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Cross-Purposes in Kosovo

Monday, July 13, 1998; Page A20

THE SIX-NATION "contact group" now warns warring Serbs and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo to cease fire. Otherwise, the United States and its partners will seek a Security Council resolution to enforce peace. But no U.N. resolution is needed. A political decision is needed to pile on the pressure, including the use of force. The first candidate for enforcement must be Slobodan Milosevic, Serb author of Kosovo's miseries. The second candidate should be the Kosovo Liberation Army, a separatist force opposed militarily by the Milosevic army and politically by the negotiation-minded Kosovans loyal to Ibrahim Rugova.
     If Mr. Milosevic was the only troublemaker in Kosovo, he could be pressed to accept negotiations with the Kosovans to restore and strengthen autonomy within Serbia. But there is a second party: the Liberation Army. Its program calls not for autonomy but for independence. That puts it at cross-purposes with the contact group (United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy), which calls for negotiated autonomy.
     In other circunstances, the six might be upholding self-determination by Kosovo's 90 percent majority of ethnic Albanians. In the real world, however, Kosovan self-determination, meaning ethnic Albanian self-determination, would not simply dismember Serbia. It likely would light the fires of a Greater Albania and drag in heavily Albanian Macedonia and fully Albanian Albania, perhaps others. The United States is devoted to self-determination, but not in all places or in all circumstances. It also is devoted to regional stability and to preventing the death, loss and refugee flows that war brings.
     This is how the contact group gets to the idea of enhanced autonomy for Kosovo. It is a compromise answer, and perhaps not an ultimate one, but it distributes the rewards and the pain somewhat fairly. Kosovans will be unhappy to have the consummation of their full self-determination deferred, but the right sort of autonomy would leave them a safety and dignity they now lack. Serbia resists enhanced autonomy, seeing it as a harbinger of dismemberment, but it had an opportunity to earn the trust of Kosovans, and it failed.
     The emphasis of the contact group is on arranging a cease-fire and encouraging a peaceful resolution of the crisis. To do this, it will have to exercise a credible threat to use force to keep the peace. On this issue the group is split on familiar lines, with Russia and France holding back. Unless the parties relent, the United States and its other European allies will have to be prepared to act on their own.

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company

13 July 1998
EXCERPTS FROM
TRANSCRIPT: WHITE HOUSE DAILY BRIEFING, MONDAY, JULY 13, 1998

THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
July 13, 1998

PRESS BRIEFING BY MIKE MCCURRY

The Briefing Room
excerpts
.........................

Q: Is there an update on Kosovo, from the standpoint of the negotiation?

MCCURRY: Well, there's been a great deal of work done by Ambassador Holbrooke, as you know, to try to find a way in which we can develop structures that would lead to some genuine mediation. There's a preference -- the concern has been while clearly we are keeping pressure on Serbia and keeping pressure, properly, on Milosevic, that within the Kosovo Albanians who have made some progress militarily recently there is less identifiable structures for mediation.
     And I think that until both sides see that their long-term opportunities are better defined by negotiation and by peaceful reconciliation than by fighting, it's going to be difficult to make a lot of progress. But we're going to continue the effort to try, of course.
.....

Taken without permission, for fair use only.

Guerrillas claim central role in Kosovo's future
KLA forces set their sights on Pristina
Serb forces target rebel stronghold
EU bars Belarus officials, mulls Kosovo policy
EU worried over support for Kosovo separatists
US Won't Support Violent Kosovo
As Prelude to Cease-Fire, Outside Observers Comb Kosovo for Truth
Diplomats Work To End Kosovo Battle
___________________________________

