NATO's Campaign:
Serb offensive against the KLA in the southwest of the province is giving NATO its best opportunity so far to destroy Yugoslav military equipment, military spokesman Gen Walter Jertz claims. He says Serb tanks and armoured vehicles have come out of camouflaged positions around Mount Pastrik near the Albanian border to attack the KLA, also known as the UCK. Although denying "direct" links between the KLA and NATO, he concedes: "Our assessment is that the current Serbian counteroffensive around Mount Pastrik offers the best opportunity so far in the air campaign to hit Serb forces hard."
Jertz also says KLA activity across the rest of the country has increased as Serb flanks are exposed by their counteroffensive.
He admits, however, that NATO planes have "unintentionally" dropped several bombs on the Albanian side of the border during Tuesday's operations.
And . . .
Kofi Annan is to meet Pope John Paul II at the Vatican tomorrow to discuss possible solutions to the Kosovo crisis.
Diplomacy:
Air raid sirens sound in Belgrade as EU and Russian envoys, Martti Ahtisaari (right) and Viktor Chernomyrdin, are expected in Yugoslav capital to present joint peace plan hammered out in Bonn with US Deputy Secretary of State, , Strobe Talbott. They arrive, eventually, just after 5 p.m. to be greeted by the Yugoslav Foreign Minister, Zivadin Jovanovic, the Serbian Prime Minister, Mirko Marjanovic, and Foreign Ministry spokesman, Nebojsa Vujovic. The plan calls for a ceasefire, the withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and the return of the refugees, as well as Belgrade's acceptance of an international peacekeeping force with NATO at its core and autonomy for the province.
Washington says the agreement reached between NATO and Russia on Kosovo is solid and that a resolution to the crisis is now entirely in Belgrade's hands. "Sufficient agreement was reached to justify a joint trip by Ahtisaari and Chernomyrdin," says the US State Department spokesman, James Rubin: "They will be reading from the same script."
Rubin terms the return of the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian Kosovan refugees "the mother of all conditions" and confirms that all of NATO's original demands for a halt in the ongoing air campaign have withstood lengthy negotiations between Chernomyrdin, Ahtisaari and Talbott. "The open question is, can Russia find a way to participate in Kfor," says Rubin, noting that Ahtisaari, who does not represent a NATO country, has made it clear that Finnish troops will participate in a peacekeeping force only under NATO command.
Juridical:
The International Court of Justice rejects a Yugoslav petition to end NATO air strikes against Serbian targets. Although it is "profoundly concerned" at the use of force in Yugoslavia, which raises "very serious issues of international law", the court says it is not competent to judge most of the case. The judges say they lack "prima facie jurisdiction" to issue provisional orders against eight NATO countries to end the air strikes. Each country is treated as a separate case, in English alphabetical order.
China, which crucially wields a permanent veto at the UN Security Council, has branded the Hague-based UN war crimes tribunal a "political tool" of NATO because of its assertion that President Slobodan Milosevic was authorising atrocities in Kosovo. The tribunal should "uphold the legal dignity and the independence and fairness of judicial authority", the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhu Bangzao, told journalists: It should "not willingly act as a political tool" of a few NATO nations led by the United States, Zhu argued, adding that the exodus of Albanian refugees began only after the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. The indictment of Milosevic, he said, was "carefully plotted" and aimed at legalising NATO's "war of aggression" against a sovereign state.
Quote of the Day:
"The training and the equipment of the pilots involved in NATO operations over Kosovo is second to none, but as any pilot will be able to tell you these things can and will happen." NATO military spokesman Gen Walter Jertz.