</This article begins with a detailed account of Mr Rubin’s anguish over his wife’s abduction – an experience that no one deserves. It is relevant however to point out that both he and his wife, in their different roles, repeatedly made use of unsubstantiated allegations against the Serbs that later proved to have been based on completely false propaganda.
His presentation of the Rambouillet negotiations and (his words) NATO’s war against Slobodan Milosevic is similarly misleading. We now know (and Albright and Rubin must have known at the time) that the fighting in Kosovo in 1998/9 had begun when an invading KLA army, armed and trained by western countries, had crossed into Kosovo from Albania with the aim of capturing the whole of Kosovo by force. When the Serb forces rallied and were on the point of expelling the KLA from the Serbian province, the west hurriedly intervened to stop the Serbian advance and then looked for a new strategy for taking Kosovo from Serbia.
Rubin goes on to explain how hard it was for the US to galvanise itself to take firm action – and harder still to get its allies to unite behind the US. In doing so he inadvertently reveals the startling ignorance of western counties about what was really happening in Yugoslavia. Starting with the official mantra that the undoubted villain of the piece, despite the fact that he was the only Yugoslav leader who tried endlessly to keep the Federation of Yugoslavia together whereas Kucan, Tudjman and Izetbegovic were all rabid nationalists, western leaders and their advisers were always more than ready to see Milosevic, a former merchant banker who was impatient to change Yugoslavia into a modern market economy and was a passionate multiculturalist, as a latter-day Hitler.
Rubin asks the rhetorical question ‘what were the US’s western allies thinking?’ when they pressed for an UN Resolution to approve NATO military intervention against Serbia. The answer must have been obvious to him and everyone else: the NATO bombing of Serbia was clearly illegal under the UN Charter, the Helsinki accords and numerous international treaties. It was at the time also illegal under NATO’s Charter. A UN Resolution would have been legally meaningless, but it would have given the west a fig-leaf to hide behind.
Rubin’s account of the Rambouillet negotiations is similarly incomplete. Madeleine Albright did not hear of the so-called Racak massacre via media news. She was told in a satellite telephone call from the US diplomatic fixer she had sent in a few weeks earlier as chief peace monitor to find her a pretext to issue an ultimatum. He rang to tell her that he was going to proclaim a Serbian war crime at Racak – the excuse she needed to demand an imposed peace negotiation.
As Mr Rubin says, her aim from the start was to end up with proposals that the Albanians could accept but the Serbs could not. This proved difficult because, contrary to Mr Rubin’s account, Milosevic was very ready to compromise. Serb rejection was achieved by the device of a secret annex to the draft agreement, added at the very last minute, which was far too much for the Serbs to stomach – it essentially removed Serbia’s sovereignty. The existence of the annex was not revealed until June 1999, just before the end of the 78-day NATO bombing.
COUNTDOWN TO A VERY PERSONAL WAR
BYLINE: By JAMES RUBIN
BODY:
It was the worst night of my life. On March 24 1999, Nato began bombing Belgrade. My wife, CNN’s Christiane Amanpour, was there, as she had been during the American bombing in Baghdad a few months earlier. But this was different. I felt a greater sense of responsibility and foreboding. Christiane had spent years reporting on the atrocities of Milosevic and his proxies. And I had been attacking the Belgrade regime day after day from the state department podium.
My fears were soon realised. Late that afternoon, I was sitting in Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s office, participating in her daily strategy session on Kosovo, when a secretary passed me a note. It was marked urgent. CNN International’s president Eason Jordan was calling.
When I answered the telephone, he said he had bad news. Christiane was missing, and possibly in danger. He told me that, a few hours earlier, after the first Nato bombs struck, Serb thugs with sub-machineguns began combing the halls of Belgrade’s Hyatt Hotel and other news offices. They broke into one newsroom, lined a group of wire service correspondents against the wall and demanded: “Where is Amanpour?” I could barely speak. He promised to stay in touch. I dropped the telephone and retreated to my office down the hall and shut the door.
I felt powerless, knowing that anything I wanted to do could make matters worse. There were no American officials in Belgrade. Any public expression of concern by the US government could backfire, either by alerting the Serbs that she was missing or making her that much more valuable as a hostage.
