The Kosovo war was planned, if that is the right word, to be just three days long. By the end of last week it had lasted more than 70 days, with 1,200 aircraft dropping around 20,000 bombs and rockets. By NATO estimates, around 5,000 members of the Yugoslav armed forces were killed in the bombardment, together with hundreds of civilians, in both Serbia and Kosovo. Around 1.4 million Kosovar Albanians were forced from their homes, of which an estimated 782,100 are now in Macedonia, Albania, Bosnia and the semi-detached Yugoslav province of Montenegro. The war was fought to protect the human rights of those Kosovars; it cannot be truly said to have ended until they have returned home. But they have a greater chance of being able to do so now than at any time since hostilities commenced on March 24.
The war was won not just by those in uniform. A NEWSWEEK reconstruction shows that the diplomatic side of the conflict was conducted with skill and tenacity. From early on the American diplomatic strategy was based on a “double-magnet” approach. The United States and its NATO allies were anxious not to trample on Russian sensitivities, already bruised by NATO enlargement and the offensive against Yugoslavia. And the Americans hoped that Moscow, with traditional ties to Belgrade, had at least a chance of getting the ear of Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. So the idea was, first, to pull the Russian position on the war closer to that of NATO; and second, to persuade the Serbs to accept whatever the Russians and NATO jointly agreed.
Implementing the plan was a task for three men. For Russia, former prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin handled the negotiations. Crucially, Chernomyrdin had the unwavering support of Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who, no less crucially, spent the time of the Kosovo war in one of his periods of lucidity. The Russian foreign minister, Igor S. Ivanov, who, at the beginning of the war, had called the leaders of the NATO countries “war criminals,” was kept out of the loop. For the Americans, the lead role was played by Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, by now a six-year veteran of the Clinton foreign-policy team and, usefully, a man who speaks fluent Russian and who knows Chernomyrdin well.
Chernomyrdin and Talbott are familiar faces in international diplomacy; but it was the third member of the trio who made all the difference. On May 4, at a breakfast meeting at Vice President Al Gore’s residence in Washington, Chernomyrdin told the American side that he needed an additional interlocutor with Belgrade–someone from a non-NATO Western country. U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright immediately suggested the president of Finland, Martti Ahtisaari. A career diplomat who had spent years in high positions at the United Nations, and whose nation will assume the presidency of the European Union next month, Ahtisaari was known to be tough and hard-edged in his judgment. He didn’t let anyone down: “This guy,” says a senior U.S. official, “was sensational.”
With the Finn on board, the three negotiators started to shuttle between Washington, Moscow–where they met in a guest house on the grounds of Stalin’s old dacha–and Western European capitals. Initially, they had to work on the first magnet–to make sure that Russia’s line on a possible peace deal did not differ from NATO’s. There were two potential sticking points. First, the NATO countries insisted that at the conclusion of hostilities all Serb forces leave Kosovo. Second, although NATO leaders were willing to have peacekeepers assembled under the auspices of a U.N. Security Council resolution, they wanted their own forces to dominate and command such an operation. Neither condition was acceptable to Milosevic; neither seemed welcome to the Russians.
On May 27 Chernomyrdin appeared to have run out of patience; in an article in The Washington Post, he said, “It is impossible to talk with bombs falling,” and threatened both an end to Russia’s participation in the peace process and a complete rupture in its relations with the United States. In public, Talbott was dismayed; but he knew very well, as a diplomatic source in Moscow puts it, that “there’s an enormous gap between what the Russians say in private and the rhetoric they give out in public.” Almost certainly, Chernomyrdin’s letter was a last attempt by the Russians to gain additional leverage in the talks. The reply from Washington: no dice. As last week began the administration privately and publicly began to put out the word that they had not ruled out a ground war in Kosovo. One way or another, NATO was going to win.
The message got through. on June 1 the trio met in Germany, in the Petersberg government guest house outside Bonn. The question was whether the Russians would insist on taking two “scripts” to their next meeting with Milosevic–one with their own understanding of a peace deal, and one with NATO’s. In that case, the Serb leader would have ample opportunity to play one side off against another. At the Petersberg meeting, Chernomyrdin gave his reply: Russia and NATO should agree on one script. “The Russians had quite a good strategy,” says one senior U.S. official. “They said, ‘Let’s get this thing over with’.”
What had happened? Not for the first time, Boris Yeltsin had shown himself to be the best Russian president the West has ever had. “[Yeltsin] has relationships that are important to him with several Western leaders, including Clinton,” says an informed Moscow source, “and we were not going to sacrifice all of that on Slobodan Milosevic’s altar.”
So the trio got down to work. Russian and NATO generals, poring over maps in another room in the Petersberg house, constantly dropped in on Talbott, Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari, discussing the deployment of a peacekeeping force. Chernomyrdin insisted that the script–which he and Ahtisaari would take to Belgrade–must convince the Serbs that if they agreed to the terms, the air war would stop. A footnote was drafted accordingly. Talbott and Ahtisaari, for their part, wanted to be sure that the Russians signed on to the removal of all Serb forces from Kosovo. The talks dragged on until 4 o’clock on Wednesday morning, interrupted by a dinner hosted by German Chancellor Gerhard Schroder.