Guerrillas claim central role in Kosovo's future
10:04 a.m. Jul 12, 1998 Eastern

By Douglas Hamilton

PRISTINA, July 12 (Reuters) - The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) on Sunday portrayed itself as an organised and steadily advancing national liberation force, insisting it was far more than a spontaneous coalition of armed groups.
     Bidding to maintain the initiative and secure a central role in deciding the fate of the ethnic Albanian majority in this province of Serbia, the separatist guerrilla organisation denounced "divisive and defeatist" internal politics and said its military task must take precedence.
     The KLA statement in the Albanian language Pristina newspaper Koha Ditore as two Serbian policemen died in Albanian sniper attacks in western Kosovo on Saturday and Sunday.
     "Things are going very well and we will be in (the Kosovo capital) Pristina very soon," KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said in the interview.
     "The KLA at the beginning had a hard time getting weapons but that problem does not exist any more. The KLA is getting stronger and stronger and I can tell you that in clashes with the occupying police and the army we are winning," he added.
     On Saturday, the paper quoted the spokesman as saying the KLA insisted that no existing political party in the ethnic Albanian community had the right to speak for it. All should acknowledge the KLA as the national army and accept that it was operating in a state of war.
     Since it emerged from obscurity last year, the KLA has overtaken the Albanians' non-violent campaign for autonomy, replacing it with an armed struggle for outright independence of Belgrade and capturing control of a third of the territory.
     Serbia initially tried to smash KLA strongholds but has been deterred from further large-scale action by the threat of international sanctions and intervention by NATO. Belgrade has refused, however, to withdraw its forces.
     The United States, Russia and major European powers are trying to broker peace talks leading to self-determination for Kosovo, short of independence which they reject as a potentially catastrophic redrawing of borders in the volatile Balkans.
     But while diplomacy and threats may have produced a temporary stand-off between the two sides and a halt to the heavy flow of refugees, there is no sign yet of the ceasefire sought by peace envoys, and political negotiations remain suspended while sporadic clashes continue.
     On the propaganda front, the KLA, now in diplomatic contact with United States envoys, appears intent on proving it has sufficient coherence, discipline and democratic credentials to merit a leading role in Kosovo's uncertain future.
     Krasniqi said the KLA was neither communist nor fascist, nor was it a mere coalition of groups which took up arms to challenge harsh Serbian rule over Kosovo's ethnic Albanians, who are 90 percent of the 1.8 million population.
     The guerrilla army had its origins in an initiative five years ago by an exiled ethnic Albanian political movement active in Switzerland and Germany, the spokesman said.
     "During 1992 and 1993 in the Peoples' Movement of Kosovo (LPK) a military wing was created from which, in 1994, the Kosovo Liberation Army was proclaimed," Krasniqi said.
     "It was in the LPK publication Zeri i Kosoves that the "Homeland Calling" fund was advertised which made the KLA what it is today," he added.
     Moderate political leader Ibrahim Rugova, elected as president by Kosovo Albanians in a ballot never recognised by Serbia, still refuses to recognise the guerrilla force, acknowledging only the existence of "armed groups."
     "We are an organised army and the war in Kosovo is commanded from inside Kosovo," Krasniqi said, repeating that the KLA did not recognise Rugova as president.
     The gulf between the two presents an intractable dilemma for mediators from the major powers, who in recent weeks have balanced their pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic with warnings to the KLA not to try to exploit peace-making efforts for their own ends.
     Krasniqi said it was "not serious" to equate the KLA with Serbian special police and Yugoslav army forces.
     He also said too much had been read into an authoritarian looking clenched fist salute given by some KLA fighters -- which has now been dropped -- and the black uniforms worn by their police.
     "There are two salutes. The official salute in the KLA is the army salute like in the Republic of Albania, with the open right hand. Another one which we see on the road from citizens and children is the closed fist. We consider that this salute has nothing to do with ideology. For us, the closed fist means brotherhood, unity and strength."
     "We have no ideology, because we have no time to deal with that. Our main cause is liberation. Ideology and political parties, that is for later," Krasniqi said.
     "About those black police uniforms: that's because it was the only cotton we had," he continued. "None of us has anything to do with either communist or fascist ideology."
     The KLA appealed to Serb civilians in Kosovo not to get mixed up in fighting between the KLA and Serbian security forces, promising that human and civil rights would be guaranteed.
     But Krasniqi said Serbian security forces would have to "go over the dead bodies of KLA soldiers to get inside Albanian villages and settlements."

