Talks Crumble as Serbs Balk; NATO to Intensify Bombing

KUMANOVO, Macedonia — Talks between a Yugoslav delegation and NATO broke down here early this morning after a second day when Yugoslavia balked at signing the alliance’s orders detailing the promised withdrawal of Serbian police and soldiers from neighboring Kosovo.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces vowed to accelerate the bombing of Yugoslavia until the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic agrees to accept NATO’s terms.

The Western alliance “has no alternative but to continue, and indeed intensify, the air campaign until such time as the Yugoslav side is prepared to implement fully and without ambiguity” the NATO proposals, said Lt. Gen. Michael Jackson, the British commander of NATO troops waiting to go into Kosovo from Macedonia and the allies’ chief representative at the talks.

Jackson said the Yugoslav delegation had submitted a proposal that “wouldn’t guarantee the safe return of all refugees or the withdrawal of Yugoslav forces,” an apparent surprise to NATO negotiators, who insisted that the discussions weren’t meant to be negotiations at all but simply clarifications and amplifications of NATO’s six pages of terms.

On Sunday, NATO spokesman Maj. Trey Cate said there were no plans to move into the province without the agreement.

For its part, the Yugoslav delegation said NATO’s terms conflicted with those accepted by Milosevic and Yugoslav lawmakers Thursday, which called for a U.N. Security Council resolution to establish a peacekeeping force under the auspices of the United Nations, rather than NATO.

The stalemate suggested that Milosevic had instructed his army-led delegation to balk until the Security Council meets to debate its resolution, perhaps hoping that Russia or China will try to alter the peace agreement to make it more in his favor.

The 15-member Yugoslav delegation was led by two deputy army chiefs of staff, Gen. Svetozar Marjanovic and Col. Gen. Blagoje Kovacevic, who interrupted the talks for lengthy consultations with officials in Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital.

Military analysts in the capital said the army was unhappy with the agreement but in no position to challenge it without Milosevic’s direction. The arrival of Deputy Foreign Minister Nebojsa Vujovic, a top Yugoslav spokesman, to join the delegation Sunday was a sign that the generals were taking government orders.

“The Yugoslav delegation came in good faith to achieve a technical agreement based on a political document,” Vujovic told reporters. “The Yugoslav delegation is ready for the continuation of talks and demands an end to the bombing.”

Pentagon Cites Lack of Yugoslav Guarantees

In Washington, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said the proposal presented by the Yugoslavs was unacceptable because it would have delayed the entry of the NATO-led peacekeeping force and “would not have guaranteed . . . the protection of all the people of Kosovo, including the internally displaced people,” as well as the safe return of refugees.

“We didn’t go there to negotiate,” Bacon said. “We went there to get compliance with the detailed plan that [Finland’s President Martti] Ahtisaari and [Russia’s special envoy Viktor S.] Chernomyrdin got from Milosevic.”

Bacon reiterated that the NATO air campaign will continue until the Yugoslav side agrees to abide by the Ahtisaari-Chernomyrdin proposal, which incorporated the alliance’s conditions for ending the combat. He said it is up to Belgrade to ask for a resumption of the talks.

“They know the [telephone] number,” he said. “They called [NATO commander Gen. Wesley K.] Clark initially. The Serbs have to accept the terms. It’s up to them.”

Bacon also accused the Yugoslav delegation of delaying tactics. He said that NATO wanted to start the meeting Friday but that Yugoslavia insisted on Saturday. Then Belgrade sent a delegation Saturday that did not have the authority to agree to anything. On Sunday, the Yugoslav delegation was upgraded, but it refused to accept the only plan that NATO was offering.

Bacon said that NATO officials will discuss the issue today in Brussels and that the foreign ministers of the Group of 8--six NATO allies plus Russia and Japan--will talk about it in Bonn today. The G-8 meeting will also give Moscow its first formal opportunity to react to the breakdown in the diplomatic effort that it originated.

Withdrawal Deadline Said to Be Hang-Up

As the talks were unraveling Sunday, media outlets in Serbia--the main Yugoslav republic, of which Kosovo is a province--at first attributed the Yugoslav intransigence to differences over the deadline for the withdrawal.

