Troubling Questions About Rambouillet

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The Clinton administration has repeatedly claimed that bombing is necessary because Milosevic would not agree to negotiations, citing his refusal to accept the Rambouillet text. But did Rambouillet represent real negotiations or an ultimatum?

Some have said that the Serbian parliament “voted to be bombed” because it refused NATO troops as outlined in Rambouillet. But the New York Times has reported (April 8) that “just before the bombing, when [the Serbian parliament] rejected NATO troops in Kosovo, it also supported the idea of a United Nations force to monitor a political settlement there.” Did the administration start bombing because it rejected the idea of a UN force and insisted on a NATO one? Has that insistence blocked the recent German peace plan?

The Rambouillet text of Feb. 23, a month before NATO began bombing, contains provisions that seem to have provided for NATO to occupy the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. Excerpts from Appendix (B):

7. NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY.
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…

Analysts available to discuss this key matter include:

ROBERT HAYDEN
Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Pittsburgh

SETH ACKERMAN
A media analyst with Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting who monitors the European press
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JAN OBERG
Director of the Transnational Foundation (TFF) in Sweden
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SAM HUSSEINI
Communications Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy

JULIANNE SMITH
Senior analyst at BASIC (British American Security Information Council)
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ALISTAIR MILLAR
Program director of the Fourth Freedom Forum, an independent research organization
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020; David Zupan, (541) 484-9167