Word: nato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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LONDON--President Bill Clinton nominated former Harvard Vice President John F. T. Shattuck as U.S. ambassador to the Czech Republic--a role that will become more tightly defined in the next year as the six-year-old country seeks to gain admission to NATO and its government struggles to overcome instability...
Rugova is also uncompromising. "We have a right to be a new independent state," he says to TIME before the meeting. He tells Holbrooke that a NATO force, including U.S. soldiers, should deploy in Kosovo to establish an "international protectorate." Washington wants no part of such talk: it prefers that Kosovo remain within Yugoslavia as a fully autonomous republic but without the right to secede. Of more immediate concern is how much support Rugova commands among the increasingly bellicose and fragmented rebels. Holbrooke presses Rugova, who insists that he can speak for the K.L.A. in negotiations with Milosevic. Holbrooke...
...Deputy Foreign Minister--in town to make sure Milosevic sticks to a promise he gave Boris Yeltsin to resume talks with Rugova--Holbrooke arrives at Milosevic's presidential palace. The two tuck into a four-hour dinner of steak, lamb and fish, while Holbrooke warns the Serb leader that NATO air strikes are inevitable if his army continues its clampdown. "What's left of your country will implode," Holbrooke says...
Milosevic remains evasive, knowing NATO is very reluctant to intervene. The Serbian strongman has only himself to blame for stoking ethnic Albanian resentment. As a Kosovar leader warns, "If Milosevic continues his current policy of negotiating and killing at the same time, there will be no solution other than for everyone to go and join the K.L.A." All too aware of this grim possibility, Holbrooke leaves the dinner with little more than a case of indigestion...
Friday, 2 p.m., Pristina. Bleary-eyed and discouraged, Holbrooke has stayed up all night, phoning diplomats in Kosovo and officials at the State Department, the U.N. and NATO headquarters. He is concerned that the next Balkan war could start at Kijevo, a village so tiny that it's not even on the map. A few thousand Albanians, 80 Serb families and 250 Serb military police are surrounded by K.L.A. checkpoints. But no one there is able to tear down the K.L.A. barricades. Ambassador Hill will return this week to try to get the checkpoints cleared, and U.S. Envoy...