BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
The U.S.-led NATO military alliance has moved closer toward
military intervention in Kosova, with plans to deploy up to
30,000 imperialist troops as an occupation force there.
Anticipating a possible military onslaught, Washington
demanded February 1 that the "Kosovo Verification Mission" of
the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe
(OSCE) move its training center immediately to Skopje,
Macedonia, and prepare for a rapid evacuation of 1,070
"monitors" in Kosova in the event that NATO launches
airstrikes against Yugoslavia. NATO commanders are assembling
up to 10,000 soldiers to "extract" the monitors, the
Economist reported January 30.
The White House has issued war threats and other political pressure to force Belgrade and Albanians who are fighting for independence from Yugoslavia to swallow a U.S.-sponsored settlement that includes "a high degree of self-governance" for the Kosovar Albanians. "We stand ready to back that strategy with the threat of force," declared U.S. president William Clinton.
The so-called Contact Group on the Balkans made up of government representatives from Britain, the United States, France, Italy, Germany, and Russia, adopted the U.S. "peace plan" January 29. They called for a meeting by February 6 in Rambouillet, France, to attend talks chaired by the British and French foreign ministers. The group set February 19 as the deadline for agreeing to the scheme or face NATO military strikes. Moscow is the only member of the Contact Group opposed to a military assault.
U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright said, "The consequences of failure to comply will be swift and serious." Albright had refused to attend the January 29 meeting of the Contact Group unless it supported a NATO order authorizing military action.
Washington has seized on the Yugoslav regime's assault on the Kosova independence struggle to press a campaign for military intervention. The Clinton administration, which opposes independence, is reportedly weighing plans to send some 7,000 GIs for the "peacekeeping" operation in Kosova. The NATO military arsenal is poised for bombing raids with 400 warplanes.
Other participants in the planned intervention include London, Paris, Bonn, and future NATO candidates Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic. Under a scheme devised by NATO last October, Kosova would be divided into four sectors with U.S., French, and British forces controlling three of them. British general Michael Jackson would command an occupying army some 30,000 troops, including up to 8,000 British soldiers, 6,000 from France, and 3,000 from Germany. The governments of the Netherlands, Russia, and the Nordic countries would send 1,000 soldiers each.
"The major powers are trying to do another Dayton," opined the Financial Times February 1. After leading a sustained NATO bombardment of Serbian forces in Yugoslavia, the Clinton administration brought representatives of the Bosnian, Serbian, and Croatian forces to a U.S. military base in Dayton, Ohio, for talks that authorized Washington to lead an occupation army in Bosnia of 60,000 NATO troops. Today the region remains partitioned and occupied by a NATO force of 30,000 soldiers. As in Bosnia, the aim of the U.S. rulers' intervention in Kosova is to prepare to use force to reestablish capitalist property relations throughout Yugoslavia. These moves are part of the tightening of imperialism's military noose around Russia.
Washington's latest "peace plan" is a 40-page draft that would remove Belgrade as the governing authority in Kosova and virtually set up the province as an imperialist protectorate. Kosova's status is to be decided after a period of three years. The proposal also calls for the Kosova Liberation Army (UCK), who are waging an armed struggle for independence, to disarm within three months.
The document would establish an "international monitoring mission" whose chief would have the power to appoint and dismiss officials in the administration and judicial system. The "mission" would supervise elections in Kosova and set up its own broadcasting system.
While its junior imperial partner London has stepped forward to lead the negotiations and the military intervention, Washington is sinking its roots deeper into the Balkans powder keg. Imperialist troops face the possibility of military confrontations with Serbian military forces and the UCK. At a January 28 meeting the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff warned about U.S. casualties as they approved the move to send ground troops.
Ibrahim Rugova, leader of the League for a Democratic Kosova and elected as president in March polls, which were boycotted by other Albanian parties and the UCK, said he will take part in the February 6 meeting in France.
UCK spokesman Jakup Krasniqi announced February 2 that representatives of the group will attend as well. "We have some objections to the proposed document but we are certainly ready to go," Krasniqi said in a statement.
Other UCK fighters have balked. "There is no point in going to talks with guns pointed at our foreheads," said Pleurat Sejdiu, a UCK representative in London.
"We are not asked to go to France to talk peace but to capitulate," declared UCK political representative Adem Demaci at February 2 news conference in Pristina, the capital of Kosova. UCK leader Sokol Bahsota expressed willingness to accept NATO "peacekeeping" troops in Kosova, but stated, "We will not give up our weapons until we have our independence."
Yugoslav deputy premier Vuk Draskovic said that he believed Belgrade would attend. Serbian deputy premier Vojislav Seselj said that he is against participating in the meeting, "despite the threats" from NATO. Seselj's Serbian Radical Party issued a statement saying that "only the complete destruction of the Albanian terrorist gangs, which have the complete support of their American mentors, will solve Kosova's crisis."
The same day the "peace plan" was presented by the Contact Group, 24 Albanians were killed in the village of Rogova, including three people in UCK uniforms. A Serb policeman had been killed there earlier. Several small bomb attacks took place over the first week of February in Pristina, against Serb as well as Albanian-frequented cafes.
Albanians make up 90 percent of the 2 million people in Kosova, a province in the southern region of Yugoslavia. They face discrimination and the province's autonomy was revoked by the Milosevic in 1989. Most Albanians in Kosova favor independence from Yugoslavia.
Natasha Terlexis and Bobbis Misailides from Athens, Greece, contributed to this article.