Violence Flares in Kosovo as U.S. Mediation Continues

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia — In the difficult months that former U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke negotiated an end to the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina, the Serbs who received the brunt of his persuasive powers added a new word to their vocabulary: holbrukciti, or “to Holbrooke”--to achieve something by brute political force.

But on Tuesday, the weary American envoy was unable to report progress after four days of intense talks with Serbian authorities and ethnic Albanian leaders aimed at averting all-out war in the Serbian province of Kosovo. “The distance between the two sides still remains very substantial,” Holbrooke said.

Holbrooke, now a Wall Street banker, was reenlisted for an emergency U.S. mission to break the deadlock between Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and Kosovo Albanians who are demanding independence. He shuttled back and forth between the two but appeared to make little headway.

The discouraging news came as the first victim was claimed in Pristina, Kosovo’s capital, lending weight to warnings that violence will escalate if the eleventh-hour diplomatic gestures fail. At least one ethnic Albanian--a man in his 60s--was shot to death by Serbian police when they launched a predawn raid on what they identified as a safe house for armed guerrillas. Police said that Albanian youths opened fire first and that the victim was caught in the cross-fire, but ethnic Albanian community leaders denied those claims and said the dead man was gunned down.

Holbrooke and U.S. senior Balkan envoy Robert Gelbard were to continue talks today. Holbrooke helped broker accords that in December 1995 ended the war in Bosnia, which claimed more than 200,000 lives in 3 1/2 years.

Although many people portray Kosovo as “the next Bosnia,” Holbrooke noted key differences, including the true ethnic divide that exists between Albanians and Serbs--unlike Bosnian Muslims and Serbs, they speak different languages, for example--and the cultural and religious significance attached to the region.

Ethnic Albanians make up 90% of Kosovo’s population of 2 million.

Holbrooke also noted that there was international support for Bosnia’s 1992 secession from the former Yugoslav federation; similar support for the ethnic Albanians does not exist now. Bosnia was a republic; Kosovo has the lesser status of province.

“This is a very different situation from Bosnia,” Holbrooke said in an interview. “It begins with the fact that all outside governments accept the fact that Kosovo is part of Yugoslavia, where in Bosnia people agreed on the exact opposite.”

Holbrooke and Gelbard began this new series of talks after Washington and its main Western allies tightened sanctions against the rump Yugoslavia to punish Milosevic for his refusal to accept foreign mediation in the crisis. But Milosevic, after meetings with Holbrooke, repeated his refusal.

Far from a spirit of compromise, official rhetoric seemed to be hardening. Vlajko Stojiljkovic, the Serbian minister of the interior, who oversees the police forces making up the bulk of troops in Kosovo, lashed out at the Albanian “terrorists” and their Western backers.

“It is impossible to understand that Albanians want an ‘ethnically clean,’ Nazi, fascist Greater Albania, like Mussolini in the Second World War,” he said in a speech marking Interior Ministry Day. “It is even more strange that certain so-called democratic countries in the West are supporting them.”

And a statement, purported to be from the guerrillas, known as the Kosovo Liberation Army, called on Albanians to “stiffen the resistance” and warned that “fierce fighting to expand liberated territory” will continue.

The rebels control large chunks of rural territory in desolate Kosovo. But until Tuesday, no fighting had been reported in Pristina.

U.S. officials this week described the growth in rebel forces as “alarming.” The guerrillas’ numbers have mushroomed from a couple of hundred fighters three months ago to several thousand now. The increase was fueled in part by Milosevic’s fierce crackdown on the separatists; more than 160 people have been killed since Feb. 28. Weapons and money continue pouring in through neighboring Albania, U.S. officials said.