I kept wondering, would they really kill or harm CNN’s chief international correspondent? The Serbs were obsessed with propaganda. Surely they knew how much that would hurt their cause. On the other hand, this particular journalist also happened to be married to the spokesman of the government that was bombing their country. Worse, her fearless reporting had made her the target of repeated death threats by Serb thugs such as the notorious war criminal “Arkan”.
It was a long, long night – a kind of waking nightmare as I waited for news. I couldn’t sleep or eat, so I survived on the calming voices of a few close friends. I kept thinking over and over that I might be responsible for my wife being killed. We had only been married for seven months. I had worked so carefully to avoid any conflict between my work and my wife’s profession. Now it was beyond my control.
I remember lying in bed replaying in my mind how the west had come to this point, wondering, like many of the administration’s critics, whether this war could have been avoided, whether the bombing campaign would succeed, and how it was all going to end. The professional part of me was sure we were right to confront Milosevic, that we had given Belgrade every reasonable chance for a diplomatic solution. Air strikes were the only option we had. If anything, I wish we had acted sooner. But as a husband, I was terrified.
Nato’s war against Slobodan Milosevic and the Belgrade regime had become a very personal war for Albright – and for me. Our friendship was formed in 1992 and 1993, when the west stood by for three years as Milosevic and his Serb cohorts in Bosnia launched their terrible campaign of mass murder and ethnic cleansing. We struggled in 1993 and 1994 to explain why the west was doing so little to halt the genocide in Bosnia. By 1995, Albright’s views were vindicated when Nato’s air strikes forced the Serbs to the bargaining table and a Bosnian peace accord was finally reached that autumn.
Now Albright the ambassador had become secretary of state and it was her turn to shape events, to author history in Washington rather than defend policy at the UN. And author history she did. Albright was so central to Nato’s decision to confront the Milosevic regime over Kosovo that it was often called “Madeleine’s war”.
In the months before and after the war, her role and the Clinton administration’s policy on Kosovo has been subjected to substantial criticism. On the one hand, many have suggested the administration was slow to react and should have confronted Milosevic much earlier. Having delayed action, these critics argue, we should never have relied on air strikes alone, but should have planned for or deployed a Nato invasion force capable of expelling Serb forces from Kosovo. On the other hand, some say the war was avoidable, the result of flawed diplomacy at the now famous Rambouillet peace conference in February 1999. The west backed Milosevic into a corner, they claim, and failed to explore the pos sibilities for a diplomatic compromise.
Having seen these events up close, at Albright’s side over the last two years, I believe most critics were unaware of how difficult it was to galvanise the west to act prior to 1999 and how flexible Washington really was in pursuing a diplomatic solution up until the final days of the bombing:
* The administration itself was deeply divided in the first half of 1998 over the wisdom of threatening the use of force;
* Nearly all our allies, including the British, put roadblocks in the way of decisive action prior to the Rambouillet peace conference in 1999. And, during Rambouillet, the French and the Italians acted in ways that could have derailed the administration’s effort to unite Nato against the Belgrade regime;
* The administration always understood that Rambouillet was a means to an end. Either a deal would be struck and Nato peacekeepers would be deployed to end the war, or, more likely given our experience, the Serbs would reject any reasonable peace deal and that would convince the Europeans finally to support the Albanians through a Nato air campaign;
* In the crucial weeks before Nato bombing began, Albright telephoned Milosevic to suggest a meeting in Geneva, at which time the administration was prepared to discuss changes in the Rambouillet accords that the Serbs had rejected. These previously undisclosed contacts show clearly that the west offered Milosevic every reasonable opportunity to resolve the Kosovo crisis diplomatically.
In retrospect, the critics were right on one point. It was a mistake publicly to disavow the use of Nato ground troops. In the end, I believe the administration would have been prepared to send in ground forces, because the president and our key allies understood that this was a war Nato simply could not lose. But by appearing to rule out ground troops from the outset, we gave Belgrade needless comfort and probably made it more difficult to gain support for that option if it had become necessary. Fortunately, Milosevic capitulated and cut off the debate as it was heating up.
