Word: nato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and her top aides bundled onto an Air Force jet bound for France, where peace talks between Yugoslav Serbs and Albanians were stalemated. From the moment she landed, Albright began trying to punch through the impasse. She bluntly threatened the Serbs with warnings about NATO air strikes, charmed the Albanians with the promise of U.S. support and kept her fellow foreign ministers in line by reminding them of their commitment to hit the Serbs hard if negotiations failed. As the day wound down, Albright sat through a tense meeting with the Kosovo "contact group...
...hiked up and down stairs for nine hours in the drafty 14th century castle in which talks were under way, carrying proposals between hard-line Serb negotiators and Kosovo guerrilla chieftains. By day's end, she had moved the Albanians, including key negotiator Veton Surroi, close to accepting the NATO plan, but the Yugoslavs were still stonewalling. "They are not engaging," she told TIME in an exclusive interview. Her plan, aides say, was to secure agreement from the Albanian side within 48 hours, isolating the Yugoslavs and presenting Belgrade with a simple choice: join the agreement or be bombed...
Slobodan Milosevic's characteristic smug smile is more than normally appropriate right now -- after all, he's the only winner in the meltdown of the Western-authored Kosovo peace deal. NATO's second deadline for agreement passed on Tuesday with neither side on board, but instead of bombs, the Serb president got another three-week extension -- bombing Milosevic into acquiescence wasn't an option as long as his enemies played hard to get. Says TIME reporter Dejan Anastasijevic, "While the U.S. and the international community are playing down the extent of the failure at Rambouillet, Milosevic is the only winner...
...NATO focused on forcing Milosevic to accept peacekeeping troops in Kosovo, hard-line rebels took over the ethnic Albanian delegation. "That made life a lot easier for Milosevic," says Anastasijevic. So no bombs, no agreement and -- as both sides let their weapons do the talking in new clashes in Kosovo Tuesday -- no sign of peace...
...European diplomats brokering the talks believe they can negotiate a temporary autonomy that gives ethnic Albanians control over most governmental functions in the province. The biggest hurdle is persuading Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic to withdraw all his special police from the province and let NATO soldiers keep order there for three years while Kosovo's final status is negotiated...