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________

KLA forces set their sights on Pristina

Copyright © 1998 Nando.net
Copyright © 1998 AFP

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (July 12, 1998 08:21 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - The Kosovo Liberation Army fighting for its province's independence against Serbian forces declared Sunday its struggle was spreading and it would soon be in Pristina, Kosovo's main city.
     KLA spokesman Jakup Krasniqi told the Koha Ditore newspaper that "the situation is developing favorably for us and, very soon, we will physically be present in Pristina."
     A later statement by the armed group read that the KLA's operations were widening across the province. "KLA units have been very successful in the defense (of territory it holds) and the conquest of new strategic targets," it said.
     The KLA currently controls around a third of the province, mainly in rural areas.
     However its ranks have swelled over the last four months, ever since Belgrade sent in its forces to quash moves toward independence by Kosovo's population, which is 90 percent ethnic Albanian.
     "The KLA is growing day by day. We are moving forward with confidence and we guarantee the (ethnic Albanian) people that they will be safe wherever the KLA is present," Krasniqi said in the newspaper interview.
     The spokesman said the armed group -- unknown before this year -- had been set up in 1994 but had had difficulties procuring arms. "Now that problem is occurring less and less," he added.
     Krasniqi said neighboring Albania was providing help, mostly politically and diplomatically.
     He welcomed the support of the Swiss-based Kosovo Popular Movement which was also active in Germany. The organization, made up of exiled politicians, was helping to finance the KLA, he said.
     Krasniqi warned Kosovo political groups against seeking to control the KLA.
     The comment follows recent declarations by Kosovo Albanian political leader Ibrahim Rugova, that he would rein in the KLA should his negotiations with the United States and Belgrade result in a peaceful solution.
     In an earlier interview with the newspaper published Saturday, Krasniqi said the KLA rejected Rugova's authority over it and the province because he had made too many errors, particularly in terms of his pacifist policies. The KLA was fighting for "unification" with Albania, he said.
     In the Sunday interview, Krasniqi denounced the province's political groups for their "destructive activities, their lack of unity and their defeatist politics."
     He said KLA members U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke had met last month were at a "low level in the hierarchy" but that another U.S. envoy, Robert Gelbard, had met true "representatives of the KLA" in Switzerland able to speak on behalf of the group.
     All Serbian forces, whether they be police, soldiers or armed civilians, "are treated as enemy forces," Krasniqi said, adding a demand for Serbian civilians in Kosovo villages to lay down any weapons.
___________________________________

The Telegraph

Serb forces target rebel stronghold

By Philip Smucker in Pec

THOUSANDS of ethnic Albanians and Serbs attempted to flee Kosovo's second city, Pec, yesterday as Serbian forces pummelled a rebel stronghold on its outskirts.
     The fighting around the strategic town, home to a large Serb garrison near the Albanian border, comes amid signals that the Kosovo Liberation Army plans to take its battle for independence to the province's major cities.
The KLA, which rejected Western calls for a ceasefire again last week, already controls large areas of rural Kosovo. But the towns and cities had escaped the conflict until now.
     Grenades and heavy artillery, fired from a Yugoslav army base in the south of the city, echoed through the walled streets of Pec as trucks carrying Serb soldiers in black masks raced through this once-tranquil ethnically-mixed city.
     With the smoke of burning homes drifting overhead, panicking Serbs and Albanians, carrying their life possessions, fought for seats on buses leaving for Montenegro. The battle yesterday was centred on a village on the outskirts of the city but Albanians in the mixed suburb of Brzenik in Pec fled their homes.
     Special troops attached to the Serbian Ministry of Interior were sent to the front lines in the past two days. The forces, thought by Western diplomats to be under the direct command of the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, moved in British"Land Rovers pulling artillery pieces. They were followed by a Dutch armoured personnel carrier, stolen from peacekeepers in Srebrenica in Bosnia in 1995.
     Refugees said that the special Serb Anti-Terrorist forces were maltreating older Albanians as they took up positions around the town of Lodja. "I watched from a window as they beat my wife in the back of the head with a rifle butt," said Rexhep Morina, an elderly Albanian. Yugoslavia's most polished security forces are based outside Pec in the town of Dubrava. Albanian human rights workers accuse them of some of the war's worst atrocities, including a recent massacre in the town of Lubinic.
     "Whenever these troops get involved the situation just deteriorates," said Hajdar Mekaj, an Albanian monitoring human rights. "They strip their victims, stab and often mutilate them beyond recognition."
     On the edge of town, Serb civilians manning checkpoints shouted threats at reporters to go no further. They said that Albanian snipers were firing down a dirt road leading to Lodja.
     "I think the KLA will attack Pec," said Fahrije, a young woman who was trying to leave with her ageing father from near Lodja, where five Serb police officers were killed earlier in the week.
     Western officials - led by US special envoy Richard Holbrooke - have tried to bring the Albanian rebels into the peace process in alliance with the popular pacifist civilian leader Ibrahim Rugova. But in an interview published yesterday, the KLA's spokesman Jakup Krasniqi said his forces would not be drawn towards any political party
___________________________________

