FL-2017-13804 B-00002620736 UNCLASSIFIED 05 09 2024 Friday May 21 1999 5 a m Moscow time 9 p m DC time 5 20 99 MEMORANDUM TO SEC ALBRIGHT APNSA BERGER OVP FUERTH FROM STROBE TALBOTT TRIP REPORT No 2 FROM Moscow Ahtisaari Chemomyrdin and I have agreed that we've made enough progress on Hammer- -Anvil to justify a follow-up meeting here in Moscow next Wednesday Depending on how that goes it's probable the two of them would travel to Belgrade the next day Thursday May 27 The purpose would be to see if they can lock in and improve upon what Chemo says he got from Milosevic Wednesday and more important to give us a fresh set of eyes on the target is Milosevic really ready to make peace on NATO's terms as Chemomyrdin keeps saying Our six hours of talks on the birch forested premises of Stalin's dacha produced agreement-what I'd call grudging acceptance on Chemomyrdin's part - that NATO must be at the core of KFOR Moreover Chemomyrdin claims that he argued for something like this arrangement strenuously with Milosevic in Belgrade yesterday and that Milosevic accepts that NATO will have to be on the ground in Kosovo That said it is not at all clear that the Russian government - and the Russian military -will sign up to the Alliance's definition of and requirements for NATO-at-the-core much less that Milosevic will agree to it In his seven hours of talks with Milosevic in Belgrade Chemomyrdin probably extracted more of an indication than he's letting on to us about what Milosevic will settle for and he is probably calibrating the welcome but highly imprecise Russian change of position accordingly But we still have what I keep calling ''the empty chair problem I got up at one point during the meeting and brought an empty chair to the table to dramatize the missing man I kept pointing to the chair and saying Yeah great but what about that guy Will he say 'yes' to what we're agreeing to We probably won't have much more of an answer on that crucial subject for the next six days before Chemo and Ahtisaari take their trip Meanwhile even as we continue to communicate directly with Milosevic in our own way through the air strikes we've got to concentrate on clarifying and solidifying our own diplomatic positions To that end Doc Foglesong and I have told Ahtisaari and Chemomyrdin that we will work intensively within the USG and at NATO in the coming days so that when we come back here next Tuesday morning we'll be in a position to take the discussion of what we mean by NATO-at-the-core down to the next level of specifics Doc is working his own channels back to DoD right l FL-2017-13804 B-00002620736 U NC LASS IFl ED 05 09 2024 now I have talked briefly to Javier Solana and told him that we're going to need to work hard in SHAPE on this subject Chemomyrdin has agreed to our proposal that Doc and George Casey be accompanied next week by one or two U S officers currently attached to SHAPE Javier was great on this score and will continue to be instrumental in providing both support and cover within the Alliance but we've got to do some quick deft work with the Quad to get them on board the contents of the Ahtisaari-Chemomyrdin package without opening it up to a frenzy ofEuromicro-management Our team will give you more on this subject tomorrow which is actually today- anyway Friday On a cautionary note when Doc George and I were here last week they ran into a stone wall with Gen Ivashov and other Russian military who refused to discuss NATO-at-the-core in the absence of political instructions from on high to do so Chemomyrdin promised us he'd get those instructions to the Russian military We'll see We'll have a first hint of his willingness and ability to follow through on that during Doc's scheduled session with Ivashov tomorrow On withdrawals returns the Russians are still fighting hard for an outcome that attaches a number to the four categories of Yugoslav personnel we're prepared to allow back into Kosovo and then convert that number into a ceiling on the number that can stay especially MUP We were adamant that all means all and that only after total withdrawal can some a small but unspecified nwnber come back and then only under the control of the SFOR commander Part of our job in coming days is to prepare for another knock-down-dragout on this critical issue A third issue is the nature of a UN umbrella The Russians want one that to our ears sounds perilously close to UN political control we said so and made clear that was a non-starter We've got further work to do with our Allies on this as well More on that below when I report on my earlier stops especially Paris earlier today And then there's a fourth issue the bombing The dreaded p -word did not come up in any context other than the one that NATO has stipulated the Alliance will suspend air strikes when by its own lights Milosevic has accepted our five conditions and we've seen the beginning of withdrawals The Russians seem to accept the fact that while the diplomacy continues including perhaps more Chemo