By spring 1998, Kosovo was about to become the next part of the former Yugoslavia determined to free itself from the ethnic hatred generated in Belgrade. After a decade of repression, an apartheid-like system had developed in Kosovo, with more than 90 per cent of 2m Albanians denied jobs, education, health care or any other basic human rights. Resistance was met by brute force, arrest, and jail. By 1998, many Albanians were frustrated by the non-violent resistance of Kosovo’s forlorn father-figure, Ibrahim Rugova. Small bands of rebels known as the KLA were challenging Serbian authority, often by assassinating Serb police and occasionally civilian workers. Serb authorities responded with brutal attacks on towns and villages. Little attempt was made to distinguish between the innocent and the guilty, between rebels and civilians.
Most western officials opposed the Serb crackdowns but disagreed over the legitimacy of the KLA and the wisdom of supporting the Albanian cause. I saw this myself during meetings that spring of the Contact Group (Germany, France, Italy, the UK, Russia and the US).
These sessions were like a real-life version of Ground-hog Day. The Serbs would crack down on Albanians with heavy loss of life. A meeting would be called. Serb atrocities would be condemned. The Albanians would be urged to stop the resistance. After much wrangling, some modest economic sanctions would be imposed on Belgrade. Then Milosevic would shrug them off and simply go about his business.
I learned first-hand how deep Albright’s personal feelings were when she rebuked me at one of these meetings. The ministers were haggling over one of the sentences related to economic sanctions, and I got up to whisper to her that I thought we could accept the word change. In a loud voice, she said: “We can’t accept it. Where do you think you are? Munich?” I sat back down to much chuckling from the American delegation.
On another occassion, I sat across from her in the private cabin of her aircraft as we were about to land in London on March 9 for the next Contact Group meeting as she vented her frustration. “I am sick and tired of going to meeting after meeting. Now I can see how Bosnia happened. What’s the point of this Contact Group if it doesn’t have any effect?” She was downcast. “Why don’t you tell that to the other ministers?” I suggested.
A few hours later, in the ornate conference room at Lancaster House, the meeting unfolded in typical manner. As chair of the meeting, Robin Cook, the UK foreign secretary, effectively focused on the outrageous behaviour of the Serbs. But the Russians blamed the Albanian “terrorists” for stirring up trouble and called on us to punish the rebels. Some ministers, especially German foreign minister Klaus Kinkel, argued for unity with the Russians, the equivalent of no action at all. Italy did not want to give up its lucrative business dealings with neighbouring Serbia, so the Italian foreign minister fretted about the difficulty of actually imposing any serious economic sanctions.
Exasperated, Albright finally took the floor, looked directly at the other ministers, and said: “Our predecessors sat in this very room as we sit today and made mistake after mistake on Bosnia. History will judge us harshly if we repeat the mistakes of our predecessors. We cannot stand by and let Milosevic do in Kosovo what he can no longer get away with doing in Bosnia.”
Her dramatic intervention did not change the outcome in London that day – a modest package of economic sanctions against the Serbs was all they could agree on – but she did lay down a marker in favour of decisive action. To deliver on her declaration, however, would take 10 more months and the creation of a new policy – diplomacy backed by force – in Washington and Europe.
The discussion in Washington was going nowhere in the spring of 1998. Some White House officials were wary of American involvement in Kosovo and top Pentagon officials had become weary of the Balkans, where nothing was ever solved, and we might get sucked into additional troop deployments. But Albright persisted in demanding a discussion of the use of force.
On one occasion, a small group of top US officials convened at the White House to discuss Kosovo. Given the sensitivity, it was held outside the normal channel of official National Security Council meetings. Albright began by insisting we confront the question of whether the west should be prepared to threaten and, if necessary, use military force. She pointed out that, in 1992, President George Bush had issued the so-called Christmas warning, threatening the use of American military power if Milosevic were to crack down militarily on the Albanians of
Kosovo precisely as he was now doing. We had learned in Bosnia, she said, that it was onlythe threat of force that had any effect on the calculations of Milosevic.
