Bill Clinton, Expressed satisfaction with Helsinki Agreement
Sergei Stepashin, Will seek financial aid for Russia today
At the G 8 summit in Cologne a statement has been drafted reaffirming NATO's policy that Yugoslavia will get no international aid for reconstruction while President Slobodan Milosevic remains in power. Russia is reported to be unhappy with the statement.
Early this morning, leaders of the world's seven richest powers began a second day of talks which are expected to focus on improving relations with Russia and the rebuilding of the Balkans. As the talks took place, up to 70,000 people formed a human chain around the centre of the city, to demand the writing off of the debt of the world's poorest nations.
Links between Moscow and the West had been badly strained by the war over Kosovo, but it is hoped that they will improve after last night's agreement between US and Russian negotiators on Russia's role in the peacekeeping force in the province. The Russian prime minister, Sergei Stepashin, who is also at the G8 talks, is expected to seek further credits to shore up his country's economy.
The agreement came after three days of talks in Helsinki and ended the tense standoff which began a week ago when two hundred Russian troops surprised NATO by taking over Pristina airport. President Clinton said that he was very pleased with the deal.
It is understood that the deal provides for the participation of about 3,000 Russian troops who will serve along side NATO forces in zones controlled by the United States, Germany and France. Russia had previously insisted on having its own zone in Kosovo, but this was rejected by NATO. Russia and NATO will also share control of the airport in the provincial capital, Pristina. Russian forces will remain under Russian control within KFOR command.
NATO has said that Serbian forces have completed the second phase of their withdrawal from Kosovo. The Serbs were due to pull out of the east and the centre of the province by midnight last night following their withdrawal from the south earlier this week. A NATO spokesman in the Kosovan capital, Pristina, confirmed that the latest deadline had been met. There are now said to be only 5,000 Serb troops in Kosovo, and they are due to leave by tomrrow night under a military agreement signed ten days ago.
The international peacekeeping force is said to be close to agreement with the Kosovo Liberation Army on a new role for the guerrilla fighters after the Serbian military withdrawal is completed. The KLA says that it wants to be transformed into a National Guard organisation as well as contributing to a new police force made up of both Kosovo Serbs and Albanians.
Meanwhile, there is growing evidence in southern Kosovo that ethnic Albanians are starting to take mass revenge on the Serb population, thousands of whom have fled the province in the past few days. In the latest incident, a number of Serb owned houses in a village near the town of Prizren have been burned to the ground by ethnic Albanians. Milovan Bojic, the deputy prime minister of Serbia, has urged Serbs who fled the province to return within the next 48 hours, saying that afterwards it would be more difficult to do so. He said that the institutions in Kosovo were still working and the international peacekeeping force had guaranteed the safety of all regardless of their nationality.
