Milosevic rules out chance of UN mediation in Kosovo

GOVERNMENT leaders in Belgrade firmly rejected any international mediation to solve the crisis in Kosovo yesterday, saying they were ready to open dialogue with leaders of the province's Albanian majority population at any time but that Kosovo's status was strictly a Serbian internal matter.

With time running out for President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia to meet international demands for a settlement to the Kosovo issue, he appeared to have adopted a strategy of temporary detente towards the Albanians combined with a vigorous refusal to let the outside world dictate terms for him.

A demonstration staged by more than 50,000 students and other young Albanians in Kosovo's capital, Pristina, passed off without so much as a glimpse of a Serb policeman - the second time this week that the Serbs have held back from their usual practice of breaking up demonstrations with overwhelming force.

At the same time, a Serbian government negotiating team, led by the deputy prime minister, Ratko Markovic, waited in Pristina for a second day on the off-chance that Albanian leaders would accept their invitation to talk to them. The Albanians, backed by the US state department, denounced Mr Markovic's delegation as a piece of propaganda aimed at scoring points, not opening a genuine dialogue.

"It looked like a veritable carnival - it was not an invitation for talks, but an attempt to undermine them," said Fehmi Agani, deputy leader of the LDK, the main Albanian party in Kosovo. The Albanians said it was impossible to consider negotiations while paramilitary police were still clustered thickly around a number of villages in the Drenica region - site of two onslaughts by Serbian forces in the last two weeks in which more than 80 Albanians perished.

The six-nation Contact Group, which met in London on Monday, issued a number of conditions for President Milosevic to fulfil on pain of further international sanctions, including acceptance of a European fact-finding mission and initiation of a "meaningful dialogue" without preconditions.

Yesterday, however, as the Council of Europe's parliamentary council leader Leni Fischer visited Belgrade for talks with Mr Milosevic, the Serbs said they would not accept the mission. They also laid down specific conditions for talks - namely, that any solution for Kosovo would have to be found within Serbia's borders.

Like Belgrade, western governments have rejected the notion of independence for Kosovo, but they have not ruled out converting it into a full republic in Yugoslavia alongside Serbia and Montenegro.

The Contact Group will meet again on March 25 to decide whether Mr Milosevic's attitude merits the imposition of economic sanctions. According to diplomatic sources, NATO and the major powers are seriously considering the creation of a military cordon sanitaire around Yugoslavia - including NATO troops in northern Albania, the expansion of the UN military mission in Macedonia, a troop presence in Bulgaria and a naval monitoring mission off the coast of Montenegro.

Pressure is also mounting on Kosovo's Albanian leadership to renounce its dreams of independence. Western governments fear an independent Kosovo would only exacerbate tensions with Belgrade, and might tempt parts of Macedonia and even Montenegro to secede from their respective states and join a nascent Greater Albania.

The LDK will have great difficulty in dropping its independence demand, however, as that is the plank on which its support is built.

One European foreign affairs minister, Piero Fassino of Italy, said yesterday that both sides would have to relax their intransigent attitudes if any solution were to be found. For the moment, the chances of that look slim.