Word: rugova
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...Pristina, Kosovo's capital, to brief ethnic Albanian leaders on the talks. Holbrooke was exhausted, and emotion percolated into his tired brain as he considered the consequences of a failed negotiation. "We may not see you again before the bombing starts," Holbrooke soberly told Albanian dissident leader Ibrahim Rugova. A quiet settled over the group. Hill said under his breath, "We may never see you again...
...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...
Tuesday, 6:10 p.m., Belgrade. Fresh from a chat with Russia's 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...
...security forces guarding a nearby Serb refugee camp. Friendly Kosovar guides usher the diplomats through alleys to a walled compound, where they take off their shoes to enter a Muslim home. Holbrooke, his jacket off and his tie loosened, is introduced to Gani Shehu, 31, who identifies himself as Rugova's party leader in the village. K.L.A. "morale officer" Lum Haxhiu, 40, fondles a European assault rifle as he tells Holbrooke he was formerly a poet in Denmark. Outside, a bearded guerrilla puffing a Marlboro stands watch decked out in a black Ninja suit, cellular phone and holstered pistol...
...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 to the Balkans Robert Gelbard will continue to work on Rugova. But Holbrooke leaves Kosovo empty-handed: "I have no magic solution to offer...