President Offers Troops To Kosovo
President Clinton is offering to commit American ground troops to a NATO peacekeeping force in Kosovo, if Serbs and ethnic Albanians overcome steep differences and reach a political settlement.
"Bosnia taught us a lesson. In this volatile region, violence we fail to oppose leads to even greater violence we will have to oppose later at greater cost," the president said in his weekly radio address from the Oval Office.
Mr. Clinton said any final decision depends on whether Yugoslavia's Serbs and the Kosovo Albanians reach a firm peace agreement. If they do, he says U.S. troops might make up about 15 percent of a NATO-led force. That would mean just shy of 4,000 Americans.
The decision was also hinted at Friday night by Sen. John Warner, R-Va., chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Mr. Clinton says having U.S. troops on the ground can give both sides in Kosovo the confidence that the peace will last. And, he says without American action now, the fighting might spill into surrounding countries.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, meanwhile, was heading for Paris Saturday to assess peace talks between the two warring sides. The parties have an informal deadline of Feb. 20 for reaching an accord.
Officials said it was not a foregone conclusion an agreement would be reached despite the threat of NATO military intervention.
There are deep divisions between the Serbs and Kosovo Albanians on almost all important issues, mediators said Friday. "We are going to have to make a lot of progress in the days ahead," said U.S. envoy Christopher Hill, the chief mediator.
More than 2,000 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes in clashes in Kosovo between ethnic Albanian separatists and Serbian security forces.
Britain and France are serving as co-hosts for the talks in Rambouillet, France. Albright will meet with Hill, the U.S. ambassador to Macedonia, and "make her own, on-the-ground assessment," the State Department said Friday.
A decision is due this weekend on whether to extend negotiations into a second week. That would depend on how much progress the two sides were making on a self-rule plan for the Serbian province.
The United States does not support independence for Kosovo, but is insisting any settlement provide maximum self-rule for a three-year trial period.
The Marines, from the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit based at Camp Lejeune, N.C., are already deployed near Kosovo as part of an amphibious ready group in the Mediterranean.
Army soldiers and heavy equipment, which sometimes take weeks to deploy, would follow Marines to Kosovo as part of a long-term NATO peacekeeping operation, said a Pentagon official, speaking on condition of anonymity. Army troops could come from Europe, Asia or U.S. bases, depending on what type of units are needed.