EU bars Belarus officials, mulls Kosovo policy
06:46 a.m. Jul 13, 1998 Eastern

BRUSSELS, July 13 (Reuters) - The European Union on Monday slapped visa restrictions on hardline Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko and his ministers in a diplomatic stand-off over an ambassdors' housing complex in Minsk.
     "A common position was agreed last week and has been ticked off (adopted)," said one EU official attending a meeting of the 15-nation bloc's foreign ministers.
     Five EU countries, the United States, Japan and others last month recalled their ambassadors from the former Soviet republic after Minsk cut off water and telephones and restricted access to the Drozdy complex, saying it needed plumbing repairs.
     The Belarus foreign ministry in Minsk reacted angrily to the EU sanction, noting the threat of "even tougher measures."
     "This is using a comparatively small problem on changing ambassadors' residences to put wide-ranging and unprecedented pressure on sovereign Belarus," a ministry statement said.
     The EU said the Belarus government action was "unlawful and unacceptable" within the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations, prompting the retaliation to bar government officials from visiting the bloc. Belarus ambassadors to EU member states had also been told to go back to Minsk, EU officials said.
     "The European Union will closely monitor the development of the situation in Belarus with a view to taking further measures if necessary," the EU said.
     Relations between Belarus and the West have been strained by Minsk's strengthening ties with Russia and Lukashenko's opposition to NATO's eastward expansion.
     Bulgaria's envoy in Minsk, Marko Ganchev, told Reuters last week that the residences would eventually be handed out to Lukashenko's own official coterie.
     Russia, Belarus's main ally, has criticised Lukashenko's handling of the crisis but has not recalled its envoy. On Wednesday, the communist chairman of Russia's lower house of parliament accused the West of trying to discredit Belarus.
     Several EU candidate nations on Monday expressed their support for the EU move and said they would follow suit.
     In a joint statement, Bulgaria, Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Iceland and Norway said they shared the EU's objectives, but Poland, Belarus's neighbour, said it would maintain a dialogue with Lukashenko although it found the EU's move "fully justified."
     EU foreign ministers were due later on Monday to take stock of the worsening crisis in the southern Serb province of Kosovo.
     German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said the EU would have to "think over" its policy on Kosovo, where more than 300 people have been killed during a Serb police crackdown on Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas.
     On a weekend trip to Moscow, Kinkel failed to persuade Russia to change its stance on military intervention in Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians outnumber Serbs by nine to one.
     Russia remains opposed to authorising the use of force through the United Nations charter if a political solution cannot be reached.
     The KLA, fighting for independence from Yugoslavia, said on Sunday it lost two men in a fierce clash with Serb security forces who attacked a guerrilla-held village near Pec, Kosovo's second largest town.
     The United States, Russia and major European powers are trying to broker peace talks leading to self-determination for Kosovo, short of independence which they reject as a potentially catastrophic redrawing of borders in the volatile Balkans.
     "We have to think a few things over in our approach. Up until now we have not got any further," Kinkel told reporters.
     The EU has in recent months skirted around imposing tough economic sanctions on the Belgrade government, agreeing only to freeze Yugoslav assets abroad and threaten to ban flights by Yugoslav airline JAT to EU airports.

Copyright 1998 Reuters Limited. All rights reserved.
___________________________________

Monday, July 13, 1998 Published at 10:58 GMT 11:58 UK

EU worried over support for Kosovo separatists

The European Union has voiced its concern over the growing support for separatist rebels in the Serbian province of Kosovo.
     The Foreign Minister of Austria -- which currently holds the EU presidency -- Wolfgang Schuessel has said that increasingly radical tendencies in the conflict have weakend the prospects of a peaceful outcome.
     He told an EU foreign ministers' meeting in Brussels that in addition to Yugoslavia, pressure for a negotiated settlement should also be applied on Kosovo Albanians.
     The German Foreign Minister, Klaus Kinkel, also urged the EU should reconsider its policy on Kosovo, saying the desired progress has not been made so far.