At 7:15 a.m. on Wednesday, June 2, Talbott was awakened by a call from a CNN correspondent: Had the talks broken down? Was Chernomyrdin returning to Moscow? Not so: but the Russians kept going off into corners, talking on their mobile phones to Moscow and then coming back to fight over tiny details–including commas–in the script. “This was editing at its worst, the most heinous sort,” says one U.S. official. In Washington, as Clinton prepared to fly to Colorado Springs, Colo., to give the commencement address at the Air Force Academy, things felt bleak. That morning, national-security adviser Sandy Berger met with influential foreign-policy experts. His message: the prospects for diplomacy didn’t look good. If the experts thought that ground troops were truly needed to win the war, said the national-security adviser, they better start making that case, now.
They didn’t have to. In the Petersberg house, everyone was getting tired and a bit cranky. But by the afternoon they had hammered out a deal, a single script, even if some parts of it–like the role of Russians in the peacekeeping force–were still vague. Ahtisaari and Chernomyrdin headed for the airport, and a flight to Belgrade.
One half of the dual strategy had worked. The unbroken desire of Yeltsin to stay on close terms with the West had done the trick. But would Milosevic now come on board? Was there any power in the second magnet?
There was, and it had been put there by an odd combination: the guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army, and the least glamorous plane in the U.S. Air Force–the slow, low-flying A-10 Warthog. As the weather improved in May, KLA forces had been engaging the Serbs inside Kosovo. The Kosovars weren’t actually winning, but then they didn’t have to. All they had to do was force the Serb forces to come out of cover in formation–then the A-10s would bomb the living daylights out of them. Especially around the area of Mount Pastric, near the Albanian border, the Warthogs were wreaking havoc. “In the last two weeks,” says a senior U.S official, “the air campaign in Kosovo has become very lethal. The [Yugoslav] military either told [Milosevic] for the first time or accepted for the first time that they were being wiped out.” So when Ahtisaari and Chernomyrdin met Milosevic on the evening of June 2, the Serb knew that militarily, the game was up.
Milosevic was cool and businesslike; no voices were raised. (“He’s always cheerful,” Milosevic’s brother Borislav told NEWSWEEK.) The Serb asked Ahtisaari if the document could be changed. The Finn told him it could not; Chernomyrdin sat in silent assent. (“Chernomyrdin did great,” says an American official.) Ahtisaari called Talbott, still in Germany, to tell him that Milosevic had summoned the Serb Parliament into session the next day; when they went to bed on Wednesday night, according to an American official, allied leaders had “no indication” whether the Parliament would accept the plan.
In fact, after his meeting with Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari broke up, Milosevic summoned the leaders of Serbia’s political parties to the White Palace in Belgrade. He spoke, says Vuk Draskovic, leader of the Serb Renewal Movement, “shortly, clearly, like a mathematician.” Milosevic circulated copies of the text. “He expressed his understanding that we must accept it,” said Draskovic. “But he said, ‘It’s up to you’.” Mirjana Milosevic, the Serb leader’s wife, closest confidante and leader of the United Yugoslav Left Party, said she was on board. Vojislav Seselj, leader of the ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, spoke against the deal. The next morning, Seselj did indeed vote against the deal–but as sonic booms from NATO planes cracked the air over Belgrade, a majority of the Parliament fell in line.
The news soon reached Washington. Early on June 3 deputy national-security adviser Jim Steinberg got a call from the White House Situation Room; the press was reporting the Parliament’s vote in Belgrade. But first reports were sketchy: had Milosevic really agreed to the removal of all Serb troops? Best to wait for official word. Ahtisaari flew back to Cologne, where a European Union summit was underway. Protocol dictated that he first formally brief the Germans. But the Finns suggested that Talbott meet them at the airport, in Ahtisaari’s limousine; when the Finn came off the plane, the deputy secretary was waiting in the left rear seat of the car. They drove 500 yards away, parked, and Ahtisaari gave Talbott the goods: Milosevic had caved.
Talbott called Albright and Clinton–the president was in the Oval Office, with a few close aides. This, said Talbott, was the real thing. Clinton remained measured and sober, telling his staff not to celebrate too soon, and then called Schroder to repeat the message. “I’ve been dealing with [Milosevic] for six years,” said the president. “There are things we need to see.”
Indeed there are. The delays at Blace raised all the old doubts about whether Milosevic could be trusted. If there is any earth left to scorch in Kosovo, retreating Serb units will doubtless scorch it. And NATO has to worry about its friends as well as its enemies; the KLA are not Boy Scouts. If KLA forces get farther into Kosovo before NATO, says one senior American official, ominously, “they’re going to kill every Serb they can find.” Nor are the Kosovars likely to be content with the mushy commitment to political autonomy, within Yugoslav sovereignty, in the peace deal. In Belgrade last week there was the usual talk that this latest defeat would soon see the end of Milosevic’s rule. But nobody ever made money betting on that horse, and even if Milosevic is toppled, the Kosovars have suffered at Serb hands for too long. “They wouldn’t care if Jesus Christ was in Belgrade,” says a U.S. official. “They want independence.”
For all those reasons, last week neither the Balkans nor NATO’s councils echoed to the sound of popping corks. In a refugee camp in Albania, Nasser Ademi, who survived 19 days of beatings in a Serb prison before he got out, summed up the mood. “If all the Serbs withdraw from Kosovo,” he said, “then we’ll go back. Otherwise, we won’t.” Getting him back is now a task not for the diplomats, but for the engineers, minesweepers and peacekeepers of General Jackson and his colleagues. NATO may have won a war; but those who were with Schwarzkopf at Safwan could tell them: winning a peace is just as hard.
