0.cached.png
By Michael Hirsh
0
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
Something is seriously wrong with this picture," Sen. John McCain said on Capitol Hill late last week. The scene was Rambouillet, a sleepy French village. The setting: a 14th-century chateau, where negotiations to achieve peace in the renegade Serbian province of Kosovo were going nowhere. After two days of nonstop talks, Madeleine Albright, the U.S. secretary of State, phoned Adem Demaci, an obscure ex-novelist with coke-bottle glasses who last year emerged as the political power behind the ragtag Kosovo Liberation Army. Albright asked Demaci not to block a NATO-backed agreement giving Kosovo limited autonomy. But Demaci, who had refused to attend the talks, insisted on full independence. He curtly told Albright that a phone call couldn't solve such a "bloody and serious" problem. Then he hung up. "Basically he stiffed her," says one astonished U.S. official. "Here is the greatest nation on earth pleading with some nothingballs to do something entirely in their own interest--which is to say yes to an interim agreement--and they defy us."
Demaci's refusal upset the key U.S. strategy at the Rambouillet talks. A Kosovar "yes" would have shifted the pressure to Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, who was resisting the idea of NATO troops as guarantors of Kosovo's autonomy. But the best Albright could achieve was a vague rebel pledge to sign by March 15. The true winner was Milosevic, who in the interim has a free hand to terrorize Kosovo's population and harass Western truce monitors there. Late last week Serb forces massed on the border and shelled the village of Bukosh. "We're being attacked and we know more is coming," Enver Orucaj, a KLA commander, told NEWSWEEK. Yet NATO has said it will not strike Milosevic if the Kosovars are resisting the peace pact.
Read More on News
Rambouillet was yet another lesson in how an indecisive superpower can be humiliated by a small, determined foe. Albright, traveling on to China this week, was described as exhausted. She told friends that it was the worst experience she'd ever been through. "She is so stung by what happened," says a close associate. "She's angry at everyone--the Serbs, the Albanians and NATO." Albright found little solace on Capitol Hill, where the reviews of Rambouillet were scathing. McCain, the Arizona Republican and likely presidential candidate, noted acidly that "a deadline with the threat of force to back it up can be a persuasive tool. There's just one catch. It must be credible." Administration officials, instead, have extended the deadline for Milosevic and the Kosovars three times. One senior official concedes: "We miscalculated. It's as simple as that."
Rambouillet was loosely modeled on the successful Dayton talks, where a closed, pressure-cooker atmosphere yielded a Bosnian accord in 1995. But Rambouillet "violated every rule," the official says. One example: the real players, Milosevic and Demaci, stayed home, calculating they could gain more by not signing. And no one on the U.S. side had prepared for a Kosovar refusal. Former senator Bob Dole, asked by Albright to call Demaci as well, says the Kosovar's obstinacy "took Milosevic off the hook completely."
Albright isn't giving up. NEWSWEEK has learned she is asking prominent U.S. figures to help win over Demaci and the hard-liners--including Dole, who will go to Kosovo soon, and George Soros, who helps to finance Kosovar news media. President Clinton, meanwhile, warned Milosevic on Friday to show restraint, saying that "NATO is prepared to act." But Milosevic, this time, may not have been listening.
View 0 Comments
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines