Meeting with Milosevic first stage in negotiations, say diplomatic sources

Thursday's nine-hour meeting between Russia's special envoy, Mr Viktor Chernomyrdin, and President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia was merely the first stage in a negotiating process, according to Russian diplomatic sources.

The results of the meeting should not be regarded as final and definitive, they stressed, as Mr Chernomyrdin prepared to arrange a meeting with representatives of the NATO member states today.

After the Belgrade meeting, Mr Chernomyrdin had suggested that agreement had been reached with Mr Milosevic for "forces", under the control of the United Nations, with a strong Russian component, to enter Kosovo.

Belgrade announced yesterday that it had agreed only to an "international non-military presence" in Kosovo, but Mr Chernomyrdin insisted that the agreement had been for a military force.

Diplomatic sources said that following further joint work between Russia and Yugoslavia a military presence in Kosovo was likely as it would be impossible to enforce any agreement without armed forces.

The confusion surrounding Mr Chernomyrdin's statement on the Belgrade meeting has not been completely clarified and may have been due to the Russian envoy's notoriously clumsy use of language. On one occasion, for example, he stunned Russian television viewers by uttering the phrase "zdes vam ne tut" which can be roughly translated as "here to you is not here".

When President Yeltsin selected Mr Chernomyrdin as his special representative on Yugoslavia and announced that "Viktor Stepanovich will be able to talk to President Milosevic in a way that no one else can", many a Russian eyebrow was raised.

To be fair to Mr Chernomyrdin, however, he appears to have gone about his task in an extremely comprehensive way by holding discussions with Slavic and non-Slavic heads of government in the Commonwealth of Independent States, including the Georgian President and former foreign minister of the Soviet Union, Mr Eduard Shevardnadze.

The initial response to the meeting between Mr Chernomyrdin and Mr Milosevic has been mixed. President Clinton and the British Prime Minister, Mr Tony Blair, have been distinctly cool in their reaction, but the results of the talks were welcomed by the UN Secretary-General, Mr Kofi Annan, and by the Italian Prime Minister, Mr Massimo d'Alema, whose country's support is vital to NATO's military capacity.

In a communique on the Belgrade meeting issued through the official news agency ITAR-TASS, the Russian side said that "a very substantial exchange of opinions" had taken place. Russia restated its position that it wanted "an immediate cessation of the missile and bomb strikes, as well as of violence and repression."

The reference to violence and repression in the same sentence as missile and bomb strikes marks a shift in emphasis by Russia which until now has been much stronger in its condemnation of NATO than of Mr Milosevic.

Five points were discussed in detail, according to the communique: the provision of humanitarian aid; the resumption of work on the political framework for the future autonomy of Kosovo;

the "feasible" reduction of the presence of military and police forces of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in Kosovo concurrent with the withdrawal of NATO units on Yugoslavia's borders;

international assistance towards the restoration of Yugoslavia's economy, including Kosovo, and of the region in general; and an "international presence" in Kosovo under the aegis of the UN and with Russian participation.