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While many are claiming the peace agreement shows that Milosevic backed down, some analysts are suggesting that essentially the same agreement could have been achieved without bombing. They point to U.S. demands at Rambouillet in February that are absent from the current agreement. While some elements of the new accords remain unclear, apparent major differences between the Rambouillet text and the current agreement include:

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WHAT MILOSEVIC GAVE UP

Can keep only a few hundred, not a few thousand, troops in Kosovo

WHAT NATO GAVE UP

The international force can be deployed only in Kosovo, not throughout Yugoslavia

International force under UN — not NATO — auspices, with Russian component

UNHCR, not NATO, supervises return of refugees

No referendum on Kosovo independence

PHYLLIS BENNIS
Author of Calling the Shots: How Washington Dominates Today’s UN and a fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies, Bennis said: “This agreement might have been achievable months earlier, without the devastation of Yugoslavia and the escalation of the anti-Albanian ‘ethnic cleansing’ in Kosovo wrought by NATO’s bombing campaign.”
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MARJORIE COHN
Professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, Cohn said: “At Rambouillet, NATO presented Milosevic with an ultimatum impossible for him to accept. NATO has now diluted its demands but, to justify two months of bombing, claims Milosevic capitulated…”

STEPHEN ZUNES
An associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, Zunes said: “Most crucially, the insistence at Rambouillet that NATO troops have ‘unimpeded access throughout the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia’ has been dropped, limiting their role only to Kosovo…”

SETH ACKERMAN
A media analyst with Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Ackerman said: “Last week’s Serb agreement was falsely reported as a total NATO victory. Then, when military talks broke down, it was claimed that the Serbs were reneging. In fact, those military talks were largely a NATO ploy — unsuccessful — to totally bypass the UN.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; or David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

GEORGE KENNEY
A former Yugoslavia desk officer at the U.S. State Department, Kenney said: “An unimpeachable press source who regularly travels with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told [me] that, swearing reporters to deep-background confidentiality at the Rambouillet talks, a senior State Department official had bragged that the United States ‘deliberately set the bar higher than the Serbs could accept.’ The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little bombing to see reason. That was clear in Appendix B of Rambouillet. This war was totally avoidable.”

GORDON CLARK
The executive director of Peace Action, one of 26 people arrested in front of the White House yesterday, Clark said: “We are not demanding President Clinton’s ‘cautious optimism,’ we are demanding an end to this immoral, illegal and insane bombing campaign. We will be joining with others tomorrow in protesting against this war.”

SR. ARDETH PLATTE
A Dominican nun and member of the Jonah House Community, Platte was also arrested yesterday. She said: “Citizens have to plead the cause for peace. Clinton bombs countries, defies the Constitution, defies international law and in the next breath tells children that they can’t use violence. Last year, I participated in a plowshare action, destroying weapons at a military show at Andrews Air Force base. There were children there ‘playing’ with the weapons. I sent pictures of it to Hillary and Bill Clinton — they should look at what they’re teaching before they go preaching.”
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JASMINKA UDOVICKI
Co-editor of Burn This House: The Making and Unmaking of Yugoslavia, Udovicki said: “Incineration of so much of civilian life in Yugoslavia, 300 schools included, was easy. Will the countries that devastated Yugoslavia finally see what the West has failed to see in the last decade: that the only path to stability in the Balkans is sustained and active support of democratic forces in Serbia? It is those forces Milosevic is now likely to try to quell with all his might.”

STEPHEN ZUNES
An associate professor of politics and chair of the Peace and Justice Studies Program at the University of San Francisco, Zunes said: “An imposed Western formula on Kosovo will result in an uneasy truce in a badly divided society which will not heal the wounds, encourage democracy or lead to real peace. While forcing an effective surrender through weeks of bombing can be successful, it will likely result in such bitterness that it will only pave the way for a dangerous political reaction, which may not be seen for some years to come, but will only add to the sense of historical wrong which manifests in violent and chauvinistic ideologies.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

The following analysts are available for comment on Russia and possibilities for negotiations:

DAVID KOTZ
Co-author of Revolution From Above: The Demise of the Soviet System and professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Kotz said: “The U.S. is trying to use Russia as a club to pressure Milosevic to submit to U.S. demands, rather than taking Russia up on its offer to serve as a genuine mediator to reach a compromise. Russia’s indebtedness to the IMF makes it appear that they can be pressured into acting as an agent for NATO. This is a very risky game to play, since the bombing has united the Russians like nothing before. It’s likely to further alienate the Russians, and a government could come to power that is hostile to the United States. The ties between Russia and the Serbians are not just an ethnic and religious bond; it’s also a long political history of alliance. There’s also Russia’s fear that this shows the expansion of NATO really is a threat to Russia’s national security. The U.S. gave virtually no weight to Russian objections to the bombing. It has crystalized anger at how they’ve been treated by the West. In Russia, you are seeing the first real sense of anti-Americanism since the demise of the Soviet Union.”

