Talks on Serb withdrawal from Kosovo continue

Before the talks got under way, NATO officials said they expected an agreement by the end of the meeting.

"We fully expect the document to be signed tonight," a NATO public affairs officer told CNN.

Kosovo peace resolution goes to U.N. Security Council

The talks began hours after foreign ministers of the world's seven major industrialized nations and Russia approved a draft resolution aimed at ending the fighting in Kosovo and sent it to the U.N. Security Council in New York.

NATO "warmly welcomed" the agreement, and said the next steps were up to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

"Of course it is up to President Milosevic to demonstrate through his actions that he is going to keep the commitments that he has made," said NATO spokesman Jamie Shea in Brussels. He has often in the past preferred to slow things down. Let him now speed things up."

NATO, Shea said, will keep up its bombing campaign until Milosevic acts.

At the Pentagon, spokesman Ken Bacon said there are signs Serb troops are making preparations to withdraw, including the mobilizing of vehicles and other means to transport troops from the region.

"We've certainly seen preparations for moving out," Bacon told reporters.

However, NATO spokesman Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz said that the Serbs were in fact reinforcing positions in western Kosovo, sending additional tanks toward the Albanian border where the Yugoslav army is fighting ethnic Albanian rebels.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said the resolution meets all of NATO's demands for troop withdrawal.

Cook said the resolution "is good for the refugees" as well as for peace throughout the region.

NATO had refused to push the resolution or stop its 75-day bombing campaign against Yugoslavia without a verifiable withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo.

But Yugoslavia refused to withdraw without a U.N. resolution supporting the peace plan agreed to earlier by Belgrade.

Terms of the agreement reached last week with Milosevic by Russian mediator Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari will be annexed to the resolution.

Ministers finalize sequence of events

Tuesday's agreement set a sequence for implementing the steps toward peace, Cook said -- one that "enables us to escape from the stalemate that we had on which way to make forward on the peace track."

The council, Cook said, will "stop just short of adoption" of the resolution to allow troop withdrawal to begin.

Once that movement is verified, the council will "then complete the formality of adopting the resolution," followed by the deployment of an international peacekeeping force to ensure the safe return of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian refugees to their homes.

Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov gave his country's tacit approval to the text of the resolution, although his support came with a caveat.

"This sort of document hardly ever satisfies those who take part in the negotiations," he said. "The important part is that this document should allow us to achieve the objective that we have, which is to stop the war in the Balkans. If we can accomplish that, then we can be satisfied with the resolution."

Russian President Boris Yeltsin "expressed satisfaction" with the draft in a phone conversation with U.S. President Bill Clinton, according to a Kremlin statement. But Yeltsin urged Clinton to "to take urgent measures" to bring about an end to NATO's bombing.

Clinton said in Washington that he expected Russia to participate in the international peacekeeping force, but not under NATO command. Russia is not a NATO member.

He said he believed Russia's role would be similar to its role in Bosnia.

"It worked there," he said.

Although the resolution was introduced Tuesday, its quick passage was not assured. China, which has veto power on the council, indicated some problems with the timing of the resolution. Ahtisaari was in Beijing Tuesday to talk with Chinese President Jiang Zemin about the agreement.

Albright: 'No way' Serbs will control Kosovo borders

Earlier Tuesday, Yugoslavia threw a new wrinkle into the peace process when it announced it intended to control its borders and determine which refugees were allowed to enter the country. But U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said that would not happen. ( 400 K/35 sec. AIFF or WAV sound)

"The Serbs will in no way be able to control who goes back into Kosovo," she said. "Those people whose identification papers were removed have in fact been reissued identification papers by UNHCR (U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees)."

Albright allowed that "there may be a few Serbs at the border," but only in an observational capacity.

Albright also said unequivocally that NATO would be at the core of the Kosovo peacekeeping force, another point of contention between Western officials and their Yugoslav and Russian counterparts.

"It is in the appendix to this resolution that it has NATO at the core and NATO will be the military leader," she said.

Ivanov said a final decision on Russia's participation in the peacekeeping force would be made later.

Bombs fall over Yugoslavia

While the diplomats worked in Germany, NATO warplanes struck scores of targets across Yugoslavia, responding loudly to Milosevic's reluctance in implementing the peace deal he accepted last Thursday.

For the first time since March, CNN was allowed Tuesday to shoot footage of NATO airstrike damage in Kosovo

NATO planes flew 658 sorties over Yugoslavia late Monday and early Tuesday, including 222 strikes sorties. NATO said its planes struck airfields at Batajnica and Sjenica; air defense early- warning sites at Kapaonik; ammunition storage facilities at Podgorje, Cuprija and Svetozarevo; a training area at Cuprija; and an oil storage site at Novi Sad.

Gen. Charles Guthrie, Britain's chief of defense staff, said that NATO forces concentrated much of their power on Serb forces operating on the ground in Kosovo, striking 20 artillery pieces, 19 armored vehicles, six tanks and nine mortars.

NATO sources also said Tuesday that its B-52 bombers had dropped gravity bombs on Serb troop concentrations in the Mount Pastrik area along the Kosovo-Albanian border.

Yugoslav forces are battling rebels from the Kosovo Liberation Army in Kosovo. KLA troops want independence for the Serbian province; Yugoslavia wants to keep the province within its realm.

Talks over implementing a Yugoslav troop withdrawal broke up Monday when Yugoslav generals and NATO officials could not reach an agreement. The continued operation of the KLA was one sore point for the Yugoslavs. But on Tuesday, KLA spokesman Hasim Thaci said the rebel group would steer clear of retreating forces.

"KLA very soon will declare that it will refrain from attacking any retreating Serb forces, and they have said before and very soon they will declare that they will not attack militarily any retreating Serb forces." Thaci told CNN.

Moscow Bureau Chief Jill Dougherty, Brussels Bureau Chief Patricia Kelley
and Correspondents Andrea Koppel and Walter Rodgers contributed to this report.

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