statements were made that beside NATO military superiority, the Army will continue to protect the border.  In several cities, soldiers’ parents began protests, only to be told after a run-around of different addresses that the army has been taken out to camp so as not to await ambush in barracks.  The Liberation Army of Kosovo (UCK) attacked a military transport and wounded four soldiers, killed one policemen in reserve, and took two Serbs hostage.  The Yugoslav Army announced that it captured new smuggled arms shipments on the Albanian border.

In the Moscow negotiations, the Russian side was represented by the Minister of External Affairs, Yevgeni Primakov, and the Minister of Defense, Igor Sergeyev.  On the eve of the negotiations, both the one and the other gave statements in which the tone of disagreement with NATO intervention, without approval from the Security Council, was kept.  Sergeyev protested because he was not notified in a timely fashion of NATO intentions to carry out a threatening military exercise.  The Russian NATO representative flew back to Moscow because his visa is expiring, which looks like “withdrawing for consultations”, but these misunderstandings were not dramatized.

Ph.D. Vladimir Veres, associate with the Center for Strategic Studies and expert for Russia, observes that the Russians are looking carefully at what point it would be possible to say “no” to NATO, without bringing their vital interests into question.  President Yeltsin would like to improve Russia’s image, to keep its influence in the Balkans, to prove himself as a peacemaker, and to repeat his recent success when he managed to persuade the West hold back military intervention in Iraq.

A BROTHER AND A SPY: The most startling aspect of the Moscow negotiations is represented by one peculiar detail — the participation of the Chief of the Russian Security Service, Vyatcheslav Trubnikov.  Veres also believes that this fairly unusual presence of the Chief of the Security Service probably means that he acquainted the Yugoslav side with Russian information about the seriousness of NATO’s intentions.

Speaking in an interview for Vreme, Veres says that Yeltsin stated at the conclusion that negotiations with Slobodan Milosevic are “a complex matter”.  Yeltsin, who is familiar with the global situation in the Balkans, probably negotiated general principles with the Yugoslav president, and let his aides take care of the finer points.

Looked at from the perspective of Belgrade’s elitist Dedinje district, it is interesting that President Milosevic’s personal translator was his brother Bora Milosevic, a Montenegrin by nationality, who was otherwise the translator during the previous meeting between his brother Slobodan Milosevic and President Yeltsin in 1993.  Incidentally, Bora was also Tito’s personal translator in talks with Brezhnev in the seventies, when during the Libyan crisis the Soviets requested that Yugoslavia allow them the use of some of its airports.  Top Yugoslav and Serbian politicians at the time looked to Bora Milosevic for days in the hope of finding out what Tito said to Brezhnev, but Bora simply disappeared from sight.  Otherwise Yeltsin’s translator was Oleg Levitin, First Secretary at the Russian Embassy in Belgrade and a man who can be supposed to be familiar with the situation in Yugoslavia.

SAFETY FUSE: The fact that Yeltsin emphasized that the negotiations would be made public so that it would be known who committed to what, can be understood as a warning for President Milosevic — the Russians are otherwise very careful lest one of the Balkan governments should draw them into a conflict, the way Tsar Nicholas II (whose remains are being commemorated in an unusual way these days) was drawn into the 1914 conflict.

The biggest psychological price for Milosevic is that on the fiftieth anniversary of the Soviet Politbureau letter and Tito’s “no” to Stalin, he went to Moscow on a mission, that this is still more written proof concerning the internationalization of the Kosovo problem, and that the Serbian referendum on the exclusion of foreign mediators was not even mentioned.  Veres is under the impression that Yeltsin got the idea that Milosevic will take on the responsibility of personally continuing negotiations with Rugova, even though this is not clear from the text itself.  (The Declaration mentions the immediate continuation of negotiations between the delegation of Albanians from Kosovo and Metohija and the “state delegation” without any mention of either Serbia or Yugoslavia.)

President Milosevic did not commit himself to withdrawing armed forces from Kosovo and did not dictate that an international representative should participate in negotiations.
There is no rational reason why he should ruin all this by going back on what he promised.  Milosevic should not anger Moscow not only because of a single vote in the Security Council, but also because of the strong economic dependence of Serbia on Russia (oil, exchange of goods).

KOHL-YELTSIN: Veres believes that it is possible that Yeltsin’s insistence on a public release of negotiations is directed at the other side, at the West, so that there is precise knowledge of who negotiated what, and so that Yeltsin is not later required to do more than he committed to.  According to information agencies, Yeltsin was asked by members of G8 to persuade President Milosevic, and it is possible that he volunteered himself for this task.  This task was probably negotiated in his contact with German Chancellor Helmut Kohl, with whom the Russian President shares good relations and a personal friendship.

“ACCORDING TO MEASURE...”: In Moscow, President Milosevic agreed to negotiations on the engagement of OSCE observers, coinciding with negotiations for the return of Yugoslavia to OSCE.  He promised to continue negotiations with the political representatives of Kosovo’s Albanians, but not with the leaders of their armed formations.  He tied the withdrawal of security forces to the degree of reduction in terrorist activities.  This part of the agreement, as Veres observes lucidly, is directed at the fact that the original is written in Russian: “According to the measure of reduction in terrorist activities, the security forces will reduce their presence beyond the area of their permanent stay.”  “According to the measure” is a Russian expression, while the Serbian expression is “in accordance with”...  Otherwise, the text of the joint declaration of Presidents Yeltsin and Milosevic accordingly calls the armed groups of Kosovo’s Albanians  terrorists, differing from western terminology which is uneven and euphemistic in this regard.
BALL: When Primakov stated that “the ball is now in the Albanian court,” President Milosevic gave his thanks in Russian, “Spasiba!”

