Kosovo talks at risk before they open as Serbia threatens to arrest delegates

It promised to be yet another high profile showcase of international problem-solving. But the Kosovo peace talks, due to start today at a 14th century French castle 50 km outside Paris, were in jeopardy last night before they had even begun.

Serbia declared itself unwilling to talk to its ethnic Albanian foes from Kosovo and threatened to arrest two guerrilla delegates who had been due to fly to France. In scenes of near farce, British and French officials in Kosovo were scouring the countryside for the two officials from the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army who were due in Paris.

Instead, they were in hiding after Serbia said it would arrest them if they arrived for their flight at Pristina airport. "I don't know where they are," said one British diplomat. "They haven't come down from the woods."

In Kosovo, international verifiers who had hoped for a few days off while the protagonists argued it out for a week in Rambouillet's seclusion were pressed into service, ready to escort the KLA officials to a plane and on to Paris. However, the unarmed monitors feared they would be unable to guarantee the safety of the delegates.

Serbia announced that the two, including key KLA negotiator Hasim Thaci, were wanted for "war crimes" committed against Serbian forces during Kosovo's 11-month war. Serbia's chief negotiator, Ratko Markovic, who arrived in Paris, announced that even if the KLA sent other delegates, Serbia would refuse to talk to them.

"We will never talk to terrorists," said Mr Markovic. He added that he would talk to Ibrahim Rugova, head of the ethnic Albanian political leadership. However, Mr Rugova, in a sign of solidarity, remained on the tarmac of Pristina airport last night, along with the rest of the Kosovo Albanians.

The French and British foreign ministers, who are co-chairing the Paris peace conference, hope to use the time-honoured method of locking the protagonists up together and sealing them off from the press so they can haggle over a pre-prepared text. They have been given until February 20th to come to an agreement.

The Yugoslavs' cage will be a gilded one - assuming the two parties can even be brought together in the same place at the same time. Notwithstanding Marie Antoinette's description of Rambouillet as "a gothic toad-hole", the 30 rooms of the French presidential summer residence are furnished with such treasures as Napoleon Bonaparte's bathtub.

Mr Rugova, the moderate who is due to lead the 15-strong Kosovar delegation, is a French-educated linguist who led a civil disobedience campaign for the past decade to demand that Yugoslavia restore Kosovo's autonomy. Although 90 per cent of the province's population are ethnic Albanians, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic cancelled their autonomy in 1989 on the grounds that Kosovo was the "cradle" of Serb civilisation.

However, two-thirds of the Kosovar delegation belong to more radical groups, including the Kosovo Liberation Army, who demand nothing short of total independence.

It is a small triumph for the Contact Group (US, Russia, France, Britain, Germany and Italy) which called the conference that Belgrade is even sending a delegation. But the 13 low-level Serb representatives will not be able to take decisions without referring back to Mr Milosevic. The group's leader, Deputy Prime Minister Ratko Markovic, is a member of Mr Milosevic's Serbian Socialist Party (SSP) and has ruled out any lessening of Serbian sovereignty over Kosovo.

If the talks do get going, the first priority will be to stop the violence which has killed hundreds of people in Kosovo in the past year. The second goal - shared by Serbs, NATO and the Contact Group alike but not the Kosovars - is to prevent the province gaining independence.

The West fears that an independent Kosovo would destabilise the region. Ethnic Albanians who compose at least a third of the population in neighbouring Macedonia might also rebel. Kosovo might demand union with Albania. And Serb officials threaten that the loss of Kosovo would encourage Bosnian Serbs to tear up the December 1995 Dayton Accords which halted the war in Bosnia.

The main problem will be persuading the KLA to accept anything less than full independence. The Rambouillet conference is proof that the guerrilla group's violent methods have been more effective in escalating the crisis and drawing international attention then the 10 years of Mr Rugova's peaceful opposition to Serbian oppression. The KLA appears convinced that continuing the war is in its interest.

The other main sticking point is the Serbs' vehement rejection of a peacekeeping force to enforce whatever agreement is reached. Serbia sees the deployment of foreign troops in Kosovo as meddling in its internal affairs. Three Contact Group mediators, the US ambassador to Macedonia, Mr Christopher Hill, the EU representative, Mr Wolfgang Petritsch, who is Austrian, and a Russian diplomat, Mr Boris Maiorski, were to meet last night to put finishing touches on the proposed agreement before it is presented to the Serbs and Kosovars today.

The text would give ethnic Albanians in Kosovo "substantial autonomy" for three years. Belgrade would retain control of foreign and defence policy but local elections, supervised by the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe next November, would give the Kosovars a greater role in running the province's economy and local taxation, education, health and justice systems.

The police - until now run by Serbs who have massacred Kosovar villagers - would be reorganised.

The challenge is to obtain an agreement vague enough so that both sides can convince their nationalists they have won.

To encourage the Kosovars, the US is inclined to leave the question of independence open after the initial three-year autonomy period. As Belgrade's traditional ally, Moscow wants to definitively rule out the possibility. Russia is also at odds with the rest of the Contact Group regarding a peacekeeping force. Moscow says an international military force should be deployed in Kosovo only with Belgrade's approval.

However, last night, it was business as usual in Kosovo as Serbian artillery thundered into KLA positions on an important highway north of Pristina and shooting was heard on the streets of the city itself.