Chernomyrdin sounding pissed

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Sun May 30 01:47:17 PDT 1999


[From the Financial Times]

May 29 1999

Russians warn time running out for talks

By Our International Staff

Kosovo Victor Chernomyrdin, Russia's special Balkan envoy, met

yesterday for nine hours of talks with Slobodan Milosevic, after

declaring the Yugoslav president still the man to deal with despite

his indictment for alleged war crimes.

Mr Chernomyrdin left the talks without commenting on their substance.

But both he and Sergei Stepashin, Russia's new prime minister, made it

clear that without quick progress Russia was ready to pull out of the

peace process.

Before leaving for Belgrade, Mr Chernomyrdin said Thursday's decision

to indict Mr Milosevic by the international tribunal for the former

Yugoslavia would "complicate" the peace process, but said, "We deal

with the lawfully elected president of Yugoslavia and we will go on

dealing with him".

In addition, Mr Chernomyrdin expressed dissatisfaction with the

progress of several days of talks with Strobe Talbott, the US special

envoy, and Martti Ahtisaari, the European Union's envoy, aimed at

finding a common position.

Mr Chernomyrdin's impatience was shared in Moscow. Mr Stepashin said

that after Mr Chernomyrdin's return, "We will definitely be able to

answer whether further political dialogue is possible or whether

Yugoslavia will be sucked into a ground war."

In an extraordinary article in the Washington Post, Mr Chernomyrdin

had said that unless Nato stopped bombing Yugoslavia soon, he would

advise Russian President Boris Yeltsin to "suspend Russia's

participation in the negotiating process, put an end to all

military-technological co-operation with the US and western Europe,

put off ratification of Start-2 and use Russia's veto as the UN

debates a resolution on Yugoslavia.

"On this," he added, "we shall find understanding from great powers

such as China and India."

The former Russian prime minister added that Nato's air war against

Yugoslavia set back Russian-US relations "by several decades". The

world, he said, had "never been so close as now to the brink of

nuclear war".

Mr Talbott, US deputy secretary of state, said in Brussels he was

"appalled" by the article, but it did not reflect the mood of his

talks with Mr Chernomyrdin in Moscow this week. Mr Talbott said: "I

disagree with everything in his article, including the punctuation

points."

Nato officials acknowledged that it was now a real possibility Russia

might pull out of the talks, but there was no sign of any let-up in

its air campaign.

William Cohen, US defence secretary, said he was confident the air

campaign would restore ethnic Albanians to their homes in Kosovo

before winter.

Nato again cut electricity supplies to an estimated 2.5m Yugoslavs on

Thursday, taking the war to ordinary civilians in what has become

almost a nightly occurrence. The alliance flew a record 800 sorties.

Reporting by John Lloyd in Moscow, Neil Buckley in Brussels and

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