Yugoslavia Foreign Relations Europe

Yugoslav air force fighter planes bombed Slovenia's main airports and border crossings Friday, killing soldiers and civilians before the Belgrade government claimed it had pounded the rebellious republic into submission and would hold its fire. A European Community delegation announced early today in Zagreb that Slovenia and a second breakaway republic, Croatia, had agreed to temporarily suspend their independence declarations. There was no official confirmation from either republic.

U.S., Russian and European officials, meeting into the night at a mountaintop mansion here overlooking the Rhine, announced Tuesday that they were moving toward a unified position on how to end 10 weeks of warfare in Yugoslavia via diplomacy. "I don't think anybody should feel euphoria here--there is no reason for that," German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder told reporters. "Nevertheless, progress has been made."

The United States and four European allies agreed Wednesday to freeze Yugoslav government funds in their banks to try to force President Slobodan Milosevic to end a growing assault on Albanian separatists in Kosovo province. The allies also held out incentives, offering to usher Milosevic's pariah nation into the United Nations, World Bank and other international bodies if he withdraws military forces from the embattled region and opens substantive peace talks with the rebels.

The conflict in Yugoslavia that British Prime Minister Tony Blair calls a progressives' war--the first run by post-World War II baby boomers--has blurred traditional lines between leftists and rightists in Europe and created some odd political bedfellows. Many European leaders came of age in 1960s protest movements against the conservative establishment and global military-industrial complex.

The 12-nation European Community has promised to consider recognizing separate Yugoslav republics after Wednesday, a move that could plunge the war-torn Balkan federation into a new phase of upheaval. Serbia and Montenegro champion Yugoslav unity so that Serbs scattered among several republics can continue to live in one country. Belgrade, backed by the federal army, has threatened retaliation against foreign powers that move to bury the corpse of Yugoslavia.

European Community foreign ministers decided Monday to recall their ambassadors from Belgrade for consultations and to seek the suspension of Yugoslavia from Europe's main security forum. The ministers also demanded the complete withdrawal of the Yugoslav federal army from Bosnia-Herzegovina or its total dissolution and the placing of its arms under international control.

Western countries should consider sending troops and arms to Yugoslavia to strike at the "cowardly" federal army that has terrorized civilians across Croatia, European Community monitors recommended in an unusually critical report disclosed here Tuesday. The call for Western military intervention came a day after the 12-nation bloc targeted Serbia and Montenegro for sanctions, saddling the two republics with the heaviest share of blame for the Yugoslav war.

The Serbian guerrilla parked his cigarette between cracked lips while he fished in a pocket for evidence he'd taken from the corpse of a Croat a few days earlier. He slapped four rifle cartridges onto the wooden bar table, rattling empty bottles and ashtrays strewn among puddles of spilled liquor. "These are hollow-point bullets, designed to rip through a man's flesh!" hissed the fighter, Nikola, his eyes blazing in anger. "The Ustasha (Croats) will stop at nothing to inflict suffering on Serbs."

The European Community, fearing the collapse of the fragile new order in Eastern Europe, met Yugoslav federal leaders Monday and agreed to send a new ministerial mission to try to broker a cease-fire in the rebel republic of Croatia. "If Yugoslavia falls into a pattern of daily killing, that would be a deep reproach and danger for all of us in Europe," British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd told reporters. Four more people were reported killed Monday in clashes in Croatia.

European diplomats continued to search Thursday for a diplomatic solution to the Yugoslav crisis but without much success. In Prague, Czechoslovakia, delegates to an emergency meeting of the 35-nation Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe agreed to send an "observer force" to Yugoslavia to try to reduce the threat of military action in the breakaway republics of Slovenia and Croatia.

Eight years ago, when the United States led an allied invasion to expel Iraqi President Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait, hundreds of thousands of pacifists took to the streets of Western Europe in protest, some of them shouting, "No blood for oil!" Today's war is closer to home, but Europe's streets are quieter.

The United States and four European allies agreed Wednesday to freeze Yugoslav government funds in their banks to try to force President Slobodan Milosevic to end a growing assault on Albanian separatists in Kosovo province. The allies also held out incentives, offering to usher Milosevic's pariah nation into the United Nations, World Bank and other international bodies if he withdraws military forces from the embattled region and opens substantive peace talks with the rebels.

The major Western powers launched a bid Tuesday to strip Serbian-dominated Yugoslavia of its voting rights in the United Nations in retaliation for its prosecution of the war against Bosnia-Herzegovina. Led by Britain, delegates from the 12-nation European Community began sounding out members of the powerful U.N. Security Council on Tuesday about the possibility of pushing through a formal resolution on the question sometime this week.

The United States and three West European allies reached agreement Thursday on a stiff, punitive Security Council resolution that would impose an immediate oil embargo on Serbia. Although Russia and China evidently have some reservations, most analysts expect the resolution to win final approval from the 15-member Security Council within the next few days. The tough U.N.

Mortars fired on a Sarajevo market from the Serb-controlled hills surrounding the Bosnian city killed at least 20 people and injured 70 Wednesday, shattering hopes that Serbian aggression had been curbed by the threat of international sanctions. The midmorning attack on the central Vase Miskina market occurred as the victims of a two-month siege of Bosnia-Herzegovina braved a day out of bunkers and hide-outs to stock up on food during a cease-fire arranged by Russian Foreign Minister Andrei V.

Overwhelmed by ethnic bloodshed that has raged out of control, the European Community pulled the last of its monitors out of Bosnia-Herzegovina on Tuesday, relief workers indicated that they may soon give up as well and the United States recalled its ambassador from Belgrade. The measures were aimed both at punishing the Serb-controlled remains of Yugoslavia for ravaging Bosnia and at pressuring the aggressors to abide by international convention.

Several Western European nations announced Monday that they are ready to send warships to Yugoslavia, if needed, to establish a "humanitarian corridor" to evacuate refugees from the war-torn country. "It is not a question of military intervention but of humanitarian measures with the possibility that those participating would defend themselves," said German Foreign Minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, chairman of the nine-nation Western European Union.

A fighter jet of the Yugoslav army blasted a European Community helicopter out of the sky over Croatia on Tuesday, killing all five cease-fire monitors on board and further jeopardizing foreign efforts to end Yugoslavia's civil war. The attack, for which the Serbian-led federal Defense Ministry in Belgrade expressed "deep regret," shattered the relative peace that had reigned in Croatia since a 15th truce took effect Friday.

European Community foreign ministers decided Monday to recall their ambassadors from Belgrade for consultations and to seek the suspension of Yugoslavia from Europe's main security forum. The ministers also demanded the complete withdrawal of the Yugoslav federal army from Bosnia-Herzegovina or its total dissolution and the placing of its arms under international control.

The 12-nation European Community has promised to consider recognizing separate Yugoslav republics after Wednesday, a move that could plunge the war-torn Balkan federation into a new phase of upheaval. Serbia and Montenegro champion Yugoslav unity so that Serbs scattered among several republics can continue to live in one country. Belgrade, backed by the federal army, has threatened retaliation against foreign powers that move to bury the corpse of Yugoslavia.