Word: nato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...intelligence spotted Serbian soldiers in Kosovo steadily slipping away from their posts. A K.L.A. offensive lured Serbian tanks out of their hiding places, massing them into cannon fodder for allied warplanes. Even the gruesome pictures of Serbian civilians mauled by errant bombs failed to crack NATO determination. Now Clinton was holding serious discussions about ground troops, a possibility Milosevic thought had been safely discarded. Perhaps most critical of all, the Hague war-crimes tribunal finally indicted him on May 27, placing his very life in jeopardy if he ever slipped from power. "He recognized he wouldn't prevail," says...
...Serbian leader. But he concluded that you could, eventually, do a deal with Milosevic if you could help him save face. Early in May, at breakfast with Vice President Al Gore and Albright, Chernomyrdin suggested he needed a negotiating partner with stature in Europe but no connections to NATO. "If I have someone from the West with me, I have a better chance of getting this done," he said. "Mother Boss," as the Russian calls Albright, immediately thought of the solid, no-nonsense Ahtisaari. Not only did he have years of experience in international negotiation and the cachet of Finland...
Ahtisaari was a welcome addition to the team soon nicknamed "hammer and anvil" in State Department circles. Chernomyrdin didn't much cotton to his uncompromising American interlocutors, and he shared the general Russian suspicion that NATO leaders, particularly Clinton, were driven less by concern for Kosovars than by the desire to show the rest of the world who is boss. Washington worried that Chernomyrdin was soft-pedaling NATO's demands in Belgrade, and wasn't sure he relayed back an accurate reading of Milosevic's intentions...
...Russia, quarreling over ways to bring the war to an end. But Milosevic's change in body language encouraged Chernomyrdin to plan another trip to Belgrade last week, even with no hope of a bombing pause. Washington wanted Ahtisaari to go along, figuring he could clearly convey NATO's demands, while the Russian followed his own script, fudging on two that Moscow opposed: all Serbian forces must be withdrawn and NATO had to form the core of the peacekeeping force...
...which he and Ahtisaari would agree on. The Russian shocked Washington again in the first hour of talks Tuesday with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott. Chernomyrdin announced Moscow acceded to the removal of all Serbian troops. Then he proposed a style change: instead of referring generally to NATO's demands, the document should spell out everything in full, including footnotes specifying the mechanics of withdrawal...