World

U.S. Envoy Meets Kostunica

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 12, 2000 / 4:42 PM EDT / CBS

Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, who met Thursday with a senior American envoy, said he was ready to resume diplomatic relations with the United States.

It was the first high-level contact between the two governments since Belgrade broke relations with the United States last year on the eve of the NATO bombing campaign.

The meeting between Kostunica and James C. O'Brien, President Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, followed welcome news from Washington for the moribund Yugoslav economy. President Clinton announced he was lifting an oil embargo and a flight ban on Yugoslavia imposed in 1998 after former President Slobodan Milosevic launched a crackdown on Kosovo Albanians.

"President Kostunica agreed to work with our Congress and our legislators, and to work through some technical issues, with an aim to establishing diplomatic relations," O'Brien told reporters after the meeting.

Kostunica spoke of the rupture between Yugoslavia and the United States, a country he has frequently criticized for interfering in the internal affairs of his country.

"After this meeting we hope we will bridge that gap and our relations will normalize," he said.

Kostunica also met with Italian Premier Giuliano Amato, the first head of government to travel to Belgrade since Kostunica took office Saturday.

"The factors that distanced Yugoslavia from a democratic society are now gone," Amato said after the meeting. "This enables us to work as friends on the task of reintegrating Yugoslavia into international institutions."

Allies of Kostunica and the ousted Slobodan Milosevic are locked in a power struggle as Kostunica seeks to dismantle the last vestiges of Milosevic's authoritarian regime and open ties to the West, which will be a key factor in revitalizing the moribund Yugoslav economy.

The lifting of the oil embargo will help relieve terrible shortages of fuel. However, "the embargo has been leaking for some time," said Leo Drollas, chief economist at the Center for Global Energy Studies in London.

The head of Croatia's Adriatic oil pipeline operator, JANAF, Ante Cicin Sain, said the company could begin supplying oil to Yugoslav refineries soon.

In addition to economic support, the West also moved to provide Kostunica with a political boost.

"We also talked about relations between our two countries," O'Brien said after meeting Kostunica. "I think our open and warm discussions of the issues that have intruded on our relationship set a good tone."