Which Albanians could this refer to?  Pristina leads the operation of national unification of Albanians, and not Tiran, which is in chaos (600,000 weapons stolen during unrest, and 1000 dead during last year).  President Milosevic stated in Moscow that he will not negotiate with UCK, which he considers a terrorist organization, and that this organization is not even recognized by the political heads of Kosovo’s Albanians.  In a way, Rugova’s adviser Fehmi Agani indirectly confirmed this when he stated after the release of the Moscow declaration that he believes that UCK is merely a form of self-organized defense by Albanians against police repression, regardless of how contradictory this self-defense is considering the fact that only the day before it consisted of attack on military food transports, attacks on civilians, and the murder of a reserve policeman.  Some experts from Belgrade (Slobodan Samardzic from the Institute for European Studies and Miroslav Hadzic from the Institute for Social Sciences in the Press Club Media Center) tend to think that the differences between politicians (“Rugova”) and armed groups (“UCK”) are smaller than publicly represented; that the differences are merely tactical and that the two groups do not differ in terms of objectives; that politicians give actual support and exploit the effects of armed conflicts, etc.

Perhaps with the phrase about the ball and their court, Primakov suggested that Russia did its part, and that someone who is responsible for Albanians is next in line.  Who could that be?  If it is the Americans, they are not showing half the resolve toward the armed Albanians from Kosovo that they are demonstrating toward the Serbs, whom they continue to threaten with bombing.  Even “after Moscow,” UCK has not been added to the list of terrorist organizations, and it is slowly getting media coverage (CNN’s Christian Amanpour had an interview with UCK’s spokesman, a certain Krasnici, one day after he showed up on Albanian state television in Tirana).

After the talks with Yeltsin, American President Bill Clinton stated that things are taking a good direction, but his State Secretary Madeleine Albright stated two times that this is not enough, and that Milosevic must withdraw his armed forces from Kosovo, that the preparations for intervention will be continued, and that the Americans can intervene on their own.  This formulation, albeit in a somewhat softened tone, is also supported by the French and the British, who proudly state that they secured great support for a Security Council resolution.

The text of the Moscow declaration does not mention any Russian obligations, or even suggestions as to how Russia could vote in the Security Council,  nor is there any indication of any promises in the statements of Russian politicians, that is if we do not include Yeltsin’s symbolic statement that Russia will not forget that it is a friendly, Slavic country.  The Russian media, such as Bierezovski’s private ORT, assess that the Yeltsin-Milosevic meeting managed to postpone the danger of intervention, while a visible tone of relief, with different degrees of dissatisfaction, can be seen in western reactions.

The result depends on whether the Serbian signatory of the Moscow document will be in a position to fulfill the obligation of not undertaking repressive measures against the civilian population with the objective of controlling terrorist activities.  Up to now, the tactic of the Albanian side was to force a conflict in which there would be civilian casualties, and now dissatisfaction with Milosevic’s success in Moscow can lead to the provocation of NATO intervention.  The character of the Serbian police is such that its two latest actions (in Drenica in January, and near the border in Djakovica) resulted either in many indirect civilian casualties, or in great destruction and a wave of refugees.  Will the obligation of allowing diplomatic representatives and accredited international organizations to inspect the situation increase police self-discipline?  Admittedly, it is not known how Europeans will react to the agreement on simultaneous negotiations concerning the engagement of OEBS observers and the return of FRY to OEBS.

Before President Milosevic’s departure for Moscow, the Serbian side was being accused of “ethnic cleansing”, which Albanian propaganda took up wholeheartedly, and western politicians and media took up without reservations.  Bojan Dimitrijevis, associate with the Institute for Contemporary History and independent analyst of military potentials of engagement in Kosovo, stated in a conversation about Kosovo in Belgrade’s Press Club, that it is highly unlikely that the Serbian government has intentions of ethnically cleansing a territory which is dominated by a two million Albanian majority.

State propaganda was incorrigibly unsuccessful in proving such claims.  The group of diplomats taken to the area where fighting took place came back with negative impressions.  Even during the operation in Djakovica, the bicycle race “Through Serbia” was partly routed through Kosovo to show that where there are no terrorists, people are living calmly,  but even this had no effect.

Two days before Milosevic’s departure for Moscow, the Serbian government called on refugees to come back to their homes and promised them help in rebuilding their houses and aid with transportation, but the effect of these actions is not yet known.  Calling on UNHCR assessments, Reuters mentions 13,000 refugees in Albania, around 10,000 in Montenegro.  Some information indicates the presence of refugees in Sandzak, while the majority (perhaps around 45,000 people) is unquestionably in Kosovo itself — partly protected by Serbian police, and partly in UCK controlled territory.  UNHCR describes the situation as very dangerous.  Be that as it may, one of the results of the Moscow negotiations, perhaps the most important one for common people, is the announcement of unhindered return of all displaced persons and refugees on the basis of programs synchronized with UNHCR and MKCK.  The fate of displaced persons will certainly be the best test for intentions and actions.