Monitor: All the News of the World: International opinion on the breakdown of the Kosovo ceasefire agreement

Tuesday 29 December 1998 00:02 GMT
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FIGHTING HAS again erupted in Kosovo, shattering the ceasefire between Kosovo and Yugoslavia. Providing for a truce between the two parties, a withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo, and the safe return of refugees to their homes, the agreement has always been frightfully fragile. As such the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe mobilised 2,000 unarmed personnel to verify the implementation of the deal. But now even the lives of the verifiers are in jeopardy as an all-out war threatens to engulf them. The people in Kosovo will also have to deal with the treacherous weather that sometimes leaves them out of reach of humanitarian aid. The situation is again urgent: the international community must intervene to guarantee Milosovic's compliance with the ceasefire, and ensure the right of the Kosovars to live in peace.

Gulf Times, UAE

THE HOPE of a negotiated end to the Kosovan situation has again disappeared with the renewed violence. Negotiations which had scarcely got off the ground broke down some weeks ago. The increasingly popular KLA is insisting on being involved in the negotiations. Its insistence is hanging like the sword of Damocles above the head of the "moderate" Kosovan "president", Ibrahim Rugova, who advocates a pacifist settlement. Belgrade has no intention of talking with the KLA, who it describes as a "terrorist organisation" while urging the rest of the international community to do the same

Liberation, France

THE WEST realises that there are dangers in supporting Kosovar independence. Albanians in Macedonia might be emboldened to join a greater Albania, and other regional ethnic entities might demand their own states as well. The US and its allies should at least spare the world the spectacle of Western diplomats pretending to work for a solution that does not exist. Milosevic has proved to be a master at engineering crises to suit his own ends. Now he's killing Kosovars again. No one can blame them for not trusting him.

The Wall Street Journal

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