Studio B, an independent television channel in Belgrade, reported that Yugoslav commanders were insisting on doubling NATO’s one-week deadline. It said the Western allies’ 10 1/2-week air war has left their army with a shortage of trucks and fuel and has damaged roads and bridges along their proposed exit routes.

The commanders were also reported to be demanding some sort of buffer zone, monitored by NATO, to protect their retreating forces from Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas.

Later, however, the official Yugoslav news agency, Tanjug, and the Russian news agency Itar-Tass said their governments were demanding that the U.N. Security Council authorize the NATO-led peacekeeping mission before it can enter Kosovo.

Tanjug said the Yugoslav and Russian foreign ministers had spoken by phone Sunday.

Lt. Gen. Yevgeny Barmyantsev, Russia’s military attache in Belgrade, showed up Sunday at the talks in Macedonia “to remind the NATO representatives” that “the peace operation in Kosovo can start only after the U.N. Security Council passes the related resolution,” Tass reported from Kumanovo.

The text of the peace agreement accepted by the Serbian parliament Thursday appears to support that position. It calls for “deployment in Kosovo, under U.N. auspices, of efficient international, civilian and security presences which would act as can be decided according to Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter.”

Belgrade authorities regard that point as a face-saving NATO concession; it allows them to tell their people, many of whom are questioning why their government held out against the alliance for so long and at such cost, that the peacekeepers are being led by the United Nations, an organization to which Yugoslavia belongs, and not by the NATO “aggressors.”

George Robertson, the British defense secretary, warned Sunday that Milosevic might resort to trickery and try to divide NATO. The response to the Yugoslav leader from the 19-nation Western alliance, Robertson said, would be an even greater number of air raids.

“If he is going to slow down the talks or dilute or weaken the agreement he has made, he should be clear now beyond any doubt at all that the bombing will continue and will intensify,” Robertson told a military briefing in London.

Later Sunday, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright left Washington on an overnight flight to Bonn for the Group of 8 meeting.

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said the foreign ministers would have two primary objectives--planning a joint approach for obtaining U.N. Security Council authorization of a NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping force and coordinating plans for creation of an international provisional administration to supervise creation of a civilian government for the province.

With the failure of the talks in Macedonia, however, the Bonn meeting may be moot or, at least, premature.

A resolution backing the peace plan would seem to face no trouble obtaining a majority on the 15-member Security Council. But under U.N. rules, the five permanent members of the council--the United States, Britain, France, Russia and China--have veto power. Both Russia and China have hinted that they might use their veto, but U.S. officials believe that if Russia goes along, China will not block action.

The G-8 meeting was intended to make sure that the Russians are on board, perhaps after first being given a chance to vent their frustration at NATO’s continued bombing.

At NATO headquarters in Brussels on Sunday, officials pledged to keep throttling the Serbs militarily but in fact continued to ratchet back air operations significantly. And as the Yugoslav generals talked about withdrawal, their forces continued to fight Kosovo rebels and to fire into neighboring Albania and Macedonia.

Serbian soldiers kept up sporadic shelling of the Albanian town of Krume and surrounding villages, causing local residents intimations that the delay could be far more serious.

Mood Swings From Initial Optimism

Asked around dinner time if they were at an impasse, spokesman Cate acknowledged that they could “possibly” be nearing one.

“Talks have not broken down, but they [the Yugoslavs] do not want this agreement,” he said.

By about 10 p.m., NATO spokesmen said they had given the Yugoslav delegation a deadline of just a few hours to sign.

With Jackson’s announcement after 3 a.m. today, it appeared that Yugoslavia was in for more relentless pounding. But Sunday, German Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz, a NATO military spokesman, noted: “We can cease fire in a minute. Even if our aircraft are over the Adriatic Sea, they can be called back by the measures we have.”

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Reitman reported from Kumanovo, Boudreaux from Belgrade and Dahlburg from Brussels. Times staff writers Marjorie Miller in Kukes and Norman Kempster in Washington also contributed to this report.

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