(26 May 1999) Russian/Eng/Nat
Top level talks continued in Moscow on Wednesday as American, Russian and Finnish envoys attempted to thrash out a compromise to end the Kosovo conflict.
U-S Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott, former Russian Premier Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari were meeting amid tight security at a government residence outside Moscow.
Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari are expected to fly to Belgrade on Thursday to put their proposals to Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic.
American envoy Strobe Talbott met Russia's foreign minister Igor Ivanov for the second time in less than a week in Moscow on Wednesday.
The two seemed to be getting down to business in the search for a solution to the Balkan war.
Since NATO airstrikes began against Yugoslavia on March 24, Russia, and particularly Ivanov, have been severely critical of the Western alliance, with their language harking back to the Cold War.
Today it was all smiles.
Speaking afterwards, Talbott seemed to hint at compromise.
NATO has insisted on its troops being at the core of any possible peacekeeping force in Kosovo.
The alliance wants the Russians on board to satisfy the Serbs.
Now Talbott seemed to be saying there may be even room for a symbolic Serb military presence, a condition Belgrade insists on before there can be any solution.
SOUNDBITE: (English)
"Now, as Secretary Albright and others have said, once there have been complete withdrawals the international community might consider permitting the return of some official Yugoslav personnel to perform very carefully and supervised functions within Kosovo."
SUPER CAPTION: Strobe Talbott, US Deputy Secretary of State
Ivanov reiterated Russia's demand that NATO end its bombing immediately and warned of a health catastrophe in the troubled Yugoslav province.
A report in the London-based "Guardian" newspaper on Wednesday suggested a possible peace plan might involve the deployment of Russian troops in the northern Serb-dominated part of Kosovo, and NATO troops in the Albanian-dominated south.
Russians, and possibly some Serb units, could be in place in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, the newspaper went on to say.
But Ivanov denied there was any plan to split Kosovo into occupied sectors.
SOUNDBITE: (Russian)
"There is no question of any demarcation at the moment. The question now is about halting the bombing and the deployment of an international presence. Anything else is talking in the wrong directions. No one is planning to divide up anything. There are documents, where it is written the Kosovo problem has to be solved in the framework of the territorial integrity and sovereignty of Yugoslavia. Anything else is just inventions with no basis."
SUPER CAPTION: Igor Ivanov, Russian Foreign Minister
Meanwhile, Finland's president Martti Ahtisaari flew in to Moscow to join in the diplomatic push.
Ahtisaari, as the next head of the European Union's rotating presidency, is the designated E-U mediator on the Kosovo conflict.
He took part in trilateral talks with Talbott and Russia's Kosovo envoy in Moscow last week, when the three failed to come up with a breakthrough.
On Wednesday he met Russia's new prime minister Sergei Stepashin.
The premier told Ahtisaari the Balkan problem was a "serious burden".
It was only early evening Moscow time before the three envoys finally met at a government country house just outside Moscow.
Under heavy guard, the talks got underway.
The talks are expected to continue late into the night.
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