Russian troops enter Yugoslavia
Copyright © 1999 Nando Media
Copyright © 1999Reuters News Service
By DEBORAH CHARLES
BELGRADE (June 11, 1999 7:33 a.m. EDT http://www.nandotimes.com) - A
first group of Russian troops entered Yugoslavia on Friday morning,
eyewitnesses said, crossing into Serbia from Bosnia en route to Kosovo
to fill a vacuum created by withdrawing Yugoslav forces. NATO troops
were still on their way.
The Russians were the first foreign troops to arrive in Yugoslavia
after the signature of an international peace deal under which NATO
ended its 11-week bombing campaign Thursday.
Reuters cameraman Fedja Gulovic saw about 50 Russian vehicles,
including 20-30 heavily armed armored personnel carriers, on the road
between the Bosnian border and Belgrade.
Most of the vehicles were marked "KFOR" -- the abbreviation for the
international Kosovo peacekeeping force which will eventually number
about 50,000.
Gulovic also saw escort vehicles but not many troops in the convoy,
which crossed into Serbia around mid-morning.
In an article datelined at the Bosnian-Yugoslav border, the
independent news agency Beta said the Russian convoy entered
Yugoslavia at around 10:30 a.m., crossing at Pavlovic Cuprija near the
Bosnian town of Bijeljina.
Beta said they would go through Belgrade and then head south to
Kosovo, though their final destination was not yet known.
The official news agency Tanjug said the convoy was greeted after
crossing the border by representatives of the Yugoslav government and
army.
The Russians' entry came as a surprise to NATO nations, which were
still trying to coordinate their own, much-heralded entry into Kosovo,
and to the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) in Bosnia.
The Russian troops are part of a brigade based in the Bosnian Serb
town of Ugljevik, some 15 miles from the border with Yugoslavia, which
is not under the direct command of SFOR.
A Russian Defense Ministry spokesman said earlier in Moscow that
preparations had begun for sending troops to Kosovo but he ruled out
any swift deployment.
NATO said from Macedonia later that a token force of 100 Russian
troops had entered to get their "feet on the ground first."
U.S. and Russian officials continued to haggle in Moscow over the
nature of Russian participation in the NATO-led international security
force in Kosovo. U.S. envoy Strobe Talbott was taking part in
discussions there.
Moscow, which has traditionally close ties with fellow Slavic Serbia,
insists that its troops should be in control of a sector of the
province similar to those allotted by NATO to the British, U.S.,
German, French and Italian contingents in KFOR.
But NATO says this would be tantamount to partition of Kosovo.
The sudden entry of the Russians into Yugoslavia evoked memories of
the last weeks of World War II, when Russian and Western troops raced
each other into Germany from opposite directions to capture as much
territory as possible before the war ended.
They eventually met up on the Elbe River, which became the borderline
between the Soviet and Western zones of occupied Germany and in 1949
the border between communist East Germany and capitalist West Germany.
The allies carved up Berlin, which lay in the Soviet occupied zone,
into Soviet, American, British and French sectors. In 1948, the Soviet
Union tried to force West Berlin into submission by blockading transit
routes into the city. The Americans responded by staging a Berlin
airlift to keep the city resupplied for 11 months until Moscow backed
down.
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Copyright © 1999 Nando Media