DAN GOURE
Deputy director for political and military studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, MSNBC military analyst and former Bush administration Pentagon official, Goure criticized the Rambouillet meetings that led up to the start of bombing in March: “Rambouillet constituted a significant compromising of Yugoslavian sovereignty over and above the issue of control of Kosovo. The administration went to Rambouillet basically to arrange a trap for Milosevic. It was a no-win situation for him — and frankly, Albright was basically trying to find a pretext for bombing. They told the Kosovar Albanians that if they signed and Milosevic didn’t, they’d bomb Serbia. Rambouillet was not a negotiation, it was a set-up, a lynch party… The administration’s current position is to continue to use the refugee situation as a basis for justifying their hardline political approach in dealing with Milosevic.”

ROBERT HAYDEN
Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Hayden is an expert on Yugoslavia and is knowledgeable about the Rambouillet text.

Note: The Rambouillet text (including key overlooked provisions in Appendix B), which Senate majority whip Don Nickles called a “disaster” yesterday, is available at the State Department’s website.

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167

Did Allies Demand Right to Occupy All of Yugoslavia?

WASHINGTON — New questions are emerging about the actual terms of the Rambouillet accords prior to the initiation of NATO’s bombing of Yugoslavia.

When NATO spokesman Jamie Shea appeared at the National Press Club in Washington yesterday, a representative of the Institute for Public Accuracy asked him to clarify provisions in the Rambouillet text that some analysts say allowed for the military occupation of all of Yugoslavia by NATO troops.

Although Shea replied that “there was no intention whatsoever of having any kind of NATO occupation regime in Yugoslavia itself,” Appendix (B) of the Rambouillet accords included the following provisions:

7. NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia].

8. NATO personnel shall enjoy… free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters.

11. NATO is granted the use of airports, roads, rails and ports without payment…

15. [NATO shall have] the right to use all of the electromagnetic spectrum…

Robert Hayden, director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh, says that a close reading of the Rambouillet accords shows that the text, rejected by Milosevic just before the bombing began, “provided for the independence of Kosovo in all but name and the military occupation by NATO of all of Yugoslavia — not just Kosovo.”

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For more information, contact:

Robert Hayden
University of Pittsburgh

At the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167.

ROBERT GREENBERG
Assistant professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and author of the forthcoming “Language and Ethnic Identity in the Former Yugoslavia,” Greenberg said today: “Milosevic is looking for an exit strategy, with the cease-fire proposal and the possibility of the U.S. soldiers being released. We just don’t seem to want to deal with him. I don’t see the benefit of continuing to risk killing Yugoslav civilians and to risk losing any of our pilots. We should have some sort of resumption of negotiations; it’s an opportunity to cooperate with the Russians in finding a way out… Rambouillet was a take-it-or-be-bombed deal. That is not giving diplomacy a fair chance to succeed.”
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DMITRI GLINSKI VASSILIEV
Dmitri Glinski Vassiliev is a research associate at George Washington University and co-author of the forthcoming “Market Bolshevism: The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms.” He said: “The bombing of Yugoslavia has endangered U.S.-Russian relations in a way unprecedented since the early 1980s. Polls show that 92 percent of Russians condemn the bombings, and 70,000 young people have registered as would-be volunteers for Yugoslavia. U.S. actions have given a big boost to militant anti-American politicians in Russia. They may win the December elections and unseat Yevgenii Primakov’s moderate reformist government that has been trying to abstain from an open confrontation with NATO. The American-led operation against Yugoslavia is an egregious violation of international law. The Clinton administration and its allies have arrogated the authority of the virtually defunct United Nations. The aggravation of the humanitarian disaster as a result of the bombing undermines the claims that Cold War institutions could be converted to humanitarian purposes.”

ROBERT WEIL
Author of “Red Cat, White Cat: China and the Contradictions of ‘Market Socialism,'” Weil said about Chinese Premier Zhurongji’s current visit to the U.S.: “There is apparently real outrage in China, as there is in Russia, about the bombing of Yugoslavia. They’ve been concerned about what they see as U.S. bullying — a throwback to the ‘great power’ of the past, which the Chinese have a long history with. Broadly, the Chinese resent the drift of U.S. policy with Albright’s ‘we’re the indispensable nation’ view of the U.S. using force to pursue its global interests. Specifically, they’re concerned about the U.S. intervening in a sovereign state while citing humanitarian reasons… The Chinese are also concerned about the missile defense systems in Asia that they see as threatening their strategic interests.”

For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167