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Monday, Feb. 8, 1999

Serbs, Kosovo Albanians agree on basic principles

Sides OK framework to keep province in Yugoslavia for at least 3 years

By JEFFREY ULBRICH
Associated Press

   RAMBOUILLET, France - Serb officials and Kosovo Albanians agreed on principles that would keep the embattled province inside Yugoslavia for at least three more years as they met separately Sunday with international mediators at a French chateau.
   Getting down to serious work after Saturday's ceremonial opening, international mediators presented the warring factions with a framework agreement worked out by the Contact Group, made up of six outside nations trying to arrange a settlement.
   The mediators also presented a set of 10 non-negotiable principles for the talks, including a guarantee of Yugoslavia's territorial integrity.
   That means Kosovo's ethnic Albanians have to give up their demand for independence for their province - at least during a three-year interim period. Both a Serb negotiator and a Western mediator said all sides had accepted those principles.
   "The atmosphere was constructive, businesslike and serious," said conference spokesman Philip Reeker.
   The peace negotiations are being held in seclusion at the 14th-century Chateau de Rambouillet, and it was not possible to confirm the Albanian acceptance directly.
   Hard-line Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas have previously said they would never accept anything short of independence for Kosovo, a province in Serbia, the main republic in Yugoslavia. The province is 90 percent ethnic Albanian.
   The two sides were driven to the negotiating table by threat of NATO air strikes against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and tough measures against the KLA to halt its arms supplies and financing.
   The Contact Group - made up of the United States, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and Italy - devised the framework agreement based on the work of U.S. mediator Christopher Hill.
   The negotiating teams were not meeting face-to-face. Instead, international mediators were shuttling between two floors of the magnificent chateau, 30 miles south of Paris.
   The two sides were presented with the full text of the Contact Group plan on Sunday. Mediators are calling for, among other things, a three-year period of autonomy for Kosovo, the guarantee of current Serb borders, protection of minorities and a police force reflecting the ethnic community.
   The delegations will be sequestered inside the chateau for the duration of the talks, scheduled to last no longer than two weeks.
   Asked whether rival sides have met informally in the chateau, the Serb official said: "We've bumped into each other in the hallways, exchanged glances, but nothing else."
   In Kosovo itself, thousands marched Sunday behind a cortege of tractors carrying the bodies of nine men slain last month in a police raid in which 24 ethnic Albanians and one Serb policemen died.
   Serb police say the victims died in a fierce gunbattle when officers raided a compound where KLA fighters had taken shelter.
   

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