From the newsroom of the BBC World Service
___________________________________

Monday July 13 4:09 PM EDT

US Won't Support Violent Kosovo

LAURA MYERS Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - The Clinton administration, renewing its criticism of fighting in Kosovo, warned that the United States and other nations will never support independence gained by violence.
     "They need to realize that their independence goals are not going to be achieved," State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said Monday. "The international community is not going to support independence for Kosovo" or a Greater Albania sought by some elements, he added.
     Rubin said Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population in the Kosovo province of Serbia, have legitimate complaints against the Yugoslav federation headed by President Slobodan Milosevic, who stripped the region of its self-rule in 1989 before the Bosnian war.
     "We have said for some time that the primary responsibility for this conflict and for the fighting and for the repression and for the dying is Slobodan Milosevic," Rubin said. "That doesn't mean that extremist elements on the Kosovar-Albanian side are free of responsibility."
     The United States supports restoration of autonomy for Kosovo, where the Albanian population has lost many political and ethnic rights, but no break from what remains of Yugoslavia, Rubin said.
     "If they think they are going to resolve and achieve independence, they are fundamentally mistaken," the spokesman said.
     The Clinton administration has threatened military action, by NATO or American troops alone, if diplomacy fails.
     The Kosovo Liberation Army, an underground terrorist-style group, is leading the battle for independence while a pacifist ethnic Albanian leader, Ibrahim Rugova, is seeking a diplomatic settlement.
     As fighting continued Monday southwest of Pristina, Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo moved to bring the KLA under his control by scheduling the first session of the Kosovo parliament for within a week.
     The parliament was elected in unofficial voting in March. Dominated by Rugova's party, which holds 108 of 120 seats, it has been boycotted by most other Albanian parties who disagree with Rugova's policies.
     Chances for the KLA to submit to Rugova's rule appear slim.
     Christopher Hill, U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, remained in the region Monday talking with Kosovar-Albanian leaders in hopes of arranging autonomy talks, Rubin said. He also has met with Yugoslav authorities.
     A leading member of a Serb opposition group, Vojislav Mihajlovic, also met with officials at the State Department to offer his Serbian Renewal Movement's platform endorsing Kosovo autonomy.
     At a news conference, Mihajlovic urged Milosevic to accept foreign mediation and endorse self-rule for Kosovo in order to end the fighting. The opposition leader also warned that if Milosevic doesn't come around, he may lose his followers.
     "Milosevic is in power nowadays, but Milosevic is not Serbia. And he is not democracy," Mihajlovic said. "There are other forces in Serbia which can help solve the Kosovo problem in a democratic way."
___________________________________

MONDAY, JULY 13, 1998

As Prelude to Cease-Fire, Outside Observers Comb Kosovo for Truth

• Missions led by the US began last week. Are they a 'diplomatic circus' or a first step to talks?

