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Peace Plan Highlights | Photo Gallery | Strike Assessment | News Video Archive | Strike at a Glance | Who's Who | Roots of the Conflict | Story Archive | Links | Discussion G-8 reaches consensus on draft Kosovo resolution
Document goes to U.N. Security Council for review
June 8, 1999
COLOGNE, Germany (CNN) -- Foreign ministers of the world's seven major industrialized nations and Russia agreed Tuesday on the wording of a draft resolution for the U.N. Security Council aimed at ending the fighting in Kosovo. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the resolution, which will now be sent to New York for consideration by the council, meets all of NATO's demands on Yugoslavia to withdraw its troops from Kosovo. The consensus reached by the Group of Eight ministers should pave the way for a resumption of talks between NATO and Yugoslav military leaders. Cook said the resolution "is good for the refugees" as well as for peace throughout the region. NATO had refused to push the resolution or stop its 75-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia without a verifiable withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo. But Yugoslavia refused to withdraw without a U.N. resolution supporting the peace plan agreed to earlier by Belgrade. Terms of the agreement reached last week with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic by Russian mediator Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari will be annexed to the resolution. Tuesday's agreement set a sequence for implementing the steps toward peace, Cook said -- one that "enables us to escape from the stalemate that we had on which way to make forward on the peace track." The council, Cook said, will "stop just short of adoption" of the resolution to allow troop withdrawal to begin. Once that movement is verified, the council will "then complete the formality of adopting the resolution," followed by the deployment of an international peacekeeping force to ensure the safe return of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian refugees to their homes. Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave his country's tacit approval to the text of the resolution, although his support came with a caveat. "This sort of document hardly ever satisfies those who take part in the negotiations," he said. "The important part is that this document should allow us to achieve the objective that we have, which is to stop the war in the Balkans. If we can accomplish that, then we can be satisfied with the resolution."
Earlier Tuesday, Yugoslavia threw a new wrinkle into the peace process when it announced it intended to control its borders and determine which refugees were allowed to enter the country. But U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that would not happen. "The Serbs will in no way be able to control who goes back into Kosovo," she said. "Those people whose identification papers were removed have in fact been reissued identification papers by UNHCR (U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees)." Albright allowed that "there may be a few Serbs at the border," but only in an observational capacity. Albright also said unequivocally that NATO would be at the core of the Kosovo peacekeeping force, another point of contention between Western officials and their Yugoslav and Russian counterparts. "It is in the appendix to this resolution that it has NATO at the core and NATO will be the military leader," she said. Ivanov said a final decision on Russia's participation in the peacekeeping force would be made later. While the diplomats worked in Germany, NATO warplanes struck scores of targets across Yugoslavia, responding loudly to Milosevic's reluctance in implementing the peace deal he accepted last Thursday.
NATO planes flew 658 sorties over Yugoslavia in the last 24 hours, including 222 strikes sorties. NATO said its planes struck airfields at Batajnica and Sjenica; air defense early- warning sites at Kapaonik; ammunition storage facilities at Podgorje, Cuprija and Svetozarevo; a training area at Cuprija; and an oil storage site at Novi Sad. Gen. Charles Guthrie, Britain's chief of defense staff, said that NATO forces concentrated much of their power on Serb forces operating on the ground in Kosovo, striking 20 artillery pieces, 19 armored vehicles, six tanks and nine mortars. Yugoslav forces are battling rebels from the Kosovo Liberation Army in Kosovo. KLA troops want independence for the Serbian province; Yugoslavia wants to keep the province within its realm. Talks Monday over implementing a Yugoslav troop withdrawal broke up Monday when Yugoslav generals and NATO officials could not reach an agreement. The continued operation of the KLA was one sore point for the Yugoslavs. But on Tuesday, KLA spokesman Hasim Thaci said the rebel group would steer clear of retreating forces. "KLA very soon will declare that it will refrain from attacking any retreating Serb forces, and they have said before and very soon they will declare that they will not attack militarily any retreating Serb forces." Thaci told CNN. Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty and Correspondents Andrea Koppel and Walter Rodgers contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES: Talks between NATO, Yugoslavia fall apart RELATED SITES: Yugoslavia:
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