Midway through her argument, one of her colleages cut her off and exploded in frustration. “What is it with you people at the state department, always wanting to threaten force and bombing? It’s not always the solution. What is it with you?” But Albright held her ground. “I remember five years ago when I was UN ambassador, Tony Lake (former national security adviser) cut me off time and time again and he wouldn’t let us really discuss this issue. Well, now I am secretary of state and we are going to have this discussion.”
Over the next few weeks, a formal discussion did take place in the NSC and, soon after, when it reached the Oval Office, the president concluded that the threat of force was necessary.
But the president’s decision was only part of the equation. All our Nato allies were still reluctant. Initially, they insisted that the use of force only be considered if the UN security council would endorse it. That was a huge impediment, because the Russians, as permanent members, could veto any such decision. Even our staunchest ally, the British, became a big problem. In early June 1998, the administration was furious when the British, without consulting us, floated a plan to seek UN approval. Sergei Lavrov, Russia’s ambassador to the UN, had warned us that Moscow would veto any attempt to endorse the use of military force against Serbia. We had told the British this over and over. What were they thinking?
There was a series of strained telephone calls between Albright and Cook, in which he cited problems “with our lawyers” over using force in the absence of UN endorsement. “Get new lawyers,” she suggested. But with a push from prime minister Tony Blair, the British finally agreed that UN security council approval was not legally required.
Our struggle with the other Nato allies continued throughout that summer. They were still demanding a UN resolution. It took a massive Serb onslaught against the KLA that sent hundreds of thousands of civilians fleeing to the hills with little food and no shelter to change their minds. In early October, with a humanitarian disaster looming, Nato was finally ready to act. And with the prospect of Nato air strikes now credible, Milosevic was finally ready to compromise.
In negotiations with our two US envoys to the Balkans, Ambassadors Richard Holbrooke and Chris Hill, Milosevic accepted the same conditions the world had been demanding for months: a ceasefire, a partial withdrawal of Serb military forces from Kosovo, and verification of the agreement in the air and on the ground. Once again it was clear that neither international outrage nor economic sanctions would move him, only the threat of force.
As the Albanians began returning to their homes and the crisis passed, there was relief in Europe. In Washington, most of us knew that the October Agreement was a temporary fix to get us through the winter. The real question was whether a political solution could be found to satisfy the legitimate desire of Kosovo’s 2m Albanians to run their own lives while providing necessary protections for the tiny Serb minority whose leaders were now ruling with an iron fist.
That autumn and winter, Albright often asked me: “What are we doing about Kosovo?” I would update her on the status of the shuttle diplomacy ambassador Chris Hill was still conducting with Belgrade and the Albanians in Kosovo. She would usually wonder whether the right deal had been struck in October and whether we could ever get the Europeans to threaten force again. Without such a threat, Milosevic would never compromise on a political solution.
“We aren’t solving this problem. We’re just kicking the can down the road. I have a bad feeling about this,” she would say. I had no answers either, mumbling: “We have to find a way to revive the threat of force or nothing will ever be accomplished.”
Perhaps we, too, were affected by the disparaging reports we were hearing about the Albanian negotiators and the KLA. Kosovo was clearly part of the former Yugoslavia, yet the Albanians were demanding independence. The rebels were unknown figures, raising money illegally through smuggling, or worse. The one leader we knew, Dr Ibrahim Rugova, was pleasant and thoughtful, but his low-key manner and diffident style of leadership was hardly inspiring. Maybe the prejudice of many Europeans who made crude jokes about Albanian immigrants and criminal gangs had, ever so slightly, rubbed off on us in the state department. But moral choices are often as much about your enemies as your allies. The Albanians may not have been our models of enlightenment, but Milosevic was most definitely the personification of evil. How could we make our allies see it this way? Milosevic soon gave us the answer.
On Saturday, January 15 1999, Albright awoke to news on the radio that Albanians had been massacred at a town called Rajak. When international inspectors quickly confirmed that Serb forces were responsible, a window opened for a decisive shift in western capitals.
The following Monday, she brought deputy secretary of state Strobe Talbott, policy planning director Mort Halperin, her chief of staff Elaine Shocas, and me, together in her office. We knew we needed a new formula to enlist European support for the threat of force. At the time, the Europeans opposed air strikes because the KLA was often responsible for breaking the October ceasefire and because there was no accompanying political strategy. So we took them at their word, and upped the ante.
