Word: serb
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...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...
...hamlet of Istinic. Rusted farm implements obstruct traffic, one of many barricades K.L.A. insurgents have set up. U.S. security agents scan the surrounding forest, fearing that the halted convoy may become a target for stray gunfire. Holbrooke orders the vehicles to head back to the town of Decane, which Serb forces burned last month. Coming through the town earlier, the convoy passed deserted buildings, but in the town's center, two dozen people sat at an open-air cafe sipping coffee and sodas. As Holbrooke drives back through the center, the cafe is empty: Serb security agents had staged...
Wednesday, 12:40 p.m., the village of Junik. Holbrooke's convoy makes an unplanned stop after passing through Serb 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...
...Haxhiu plops next to him so that photographers can snap the first photo of a high-ranking U.S. official with a K.L.A. fighter. Holbrooke is furious that Haxhiu sits through the meeting with his assault rifle propped between his legs. Sipping Turkish coffee, Shehu reports that Serb attacks have reduced the population from 12,000 to 2,000, and the village remains under Serb mortar fire. He brushes aside Holbrooke's plea for a cease-fire and says the guerrillas will fight until Kosovo wins independence, or until death. "It reminds me of Bosnia on the eve of war," Holbrooke...
...this point, Kosovo remains a low-intensity struggle, but Holbrooke fears it will explode into real conflict. Provocations are threatening at the roadblocks lining the main highway running west from Pristina, and the mission has contracted to clearing two checkpoints, one belonging to the K.L.A., the other to the Serbs. Holbrooke pleads with Milosevic to hold off from attacking the Kosovar roadblocks, but the Serb is noncommittal. "We managed to stop a war in Bosnia," Holbrooke reminds him, "and our job now is to prevent a war. And this can be done by yourself...