trips to Belgrade so will the bombing Ahtisaari understands that will be the case if he goes along • Chubais told you Mme Secretary and me on Sunday that Ivashov would be fired No hint of that here tonight 2 FL-2017-13804 B-00002620736 UNCLASSIFIED 05 09 2024 However both men are interested in whether the Alliance will take care not to endanger their own safety and in Chemo's case he is pressing hard for NATO at least not to intensify bombing in the immediate wake of his trip He claims that in the case of all three of his trips he's gone he's left and the strikes have intensified He says the Yugoslavs have noticed are wondering if there's a causal connection and are questioning whether it's a good idea to invite him back Doc will be working this issue through his channels Given what he regarded as the significant Russian movement on a NATOat-the-core KFOR plus the hint of some movement in Belgrade Ahtisaari is prepared to return here on Wednesday with a default position in favor of going to see Slobo the next day But that's only if what's happened in the intervening days confirms Chemo's repeated statements that Russia is now prepared to help bring about such a force rather than doing everything it can to block it or UNPROFORize it If Ahtisaari does decide next Wednesday to go ahead with the trip on Thursday he will do so only after first reiterating and establishing with Chemomyrdin happy coincidence five conditions that he laid out earlier tonight 1 While they will divide their speaking parts into the general principles for suspension of hostilities Chemomyrdin's affirmation of the G-8 principles perhaps as amended in our direction in NATO-at-the-core and the essential specifics Ahtisaari's layout of the elaboration of conditions there must be in advance of their trip total clarity between them on the contents and meaning of the entire package 2 They must understand in advance that the only circumstance in which NATO will suspend military action would be Milosevic's total and unambiguous acceptance of the package plus verifiable beginning of withdrawal 3 They must understand in advance that NATO reserves exclusively to itself the decision on what constitutes acceptance on Milosevic's part- and what constitutes adequate verification of withdrawal although we've indicated we're open to ideas about how Russia might participate in verification In other words we and only we will decide what we hear to be a yes and any 1orm of yes b ut equa ls no 4 They must understand in advance that neither is asking for nor receiving authority to negotiate on behalf of NATO 5 They must promise in advance that neither will- in Belgrade or afterward no matter what the outcome - contradict each other or blame each other for the consequences ofMilosevic's refusal to accept- i e continuation of bombing For this approach to accomplish what the Russians most want- a suspension of bombing-there can't be any ambiguity imprecision or lacunae about the essential specifics that Ahtisaari would lay out to Milosevic We 3 FL-2017-13804 B-00002620736 UNCLASSIFIED 05 09 2024 know how Milosevic will try to exploit any such loopholes and we don't want Chernomyrdin - in what he says doesn't say or says afterward - to give aid and comfort to our enemy in this regard The U S role - including my return to Europe next week-will be to help the two gentlemen in that regard It was in that spirit that we saw fit to commit to paper the key points in Helsinki and that document remains as we've told Cherno a canonical text from our standpoint Ahtisaari has referred to NATO's five conditions plus the five conditions he's setting for joining Cherno as The Ten Commandments What matters of course - and what we must now test - is whether the Russian government as whole really does understand as Cherno has said he understands that KFOR has got to be in Ahtisaari's phrase hard-core NATO As we've speculated Yeltsin has ordered Cherno to get Kosovo fixed- and that means the bombing stopped- almost no matter what it takes even if that means Russia as part of a hard-core NATO KFOR It will be interesting in several hours for me to meet with Ivanov Will he be up on what transpired earlier tonight and supportive of it Or will he react the way he did to Helsinki On Wednesday Mme Secretary Ivanov told you that he regarded our Helsinki paper as a step backward from the Bonn G-8 statement It is of course exactly the opposite it makes clear how we can move forward from Bonn rn go over that ground with him before departure Ifhe seems to be clueless or worse in a blocking mode it will not augur well for next steps - or for next week As you know we've sensed that Cherno is leaning sometimes unsteadily forward while Ivanov tries to pull him backward with a lot of help and maybe some instigation from his sort-of namesake Ivanovsky the career diplomat whom Ivanov has seconded to Cherno and who throughout tonight's session was whispering negative advice in Cherno's ear like a very grumpy Jimminy Cricket Part of