Instead of linking the threat of force to a simple ceasefire, we would link it to a definitive diplomatic solution. Milosevic would have to compromise and agree to a fair political settlement that provided the Kosovo Albanians with self-government. The Albanians would have to defer demands for independence. If the Serbs rejected a political solution, then the allies would be asked to support Nato air strikes.
Then we took it one step further. If we were really going to lead a western response and bring the Europeans on board, we had to be prepared to deploy American ground troops, lest the Europeans accuse us, as they had in Bosnia, of talking tough but refusing to commit our own troops. So we decided to recommend that American soldiers would join a Nato peacekeeping force if an agreement were reached. This would be a clear mission, with a real peace to keep, not a dressed-up ceasefire like the one in October.
That week, Albright, defence secretary William Cohen, national security adviser Sandy Berger, CIA director George Tenet and the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Hugh Shelton met for several hours each day, analysing the problem and debating her plan. Within a few days, the new strategy was put to Clinton and he approved it. Compared with previous crises, this was decisive action. I suspect the speed reflected the meeting of minds that had developed between Albright and the president. Like his secretary of state, Clinton was determined not to repeat the blunders of Bosnia.
With Washington’s agreement, Albright set off on a previously scheduled trip to Moscow and the Gulf and began to work the Europeans. It was in Moscow that the diplomacy came together. Albright, Cohen, and Berger began sketching the outlines of the new strategy by telephone to their counterparts in London, Paris, and Bonn. The response was encouraging. By picking up on European insistence on a definite political strategy, including a short deadline for the parties to decide, and talking about the possibility of American ground troops, the allies were coming around. But what about the Russians, they kept asking?
On January 27, Albright accompanied Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov to the Bolshoi for a performance of Verdi’s opera La Traviata. During intermission, she took him aside in the velvet-lined box built for the Tsar. Amid an elaborate spread of caviar and champagne, she laid all her cards on the table.
Ivanov told her: “Russia could never agree to Nato force being used against the Serbs.” But Albright explained: “We’re not asking you to support the use of force per se. That will be Nato’s decision, not Russia’s. So long as this goes on, it will be a major problem between us. And you know that if we are ever going to resolve Kosovo, a credible threat of force is necessary or Milosevic will never respond.” Ivanov later told other diplomats this frank exchange was one reason why Moscow, in effect, went along with Nato’s threat of air strikes.
Albright returned to her hotel room confident the Russians could be managed. While opposing Nato’s threats of force publicly, Moscow would support establishing a short deadline to achieve a political solution, knowing full well that Nato air strikes would ensue if the Serbs balked. While she was at the opera, Jim Steinberg, the deputy national security adviser, and I developed the scenarios she would use with the Europeans. According to the new plan, if the Serbs and the Albanians agreed a settlement, Nato would implement it and US troops would participate. If the Serbs balked, Nato would initiate air strikes. If the Kosovars balked, we would try to cut off international support for their rebellion. If both sides did not agree, we would try to go back to the October agreement.
When she finally reached the other ministers from the UK, France, Germany and Italy, it was well after midnight in Moscow. After briefing them on her talk with Ivanov, they were still insisting on having a Contact Group meeting. She wanted no more meetings unless real decisions would be made. (Cook, for one, knew how neuralgic Albright felt about these meetings. He had said to her a few months earlier: “Madeleine, you are becoming so disagreeable at these sessions. Perhaps you should take a vacation.”)
Albright was as tough as I can remember. She asked each minister the same question. “I want your word on this. If I agree to come to a meeting where we will lay out this new diplomatic strategy, you will instruct your ambassador in Brussels to support air strikes should the Serbs be responsible for a breakdown in the talks?” The ministers agreed but only after securing her pledge to punish the Albanian side in the event the KLA caused a breakdown.
In Albright’s hotel suite there was a sense that a historic turning point had been reached. There was also an amusing sub-plot. After agreeing to her demands, the British and French ministers proceeded to lobby Albright for the privilege of hosting the peace conference. A Euro-compromise was finally reached: the meeting to establish the talks and set a two-week deadline would convene in London two days later; the actual talks would take place in France, with the British and French chairing the peace conference. The fate of tiny Kosovo would be determined at a grand castle near Paris, in a small town called Rambouillet.
