WASHINGTON -- Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright and Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen will meet with top Russian officials in Helsinki, Finland, this week to try to end an embarrassing standoff between NATO and Russian troops at the Pristina airport in Kosovo.
Four days after 200 Russian troops stunned the West by moving into Kosovo without an agreement with NATO, their presence in what was supposed to be the alliance headquarters in Pristina continued to preoccupy the highest levels of government in Washington and Moscow.
In Kosovo, NATO-led peacekeeping troops were moving in and Yugoslavian troops and some worried Serbian civilians were moving out.
A convoy of 1,200 U.S. Marines crossed in just south of Kacanik, the location of one of the peacekeepers' first grim discoveries, a possible mass grave site containing, villagers said, more than 90 bodies.
In another show of force not provided for in the peace agreement, the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was supposed to demilitarize, instead opened an office in Pristina, the Kosovo capital.
In Prizren, German soldiers disarmed several KLA members when they tried to seize wounded Serbian soldiers at the main hospital.
Prizren was a hotbed of tension. Terrified Serbs carried their belongings to bus stops and left town as crowds of hostile ethnic Albanians gathered nearby.
President Clinton spoke by telephone with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin for the second time in two days yesterday, a day after Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott returned from Moscow without an agreement on what role Russia will play in the Kosovo peacekeeping force.
Administration officials hope Albright and Cohen will be able to work out a deal at their meeting in Helsinki with Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov and Defense Minister Marshal Igor Sergeyev.
But they said a final solution to Russia's peacekeeping role might not come until the two presidents meet face to face Sunday at the Group of Eight summit in Cologne, Germany.
The Russians are demanding that they be able to control part of Kosovo and not have to report directly through the NATO commanders.
U.S. officials have rejected this, fearing it could lead to a Serb enclave in a partitioned Kosovo, but they are working on a compromise that would allow Russian troops to have an area of responsibility within one of the sectors of Kosovo controlled by a NATO country.
Instead of being directly under NATO, they could report to a commander who falls outside the direct NATO chain of command and who might be from a neutral country, such as Finland or Sweden.
"This would give them enough political room to say, 'We're not reporting to NATO,' " a State Department official said.
"I think we are making progress," National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger said.
If strides were made toward resolving the problem, they failed to erase completely what one official called "Cold War flashbacks" and a chill that fell over the peacekeeping operation Friday night.
Even the choice of a neutral meeting ground -- Helsinki -- carried a reminder of U.S.-Soviet meetings.
The Russian troops have no more than a token presence in Kosovo, where the number of NATO troops taking up peacekeeping functions stood yesterday at 14,000 and was climbing by the hour.
But because of Moscow's strong opposition to NATO's air war and historic ties to the Serbs, its defiant stand at the airport represents at least a symbolic resistance to NATO's occupation of the province.
More worrisome, the Russian troops' entry revealed disarray and confusion within the Russian government and raised questions about whether the military was under civilian control.
NATO's commander in Kosovo, Lt. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, played down the problems caused by the Russians yesterday, saying the airport turns out not to have been a desirable site for a headquarters after all.
"I'm not in a turf war with them. They are on the airfield. They regard it as important. It is not important to me at this stage," he said at a news conference.
"Frankly, now that I've seen the ground, it's too far out of town. I'm a little concerned about unexploded ordnance." Jackson has set up a temporary headquarters elsewhere in Pristina.
In Washington, officials took pains to play down the crisis with Russia, arguing that it should not detract from the strides made so far by NATO forces in stabilizing the province.
"I am confident that the U.S.-Russia relationship is one that is based on real national interests for both our countries and, therefore, we'll deal with the issues one by one, and that there has not been long-term damage from this," Albright said yesterday.
By de-emphasizing the tension, officials were trying to avoid inflaming anti-Western sentiment in Moscow, particularly in the Duma, the Russian parliament.
"One of NATO's fundamental jobs is engaging Russia," a NATO diplomat said. "By sitting at the airport, they're saying, 'I did it my way.' Are we going to take it away from them and allow the Duma to come crashing down on any relationship with the West? I don't think we are."
"We need to keep our eyes on the ball, and that is to see what's going on," said Albright. "This is a huge deal."
Who is in charge
But it was still not clear who was in charge of the Russian troops and who had the authority to negotiate on their behalf. Even yesterday, Albright was alluding to "confusion" at the highest levels of Yeltsin's government.
"What the Russians have told us is that President Yeltsin decided that they did want to be part of the peacekeeping operation, and that the military just got out one step ahead," Albright shrugged, adding, "I can't get into speculation about what is going on in Moscow."
Despite some British assertions otherwise, Deputy National Security Adviser James Steinberg insisted that there would be no linkage between International Monetary Fund assistance to Russia and Russian cooperation with NATO when Russian officials sit down with the seven industrial powers later this week to discuss economic issues.
But, he added, "Russia needs to do what it needs to do to get [its] IMF [loan package] back on track."
"The situation is there are a small number of Russian troops in Pristina. They are at the airport," said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon. "Being in control isn't really relevant at this stage, whether they're in control or not, because there are no flights going in and NATO doesn't plan to use the airport at this stage."
Bacon said the Russians are expected to be resupplied in the coming days by their troops involved in the Bosnian peacekeeping effort.
Four years ago there were high-level talks between then-Defense Secretary William J. Perry and his Russian counterpart, Pavel Grachev, on the number of Russian troops who would join that peacekeeping effort, where they would patrol and under whose authority.
"We had similar disagreements back in 1995," Bacon said. "And I have every confidence that we will have a chance to resolve these difficulties through a continuing series of meetings."
The Pentagon provided video from an unmanned U.S. Army aircraft, with officials saying it showed a steady stream of 300 to 500 trucks, troops, armor and civilians moving out of Kosovo, bumper to bumper.
Making deadline in doubt
But Bacon said it was uncertain whether the Serbian forces would meet their first withdrawal deadline of midnight local time today to move out of the southern section of the province. They have until Sunday to withdraw from the rest of Kosovo.
"I can't predict," Bacon said. "There are logistical problems, you saw one: traffic jams. They are certainly making a determined effort to get out."
It appears the Serbs have removed all their fixed-wing aircraft and SA-6 surface-to-air missiles and are trying to remove the remainder of their anti-aircraft artillery, Bacon said.
Serbian civilians were leaving, too. The International Red Cross said more than 11,000 ethnic Serbs had fled since last week's peace accord. Thousands more were said to be on their way out.
The United Nations disclosed its civilian peace plans for Kosovo to parallel the NATO-led military operation, delegating reconstruction and the building of institutions to two European organizations.
The operation is to be called the U.N. Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, or UNMIK. The U.N. Security Council has to approve the plans.
Sun national staff writer Tom Bowman contributed to this article.
Pub Date: 6/15/99