the reason for this I suspect is butt-covering by Ivanov Back at the Bonn G-8 Ministerial Ivanov acceded to some important though less than ideal improvements in wording especially description of KFOR as an effective international security presence We can be pretty sure that he sold this at home as our concession to him that is he bragged about how he beat back our attempts to add the word military vice security and force vice presence Now in our Helsinki paper we're making unmistakably clear that it's got to a military force with NATO at its core So Ivanov may be getting or anticipating heat for having fallen into a trap you set for him in Bonn Beyond that the last three weeks have been full of evidence that there's both institutional and personal bad blood between Ivanov and Chemo Primakov's guy versus Yeltsin's guy etc 4 FL-2017-13804 B-00002620736 U NC LASS IFl ED 05 09 2024 We had what may have been a precursor of Chemo's position being ascendant Wednesday at the G-8 political directors meeting in Bonn Boris Mayorsky the Russian master stone-waller said Russia does not think KFOR should be blue-helmeted it should have a nominal authority from the UN it should report nominally to the SYG or his designated representative Boris knows English very well including loaded adverbs That isn't our position of course but it's moving in the right direction and Chemo took it further tonight t What we've got to do is try to keep 'em movin' There are three ways to do that One is no4 under any circumstances to give into the temptation to expose the Russians publicly as positioning themselves to concede to us on NATO-at-thecore since that will Chemomyrdin made clear queer whatever further movement the Russians might make If only for Russian domestic political reasons the Russian government would have to deny having made any concession My guess is that as they think through their own next moves including the endgame they can imagine sacrificing a major piece - i e accepting NATO-at-the-core - only if it's in the context of a peace i e suspension of hostilities in other words they may be counting on the cheers of praise at home to drown out the howls of protests as Russian soldiers head off to keep the peace under the command of General Clark who is well known to Russian audiences these days The second thing we can do is to be equally careful not to appear to be adding conditions on NATO's behalf and or walking back from principles that Russia has associated itself with specifically the Bonn G-8 statement That's why it was good that Wednesday in response to press reports on Chemo's visit to Belgrade we reaffirmed both the G-8 principles and the NATO conditions We must publicly remind everyone and reassure the Russians that our diplomacy is all about amplifying and making operational the G-8 principles not changing them or toughening them up We're not moving the goal posts we're trying to move a t Mayorsky also signaled movement on withdrawals Here's his argument there rather than going from the 80-100 000 including paramilitaries anned Serbs that are in Kosovo now let's figure out how many we' re prepared under NA TO' s scheme to let comeback in the designated four categories Then let's take the aggregate number and say the Serbs need to go down from 100 000 to X There are two problems with this suggestion First we believe that zero has to mean zero and we must consider returns only after we've established in principle and to the extent possible in fact the totality of withdrawals Second when Cherno got notional about the number X it was much too large UNESCO says there are 8 000 religious and historical sites in Kosovo and let's say it takes three guys for each site - the math lands you suspiciously close to one number that Slobo has hanging out there 22 000 At the Bonn meeting yesterday Mayorsky floated a number in the range of 500 of 1 200 the low end of which is in the universe of what our experts are thinking about 5 FL-2017-13804 B-00002620736 U NC LASS IFl ED 05 09 2024 team that includes the Russians closer to the only goal line there is I hear a wee small voice in my ear- maybe it's Doc Foglesong a big sports fan saying block that metaphor Third especially in the light of what we heard tonight we need to do a lot more work on a faster schedule and in a way that includes both the Alliance and the Russians on some gritty but important essential specifics as opposed to genuine 'details' that can wait until after there's a peace Here are the ones that our stops in Helsinki Bonn Paris and Moscow this week have highlighted • What exactly do we mean by NATO-at-the-core What's the actual command structure How does it relate to sectors How does it relate to the UN The French Levitte are pushing a single UN-ish over-guy as opposed to overlord who would not give orders to the KFOR commander but as Jean-David puts it ' would have coffee with him every morning Call this the coffeewith-Kofi option Is there some version of it we can live with We've got to decide