The Canadian Press Wednesday, April 14,
1999
GERMANY PROPOSES PLAN FOR PEACE IN KOSOVO BASED ON USE OF U.N. FORCES
White House reiterates U.S. insistence that peacekeeping
forces in Kosovo be under NATO command.
BELGRADE (CP) — Yugoslavia said Wednesday that a convoy
of ethnic Albanian refugees were bombed by NATO planes in
Kosovo, killing 70 people and injuring 31others. NATO said its
aircraft carried out attacks in Kosovo. "The pilots state they at-
tacked only military vehicles," NATO said in a statement.
"We cannot confirm press reports alleging that these attacks
may have caused civilian casualties."
Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesman Nebojsa Vujevic de-
nounced the strike as a "crime against humanity."
"The bodies are literally littered on the highway," he said.
While there was no independent confirmation, if the account
were true, it would mark by far the largest single loss of civilian
life reported during the three-week-old NATO bombing campaign.
This happened the same day Germany proposed a new plan for
peace in the troubled province. But reports of refugee casualties
from the Kosovo convoy stole much of the media attention.
Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said NATO was investi-
gating but there was no indication its planes hit civilians.
Bacon said Gen. Wesley Clark, one of NATO’s top command-
ers, told him in a telephone conversation on Wednesday that he
had received "verbal reports of the possibility" that after military
vehicles in the refugee convoy were hit, "military people got out
and . . . began to attack civilians in the middle of the convoy."
"We don’t know what the full facts are," Bacon said.
Earlier, Bacon said UN relief workers had reported to NATO
that refugees entering Albania had claimed refugee convoys were
being attacked by Yugoslav planes and helicopters.
Video taken under Serb control showed smashed bodies scat-
tered along a roadway, damaged farm vehicles and bombed-out
farm buildings nearby. People in rough peasant clothing, some
with blood streaming down their faces, loaded bodies of the dead
and wounded into trunks of cars or wheelbarrows to transport
them.
Old men and women wept by the roadside. A young boy sat on
a trailer rig, sobbing.
Kosovo’s Serb-run Media Centre reported 70 ethnic Albanians
died in two NATO strikes on refugee convoys.
"In the village of Meja, 64 people were killed and 20 wounded
including three Serb policemen who were escorting the convoy," a
media centre official said by telephone from the Kosovo regional
capital, Pristina.
"In the village of Zrze, six people were killed and 11
wounded," he said.
The Media Centre said the NATO attacks were on columns of
ethnic Albanian refugees, one of them containing several thousand
people on tractors and in cars. It said the three wounded police-
men had also died.
Meanwhile, in a drive to bring peace to Kosovo, Germany un-
veiled a plan calling for a one-day suspension of air strikes if
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic begins withdrawing
troops from the province.
"If there is an agreement, then there will be a pause while Mi-
losevic withdraws his troops," Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Ax-
worthy said in Ottawa.
NATO called the German plan a "food-for-thought paper," but
did not immediately endorse it.
Spokesman Jamie Shea said it was a "very useful and necessary
contribution" to the debate on how to get Milosevic to back down.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, current president of
the 15-country European Union, convened a special EU summit
Wednesday evening to discuss the peace plan and to meet with UN
Secretary General Kofi Annan.
Alliance officials feel the air campaign has begun to stagger
Milosevic and are hesitant to ease up and give him a chance to re-
cuperate.
The proposals call for a UN military force to move in as
Yugoslav army and special police forces withdraw. That would be
followed by a return of the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Alba-
nian refugees who have fled to Albania and Macedonia and an in-
terim UN administration of Kosovo.
Axworthy said Canada helped prepare the plan last weekend. It
has yet to be sold to Russia.
"We certainly have to seek out the agreement of Russia to be
one of the participants and clearly to get the agreement of Mr.
Milosevic to the conditions that were set out."
German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer said Russia had
"almost fully agreed" to the plan.
But he said Russia still had concerns over the makeup of an
international peacekeeping force for Kosovo, for which Germany
is trying to win Moscow’s consent to a UN mandate.
In a gesture to Russia, the German plan does not insist on a
NATO peacekeeping force, rather it suggests a "robust" contin-
gent of international troops under a single commander.
Russia and China have veto power in the UN Security Council
and are seen as potential stumbling blocks to efforts to enlist the
UN against Milosevic.
Axworthy said he will discuss the German plan with Chinese
Premier Zhu Ronji, who is to arrive in Ottawa Thursday to begin a
week-long Canadian visit.
White House spokesman Joe Lockhart reiterated the U.S. in-
sistence that any peacekeeping force for Kosovo be under NATO
command.
NATO has intensified air raids this week and asked for an ex-
tra 300 aircraft from the United States to bring its air armada up to
some 1,100 planes.
Canadian military planners were considering a NATO request
for more planes as the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia en-
tered its fourth week Wednesday.
"Additional aircraft are need because we want to intensify this
campaign," Defence Minister Art Eggleton said in Ottawa.
"Additional aircraft are being provided by many countries and
Canada is also considering it."
In Macedonia, some 1,200 ethnic Albanians were reported to
have fled the fighting in Kosovo, indicating Belgrade had opened a
small escape corridor for refugees still trapped in the region.
