Word: agreement
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...competition to claim them is fierce. With the Yugoslav army and Serb civilians pouring out of the province, armed KLA units are moving quickly to take control of as much of Kosovo as they can get their hands on. Although this supposedly was precisely the scenario the peace agreement was designed to avoid, NATO?s ambiguous relationship with the KLA -- which was a de facto ally against the Serbs until two weeks ago -- and the movement?s political agenda may have made it inevitable. "NATO knew from the start that demilitarizing the KLA would be a problem," says TIME Central...
NATO has plenty more devilish details to iron out if the settlement plan is to work. The two-page, 10-point agreement left key issues unresolved, including sensitive questions of command. For weeks Moscow not only insisted on participating in the peace force but tried to place its troops in charge of Kosovo's northern quadrant, where many Serbian holy sites lie. Washington refused for fear that would effectively partition the province. Now the diplomats are wrangling over just what role the Russian troops will play and who will command them. Russia's proud military men oppose the settlement, making...
...NATO would be to the peacekeeping force. Washington held out for a swift timetable, and "Strobe just hammered to make sure the document had NATO at the core," says a senior U.S. official. When the exhausted diplomats reconvened Wednesday morning, Ahtisaari threatened to pull out if there was no agreement, and Chernomyrdin conceded. Now Moscow had sided with NATO, leaving Milosevic isolated...
...even if there is no real political opposition to challenge him now, he cannot rest easy. He will try to put a worth-it-all face on defeat by claiming this peace agreement is more favorable than the Rambouillet plan, since it gives Serbia uncontested sovereignty over Kosovo. But with no troops there to enforce it, his legal ownership is a sham. And he was forced to swallow the humiliation of admitting foreign soldiers onto Yugoslav soil. The ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party voted against a deal it denounced as a total sellout. Party leader and Deputy Prime Minister Vojislav Seselj...
While in the worst-case scenario, failure to reach agreement with Russia creates the possibility of a Berlin 1945-style partition of Kosovo, Moscow?s gambit could also be designed for domestic consumption in Russia and Yugoslavia, emphasizing that Kosovo hasn?t been surrendered to NATO. So don?t expect Western and Russian forces to square off in a Cold War replay. Like the space race, the rush to get to Kosovo may be more about planting a flag...