with our Allies and with the Russians before we get a whole lot further • What exactly do we mean by MUP Right now we i e SHAPE mean every single policemen including traffic cops and cops on the beat The Russians specifically Cherno are arguing that if we insist on expelling every last policemen of every job description track record and background including ones whose families have lived in Kosovo for generations we'll be committing ethnic cleansing in reverse Therefore they say we should not be rigid and total in the way we define MUP • As Serb forces withdraw how do we prevent a security vacuum that unleashes chaos including an orgy of Albanian-on-Serb retribution and an accompanying new refugee crisis this time Serbs fleeing across borders including in Montenegro and Macedonia • More generally how do we protect Serbs who decide to stay on in Kosovo By the way on this last point Michael Steiner our interlocutor this week who knows the Balkans best was quite blunt in predicting that - despite our good intentions and reassuring rhetoric about Kosovo's ending up as a multiethnic democracy - it's in fact going to be fairly soon after it's what liberated from Belgrade an all-Albanian what protectorate of the international community Ifwe succeed in our mission short-term - i e get all armed Serbs i Cherno's proposal is for a troika to coordinate KFOR that would be chaired by a NATO member with one Russian deputy and one traditional neutral one a FRY representative would be attached to the troika as a liaison- to take orders not to give them in Cherno's words 6 FL-2017-13804 out stay B-00002620736 U NC LASS IFl ED 05 09 2024 and open up return to refugees no Serbs of any description will want to Be that as it may it's equally if not even more true that ifwe fail in our mission short-term no Albanians of any description except for UCKsters bent on vengeance and independence will return Whatever the answers to these and other such questions Levitte on Thursday formally and rather urgently proposed that we set up a Quad working group right away - in coming days if possible - and that we make a real effort as he put it to take account of the Russian factor in our planning for KFOR and civilian implementation so that when we talk to them in the future we're not just giving them our answers to their questions The French as you know have been quite resistant to the AhtisaariChemomyrdin gambit partly for not-invented-in-Paris reasons partly and relatedly for reasons of hypersensitivity to the hyperpuissance With a lot of stroking and a special trip to Paris just to see V edrine and Levitte we've got them calmed down But we have more work to do there Levitte had just come from seeing Chirac who is still pushing the idea that if Ahtisaari goes to Belgrade with or without Chemo he should undertake in advance to see while he's there every conceivable Serbian politician especially democrats and ' democrats in order to encourage anti-Milosevic feeling and to demonstrate our distaste for dealing with Slobo Ahtisaari who had gotten this message directly from Chirac tonight over dinner told Chemo that he intended to see opposition figures in Belgrade ifhe goes there next week Cherno said why not Maybe he'd do the same This aspect of their mission requires to put it mildly more thought Via Levitte yesterday we heard Chirac also wanted a G-8 Ministerial to approve the Ahtisaari-Chernomyrdin package in advance of the trip which of course would flush out the Russians on hard-core-NATO We didn't quite hear that in Paris Thursday- maybe in part because I preempted-but Jean-David did say that Ahtisaari and Chernomyrdin should ' agree in advance on their message If that means what we're saying with the five ground rules above the nd 2 five of the Commandments then d'accord If however it means making it harder for Chemomyrdin to associate himself in Belgrade with Ahtisaari's half of the script then pas de tout On Bildt his name never came up in Moscow but it did come up in Paris earlier because I raised it I decided at the tail end of a generally very accordfilled session with Levitte to lay down our marker on Bildt a we support him in his assignment to begin now preparing for peace-implementation b we oppose and will do whatever necessary to thwart - his involvement in any aspect whatsoever of peace-brokerage c we reserve on whom we will support for the 7 FL-2017-13804 B-00002620736 U NC LASS IFl ED 05 09 2024 Big Job in Kosovo whatever its institutional auspices Jean-David's reaction hmmmm Among the issues we didn't get to in Paris or Moscow are critical ones of sequencing and synchronization among the various tracks AhtisaariChenromyrdin G-8 and UNSC While Doc Co are working hard on the hard military security questions we've got a considerable challenge of our own ahead on the diplomatic front As our team sorts through all that it heard today we'll provide further impressions and suggestions on how to prepare for next week and how to manage Allies in the meantime 8