Albright sent me ahead to Rambouillet on February 5 1999. When I arrived, the pieces all seemed in place. We had the leverage to pressure the Serbs and the Albanians. The key elements of the political package – a three-year interim accord that deferred independence but provided self-government for the Albanians and legal protections for Serbs – were nearly complete. And there was a two-week deadline for the parties to accept the peace plan.
But we also had a host of other problems. Ominously, Serb forces began massing in and around Kosovo. It looked as if we could be talking peace in an ancient French chateau while the Albanians were being subjected to a new onslaught on the ground. Milosevic refused to come to the castle and sent his henchman, Serbia’s president Milan Milutinovic, in his stead. The Albanians, meanwhile, had never operated as a coherent group before. They selected the young, unknown KLA leader, Hashim Thaci as the head of their delegation. We had no idea who he was.
My immediate problem was more personal. What should I say to the hundred or so journalists who had descended on the town of Rambouillet? I knew they would want to know what our objectives were for the talks. Obviously, the best outcome was a peace agreement implemented by a strong Nato force, and that’s what I told small groups of French, British and American journalists brought in to see me at the American ambassador’s residence.
Privately, I doubted we could achieve all of this right away. Our real strategy, I knew, was more pragmatic than was publicly understood at the time. We were under no illusions that the Serbs would quickly yield to our demands and resolve it all at Rambouillet. Our first priority was to unite the Europeans behind air strikes by clearly defining the aggressor and the victim. Whether based on prejudice or hostility to the KLA, the Europeans were still riddled with doubt about the Albanians. Our allies would only support the threat of force if the Albanians overcame that doubt by showing flexibility and agreeing to defer their demand for independence.
Experience had shown that if Milosevic would compromise at all it would be at the last minute – and only if he knew that air strikes were imminent. And, for the Europeans to join us in making that threat, the Albanians had to say yes to our peace plan.
We were certain of one thing: the Serb leaders weren’t particularly interested in peace talks. They intended to solve their “Albanian problem” with a massive crackdown. Milutunovic himself admitted this in one of his first meetings with Albright at the castle. It was surreal. He was polite, almost obsequious, saying over and over: “Serbia is a friend of America. We want to be part of Nato. You should let us join Nato, not bomb us.” And she would reply: “Do you understand that Nato attacks will take place if the Serbs don’t agree?” “Yes, yes,” he said. Then he would add quizzically: “Why do you care about these Albanians anyway? We will solve the Albanian problem in a few short weeks,” he assured her darkly.
Whatever the Serbs were planning, getting the Albanians on board was a bigger challenge than expected.
When Albright arrived a few days later, Jim O’Brien, a long-time Albright aide and one of our top negotiators, told her that the key figure in the Albanian delegation of politicians, journalists, and intellectuals was Hashim Thaci – leader of the political wing of the KLA. Her first meeting with him took place in a small, private room in the basement of the drafty chateau. Thaci began by talking of his deep respect for her personally. He even asked for a photographer to take their picture.
Albright gave him a pep talk, saying: “I hope you will become Kosovo’s Gerry Adams and choose peace over continuing war and terrorism.” Thaci greeted me especially warmly. I suspect this was because during the many months when few were paying attention to Kosovo I was the television face of American foreign policy he would see on CNN and the BBC, condemning the Serb crackdowns and keeping the Albanian hope for western intervention alive. With the entire US strategy to pressure Milosevic now dependent on this mysterious rebel, Albright told me to work with Thaci. The rest of the Albanian delegation had already signalled they would most likely go along. If he agreed, we could proceed. If not, we were back to square one.
Thaci and I took walks through the castle’s elaborate sculpted gardens. We had coffee together in the formal dining rooms. We talked through an interpreter about American movies, about our fondness for Italian suits, anything I could think of. I told him how I worked with the media and about America’s links to key democratic figures in Bosnia. He described how he had started out as a leader of student protests but became frustrated and helped found the KLA.
