Peace in Kosovo: Rebuilding a Future for the Balkans

countries. Most of the international meetings on the crisis were held in Germany and Italy and this surely helped the political leaders Gerhard Schröder and Massimo D'Alema to keep their most exposed countries in line with the other partners. Especially the Germans played a major role in the diplomatic offensive that should have led to the solution of the conflict. After having cleared their loyalty to the alliance, Schröder and his Foreign minister Joschka Fischer insisted on getting the Russians involved in the diplomatic game. They encouraged the efforts of the Russian mediator chosen by Boris Yeltsin, Viktor Chernomyrdin, who traveled several times from Moscow to Belgrade and then to Germany and back.

After two months of useless talks the negotiations got finally closer to a solution, when Chernomyrdin was sided by a representative of the European Union, Finland's president Martti Ahtisaari. This lucky choice was made by the German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, who was holding the EU's presidency in the last six months.

Europe's diplomatic efforts

Ahtisaari, who had already shown his ability as a mediator during the Namibia-conflict more than twenty years ago and during the Bosnia war 1992-1995, took up the negotiations together with Chernomyrdin and the American deputy foreign minister Strobe Talbott on 14th May. His idea was to get the Russians completely integrated in the agreement, eliminating even the slightest point of different views and thus demonstrating Milosevic his complete isolation before the international community. While Moscow's diplomats showed quite cooperative during these talks, the major problems arrived from the Russian generals. But with Yeltsin wanting to get definitely rid of the Kosovo-problem, an agreement was finally fought. Thus, when Ahtisaari, Chernomyrdin and Talbott flew to Belgrade, it was not for further negotiations, but only to announce the international community's peace conditions to the Yugoslavian government.

The first positive signal arrived on 3rd June, when the Serbian Parliament approved the G8's peace plan. After this decision Milosevic had definitely lost any possibility to continue his treacherous diplomatic tricks. Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and the other NATO leaders, who had already started discussing the scenarios for a ground attack, were relieved by this news and ordered their military to prepare for a peaceful invasion.

Yugoslavia's capitulation

The British general Michael Jackson was sent to Kumanovo in Macedonia to discuss the military aspects of the Serbian retreat with Milosevic's generals. "For generals who are said by NATO to have lost around

Go To Page: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Articles in this Topic    Discussions in this Topic