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In February 1999, at meetings held in the French city of Rambouillet, the multiethnic Yugoslav delegation (composed of Kosovo Serbs, Roma, and Albanian and Egyptian representatives) met with US officials, including Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in the hope of reaching a negotiated settlement. Britain and France acted as co-chairs. The Yugoslavs had put forth a number of proposals, all of which went pretty much unreported in the Western media. These included:
- An agreement to stop hostilities in Kosovo and pursue a "peaceful solution through dialogue."
- Guaranteed human rights for all citizens, and promotion of the cultural and linguistic identity of each national community.
- The facilitated return of all displaced citizens to their homes.
- The widest possible media freedom.
- A legislative assembly elected by proportional representation, with additional seats set aside for the various national communities. The assembly's responsibilities would include— along with budget and taxes—regulations governing education, environment, medical institutions, urban planning, agriculture, elections, property ownership, and economic, scientific, technological and social development.
Belgrade's proposals were brushed aside as a basis for negotiation. Instead, the State Department produced a ninety-page document, "the Rambouillet Peace Agreement," which demanded complete autonomy for Kosovo, the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from the province, and occupation by NATO forces. Kosovo, a historically integral part of Serbia, would be accorded de facto independence. Still, the breakaway province would be able to exercise influence on Yugoslavia and Serbia by sending its representatives to Yugoslav and Serbian parliaments, ministerial cabinets, and courts, while Yugoslavia and Serbia would be barred from any say in Kosovo's affairs.
This was precisely the one-sided aspect of the 1974 constitution that had given the Albanians a veto over Serbian affairs through most of the 1980s. It left Kosovo effectively independent of Serbia and Yugoslavia, without Serbia and Yugoslavia being independent of Kosovo. In the name of autonomy, the Kosovo constitution would overrule the Yugoslav and Serbian constitutions. Responding to strong popular demands, the Serbian parliament had voted to reduce Kosovo's autonomy to the more normal federal standards that had prevailed before 1974. This provoked a general Albanian boycott of Serbian institutions and a rejection of the very considerable democratic rights Kosovo still possessed. In any case, the oft-repeated charge that the ruthless dictator Milošević stripped Kosovo of its autonomy is a serious distortion.
The Rambouillet "agreement" obliged Yugoslavia to continue giving Kosovo direct aid and an "equitable" share of federal revenues, while having no say over federal resources and properties left behind in Kosovo. The "agreement" promised substantial aid to Kosovo but no assistance to the 650,000 refugees in Serbia, and no suspension of sanctions against Serbia.
Under Rambouillet, a Civilian Implementation Mission (CIM), appointed by NATO, would rule Kosovo, redolent of US / EU colonial control over the Muslim-Croat Federation in Bosnia and Republika Srpska. The Chief of the CIM would have "the authority to issue binding directives to the Parties [Yugoslavia and Kosovo] on all important matters he saw fit, including appointing and removing officials and curtailing institutions." The Rambouillet "accord" would have turned Kosovo into a NATO colony, and gone a long way toward subordinating all of Yugoslavia.
Western decision makers long made it clear that too much of the Yugoslav economy still remained in the not-for-profit public sector, including the Trepca mining complex in Kosovo, described in the New York Times as "war's glittering prize ... the most valuable piece of real estate in the Balkans...worth at least $5 billion" in deposits of coal, lead, zinc, cadmium, gold, and silver .5 Under the Rambouillet proposals, the Trepca mines were among the federal properties that the Yugoslavs would have to privatize and kiss goodbye.
The Yugoslav delegation at Rambouillet agreed to cede de facto independence to Kosovo, including control over religion, education, health care systems, and local governance. But they sought to negotiate changes that would (a) allow the FRY to retain authority over economic and foreign policy, and (b) limit any international presence in Kosovo to observation and advice. "The Serbian negotiating efforts were summarily dismissed and the Serbs were told they had only two choices: sign the agreement as written or face NATO bombing."
US officials at Rambouillet made their determined dedication to the free market perfectly clear. Chapter 4a, Article 1, of the Rambouillet "agreement" states in no uncertain terms: "The economy of Kosovo shall function in accordance with free market principles." There was to be no restriction on the movement of "goods, services, and capital to Kosovo." The citizens of Kosovo and the rest of Serbia were not troubled for their opinions on this. As with every other aspect of the "agreement," matters of trade, investment, and corporate ownership were settled for them by the Western policy makers.
To be certain that war could not be avoided, the US delegation added a remarkable military protocol, which subordinated all of Yugoslavia to an extraterritoriality tantamount to outright colonial domination. NATO forces were to have unrestrained access to all of Yugoslavia. Appendix B of the Rambouillet agreement reads:
- 6.b. NATO [military and civilian] personnel, under all circumstances and at all times, shall be immune from...jurisdiction in respect of any civil, administrative, criminal, or disciplinary offenses which may be committed by them in the FRY [the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia].
- 7. NATO personnel shall be immune from any form of arrest, investigation, or detention by the authorities in the FRY.
- 8. NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters.
NATO was to be granted unfettered use of airports, roads, rails, and ports, and was to be free of any obligation to pay duties, taxes, fees, or other costs. Upon NATO's "simple request," Yugoslavia was to "grant all telecommunications services, including broadcast services," needed for NATO's operation, "as determined by NATO." This would include "the right to use all of the electromagnetic spectrum for this purpose, free of cost." In other words, NATO could take over all of Yugoslavia's airwaves. NATO would also have the option to improve or otherwise modify for its own use "certain infrastructure in the FRY, such as roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, and utility systems."
In effect, not just Kosovo but all of Yugoslavia was to come under NATO's regency. NATO forces would be accountable to no one, able to operate at will throughout the length and breadth of the FRY. It is a measure of the dishonesty of Western leaders and media that they managed to leave this most outrageous portion of the Rambouillet document unpublicized.
The Rambouillet "agreement" was not an agreement at all, not a negotiated settlement but an ultimatum for unconditional surrender, a diktat that spelled death for Yugoslavia and could not be accepted by Belgrade. As John Pilger wrote, "Anyone scrutinizing the Rambouillet document is left in little doubt that the excuses given for the subsequent bombing were fabricated. The peace negotiations were stage managed, and the Serbs were told: surrender and be occupied, or don't surrender and be destroyed.
Rambouillet was, in effect, an ambush. Ronald Hatchett sums it up well: It was "a declaration of war disguised as a peace agreement." George Kenney, a former US State Department, Yugoslavia, desk officer, lends substance to this view: "An unimpeachable press source who regularly travels with Secretary of State Madeleine Albright told this [writer] that a senior State Department official had bragged that the United States 'deliberately set the bar higher than the Serbs could accept.' The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little bombing to see reason." James Jatras, a foreign policy aid to Senate Republicans, reported essentially the same story in a speech in May 1999." There was a deliberate US strategy to push unacceptable demands in order to make Milošević seem like the recalcitrant belligerent, thereby creating a pretext for NATO's aerial massacre.
As US leaders would have us believe, it was the intransigent Serbs, led by the diabolical Miosevic, who refused to negotiate. In fact, as we have seen, it was the US government that disallowed any kind of serious diplomacy. The rest is history. Belgrade refused to sign the Ramboufflet ultimatum. Buttressed by the Racak atrocity story of a few weeks earlier, NATO battered Yugoslavia with round-the-clock aerial assaults for eleven weeks, from March 24 to June 10 1999, professedly to deliver the Kosovo Albanians from genocide and introduce the Serbs to the blessings of Western democracy.