Amid the chaos of foreign ministers, diplomats, and military officials inside, and journalists outside, we developed a kind of friendship. Thaci was young, nervous, and told us many times he feared the Serbs would assassinate him if they could. He even told the press he feared he might be killed right there on the castle grounds. I said that such statements only made him seem paranoid. The other Albanians often put him down, saying he was too emotional and inexperienced. Maybe so, but they would not make a decision without him.
By the end of the two weeks, the negotiators had reached agreement on most of the 100-page document. Two key issues remained: would the Kosovar Albanians accept a vague formulation that did not guarantee them an independent state? Would the Serbs accept Nato peacekeepers? Our negotiators had assured us that the Albanians would come round in the end. But they were stubbornly holding out. Worse, the unity of the Europeans was cracking.
The Italians were now collaborating with the Serbs to end the conference on Belgrade’s terms. This was not a total surprise since Italian public opinion was hostile towards the prospect of Nato intervention against their Serbian neighbours.
The day before, with all the ministers and their aides crammed into a tiny office in the attic of the castle, the foreign minister Lamberto Dini kept climbing over people to leave the room. We discovered a few hours later that he was sharing document drafts with Serbian president Milutunovic. At one point, he came back and suggested dropping our demand that Nato troops implement the agreement. There was an eerie silence as none of the Europeans responded to his proposal that we merely call for “implementation” of the peace plan, with no mention of military or Nato.
I was stunned that Italy would carry water for Milosevic so blatantly. The Serbs had said for weeks they could agree to lightly armed UN personnel rather than Nato peacekeepers. But not even the moderate Albanians could accept such a plan. It would be Bosnia all over again, with the Serb military controlling events on the ground, violating the agreement at will and the UN standing by helplessly. But none of the other Europeans were objecting!
Finally, Albright said: “Lamberto, this doesn’t work at all. The whole point is for the Serbs to accept a Nato force.” She demanded that the word “military” be reinserted and Dini’s gambit was foiled.
Meanwhile, for more obscure reasons, the French were sabotaging our effort to bring the Albanians on board. We knew the critical factor for the KLA was the prospect of air strikes and Nato ground troops. So we had arranged for Nato’s Supreme Allied Commander, General Wesley Clark, to come to the castle to brief them on Nato military plans and help win them over in the final hours of the conference.
General Clark was a formidable figure. He understood the Serb military and the Balkans as well as anyone. But the French were refusing to allow him on to the castle grounds, arguing that his Nato role would somehow upset the diplomatic balance with the Serbs. This was ridiculous. In truth, the French objection was ideological. They hated any prominence being given to the military arm of the Nato alliance, which they have never joined. Albright finally convinced Hubert Vedrine, the foreign minister, to allow four KLA members to leave the castle for a briefing with Clark at a military airfield.
The KLA was holding out for a clear commitment to eventual independence. This was a deal-breaker for the Serbs, and we couldn’t accept it either. In meeting after meeting with the Albanian delegation, Albright argued with increasing passion – calling on their sense of history, their respect for the US, and the weakness of their position on the ground. “Don’t you understand?” she would ask. “Without this agreement, there will be no Nato air power, there will be no Nato ground troops, and the Serbs will just slaughter your people.”
In the end, it came down to Thaci and he would not budge. The other KLA members told us privately they were prepared to agree but it was up to him. So I brought Thaci in to see Albright in the corner dining room serving as her office. I had rarely seen her so angry.
“You promised you would work with us. Now you are destroying the chances for western action. You will be personally responsible for the deaths of your people if you don’t change your mind. Leadership is about making hard decisions.
“I know it is hard for you to defer the question of independence. But if you can’t agree, you will have no support in the west. You will risk your friendship with me and with Mr Rubin. You have no better friends in the west than Mr Rubin and me. But we can’t help you if you let down the Albanian people this way.”
Thaci was on the verge of tears. He had never dealt with foreign ministers before, let alone an angry US secretary of state. He told her how he had witnessed first-hand the deaths of his friends and atrocities committed against women, children and the elderly. He knew what the consequences were. For a few moments he was unable to speak. Then, composing himself, he said he was sorry but the answer was no. . .