Word: rugova
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...K.L.A., as well as the moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova, insist that outright independence is the only acceptable solution. Milosevic shows no willingness to countenance that and has stalled on negotiations in order to launch his crackdown. The West frets that escalation of the conflict could lead to a Balkan war wider and more destabilizing than Bosnia's, drawing in Albania, Macedonia and even Greece. Holbrooke's aim is to cajole everyone to the bargaining table...
Tuesday, 1:08 p.m., the U.S. embassy in Skopje. Holbrooke and Hill meet with Rugova. It's 90[degrees]F., but the Kosovar novelist and literature professor arrives wearing a sweater, coat and red silk ascot. As the men sit down, Holbrooke asks Rugova if he wants to remove his jacket. "No," Rugova responds. "I'm an Albanian snake...
...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...