March 19, 1999
Belgrade - Yugoslavia has asked for an urgent meeting of the U.N. Security Council to have NATO stop threatening to bomb the country if it does not sign up to peace with Kosovo Albanians shortly, Belgrade media said Friday.
The Council's permanent members, each with veto power, are three leading NATO powers, the United States, Britain and France, but also Russia and China, which strongly oppose outside military intervention in the Kosovo conflict.
Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic, in a letter to the Security Council, urged NATO to stop threats to attack Belgrade and to withdraw around 10,000 troops already deployed in neighboring Macedonia. "I ask you to convene a session of the Security Council so that the body most responsible for peace and security could invite NATO ... to stop threats of force against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, stop a further massing of troops and armaments in the region and withdraw deployed forces and technology,'' Jovanovic wrote, according to pro-government media. "This would contribute to reducing tensions and remove (the possibility of) unforeseeable danger to peace and security in the region.''
Jovanovic sent a similar letter to Knut Vollebaek, chairman of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has some 1,400 monitors in Kosovo watching the renewed fighting between Serbian security forces and ethnic Albanian guerrillas that has wrecked an October cease-fire. The OSCE, a civilian security bloc, groups European countries and the United States and Canada. Jovanovic called on OSCE members, especially countries bordering Yugoslavia, ``to show understanding for (our) efforts to protect (our) legitimate national and state interests.''
Belgrade has rejected the internationally drafted autonomy plan for Kosovo which was signed in Paris Thursday by representatives of the Serbian province's ethnic Albanian majority. It said the plan would violate its sovereignty. "In the event of a NATO attack, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia will act in accordance with its legitimate right to self-defense,'' Jovanovic told the Security Council and OSCE.
NATO has stationed around 10,000 rapid reaction troops in Macedonia, to Kosovo's south, with the official task of whisking OSCE monitors out of the province if they come under attack. But NATO's Macedonia contingent would also serve as the vanguard of a peacekeeping force in Kosovo if Yugoslavia drops its refusal to accept one to police a peace accord. Belgrade's rejection of any NATO presence in Kosovo is the biggest obstacle to a final peace settlement.
Western diplomats said as the Kosovo Albanians signed the autonomy blueprint alone Thursday that the Serbs would probably be given until next Wednesday to endorse the text or face imminent NATO air strikes.
