Cook pleasantly surprised by Kosovo talks
Last Updated: Tuesday, February 9, 1999 | 11:02 PM ET
CBC News
Cook predicted that the negotiations would be 75 per cent complete in the coming days. He admitted however, that the toughest hurdles were still to overcome. The negotiating parties must still work out how to install a majority Albanian police presence in Kosovo and how to scale down the Yugoslav army in the province.
Cook warned the Albanians not to be too ambitious and that there was no chance for NATO intervention without a political settlement that Belgrade had agreed to first. Analysts reading between the lines said Cook was implying that NATO intervention in Kosovo was still a long way off.
Serbs negotiators admitted Tuesday, that Belgrade might accept a United Nations led peace keeping initiative.
Serbs and ethnic Albanian delegations are in a lock-up session at Rambouillet near Paris.
On Monday, Yugoslav Serbs said the international peace plan for the troubled province of Kosovo are "horrifying because it would take Serbia out of Kosovo completely."
Under the proposal, both Serb and ethnic Albanian sides would call an immediate halt to the current fighting and Kosovo would be given a large degree of autonomy within Serbia. The situation would be reviewed in three years.
Foreign diplomats hope the Albanian desire for independence will have lessened by the end of the three-year period. However, leaders of the pro-independence Kosovo Liberation Army are demanding an independence referendum in three years -- a referendum certain to endorse independence.
Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has refused to grant autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia or independence.
Ethnic Albanians make up about 90 per cent of Kosovo's population. Serbs dominate the rest of Yugoslavia.
Many Serbs have a deep attachment to Kosovo, seeing the province as central to their nation's culture, religion and history.