Justin Brown
Special to The Christian Science Monitor
PRISTINA, YUGOSLAVIA

As diplomats scramble to prevent all-out war in the troubled Serbian province of Kosovo, their hopes ride on an extensive observer mission that could lay the groundwork for a cease-fire.
     The week-old program spearheaded by the United States will eventually send scores of military experts on fact-finding missions throughout the region, where fighting continues to threaten the stability of the Balkans. It will be the largest diplomatic presence in Kosovo to date.
     "This is the single most positive thing to happen since I've been here," says a Western observer in Kosovo. "There have been a lot of lies going around, and this should finally get to the bottom of it."
     The mission of about 40 observers, a dozen of whom will be from the US, underscores the international community's lack of first-hand knowledge about Kosovo, where ethnic Albanians have taken up arms to fight for independence and NATO is threatening to intervene.
     Most of Kosovo's 2 million residents live in remote villages that are linked by unmapped dirt roads, making it difficult to document the fighting.
     While diplomats have consistently blamed Serbian forces for being the aggressors, there is growing concern that the ethnic Albanian guerrillas known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) are playing a role in the escalation of violence. One goal of the mission is to set the record straight.
     More than 300 people, mostly ethnic Albanian civilians, have died, thousands have fled their homes, and several villages have been torched since the Serbian forces launched a Feb. 28 crackdown aimed at armed separatists.
     Fighting over the weekend inched toward the western city of Pec, Kosovo's second-largest. Reports from inside the city said ethnic Albanian residents were nearing a state of panic as the sounds of gunfire and detonations bounced off the mountain ranges adjacent to the city.
     The observer mission was arranged in part by Russian President Boris Yeltsin during his June meetings in Moscow with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. It includes teams from the Contact Group - the US, Russia, Britain, Germany, France, and Italy - as well as representatives from the European Community and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe.
     Mr. Milosevic agreed to allow the observers provided they were officially registered in Belgrade, the capital of postwar Yugoslavia, which consists of Serbia and tiny Montenegro.
     The observer patrols coincide with a changing focus of diplomatic efforts. Previously the Contact Group had put the onus on Milosevic to withdraw his forces from the region. Now, with advances by the KLA, diplomats are calling for a cease-fire.
     But fighting on both sides is gradually slipping beyond the control of mainstream political leaders, making it difficult to orchestrate talks. Nevertheless, diplomats say having a strong web of observation points in place could help enforce a truce if the fighting were to stop.
     The international community supports greater autonomy for Kosovo, but not the independence overwhelmingly favored by the impoverished region's 90 percent ethnic Albanian majority.
     The mission has drawn mixed reactions here. After its July 6 inaugural run, trailed by journalists, one local Albanian-language newspaper referred to it as a "diplomatic circus."
     An official close to de facto ethnic Albanian President Ibrahim Rugova says the mission is welcome, but "it's ridiculous that if there's fighting they'll just stand by and see who's the winner.
     "The point is ... there's fighting today and the observers are nowhere to be found," he says. "Maybe tomorrow, after the bombardment, they can take photos."
     A Serbian government source says Belgrade officials are a bit alarmed because they did not anticipate such a large operation.
     The observers will surely have contact with the KLA, which is increasingly receiving criticism for its lack of political leadership. Jakup Krasniqi, the KLA's self-styled spokesman, said in an interview Saturday with a local newspaper that he wanted Kosovo's politicians to form a united front with the KLA.
     He also recently said the KLA favored a "Greater Albania," a radical plan opposed by the West. But local analysts warned against diplomats applying pressure to the KLA.
     "If the observers go out into the field looking for the dark side of the KLA,they will surely lose their contacts with the KLA, and the mission will be questionable," says Dukagjin Gorani, an editor at the Albanian-language daily Koha Ditore.
___________________________________

Sunday July 12 10:17 AM EDT

Diplomats Work To End Kosovo Battle

ADAM BROWN Associated Press Writer

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (AP) - Diplomats worked Sunday to find a new approach to resolving the crisis in Kosovo, where the latest clashes have claimed the lives of at least two Serb policemen, Serb sources said Sunday.
     In Bonn Sunday, Germany Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel telephoned his counterparts in the six-nation Contact Group searching for a diplomatic solution to discuss new ideas for ending the fighting, his spokesman Martin Erdmann said.
     On Saturday, Kinkel and Russia's Yevgeny Primakov met in Moscow and discussed "new, creative possibilities" for Kosovo, where the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army is fighting for independence from Serbia - part of Yugoslavia.
     In an interview published in the Berlin daily Tagesspiegel on Sunday, Kinkel hinted at a conference like the Dayton peace accord - which ended the Bosnian war in 1995. "Perhaps we need a process that resembles the one that took place in Dayton," the paper quoted him as saying.
     Following Saturday's talks, Kinkel told journalists it was time to consider a new method to get both sides to agree to a cease-fire and peace talks.

Meanwhile the fighting continued in Kosovo.

The pro-government Serb Media Center reported two Serb policemen were killed and one was seriously wounded in a rash of attacks by the KLA on police checkpoints in western Kosovo. No independent confirmation was immediately available.
     Earlier Saturday, Serb forces launched a strong attack on the village of Lodja, on the outskirts of Kosovo's second-largest city Pec in western Kosovo, independent sources reported. Ethnic Albanian sources said a 78-year-old ethnic Albanian man was killed and three others were wounded, but police failed to recapture the village.
     However, the Serb Media Center, quoting government sources, said police regained control of a three-mile stretch of the road during the "action" to locate two missing police officers.
     Police came under fire as soon as they approached Lodja and, "after two hours of battle, armed Albanians ran away," but the police officers killed three days ago were not found, the Serb Media Center said.

Lodja is a KLA stronghold and a reputed center for weapons smuggling from Albania

Also Saturday, Albanian sources reported fresh fighting in the Decani area, east of Pec, and near the border town of Djakovica.
     On Sunday there were independent reports of continued shooting around Pec.
     The United States and the Europeans are trying to stop the fighting for fear it will spread to other Balkan countries with large ethnic Albanian communities.
     Hundreds of people have been killed in Kosovo since February, when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic launched a crackdown on Albanian separatists, who had been attacking Serb police and military facilities.
 

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