U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE DAILY PRESS BRIEFING (May 2, 1995)

From: hristu@arcadia.harvard.edu (Dimitrios Hristu)

Subject: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF STATE DAILY PRESS BRIEFING (May 2, 1995)

FORMER YUGOSLAVIA

Fighting in Croatia ....................................1-7

--U.S. Diplomacy: Secretary Christoper Meetings; Telecon

  w/FM Kozyrev; Amb. Frasure Call to Mr. Milosevic;

  Amb. Galbraith Activities ............................1-2,4-5,6

--Contact Group Involvement in Mediation ...............2

Contact Group Mtgs./Work on Bosnia Ceasefire   Arrangement

..........................................2

Enhancement of Economic Embargo/

  Security for UNPROFOR Troops .........................3

NATO Airstrikes--Existing Arrangements .................3,6-7

CYPRUS

Prospect of Cyprus Membership in EU ....................7

[...]

FORMER YUGOSLAV REPUBLIC OF MACEDONIA

Security Situation .....................................19

MR. BURNS: Good afternoon, everybody. Welcome to the State Department briefing. I'll be glad to go right to any questions you have today.

Q Do you know how many measures that you folks are about to invoke to help the situation in the former Yugoslavia, such as more monitors, maybe, along the dividing line? There is an interesting interview Mr. Holbrooke gave the Washington Times touching on that and some other possibilities.

MR. BURNS: He always gives interesting interviews.

Q He is really up to speed.

MR. BURNS: He is always up to speed. He is a very good diplomat.

I have a couple of things that I wanted to say, Barry, about the situation in Croatia, and if you would like to expand that, we can talk about Bosnia as well.

The United States is, obviously, very concerned by the new round of fighting in Croatia. We condemn in strong terms the indiscriminate attack on civilians in Zagreb, and we urge restraint on all sides and an end to the fighting.

We believe that U.N. authority should be respected by all sides and re-established in the region. We therefore support Mr. Akashi's efforts in the region today. We do not believe the situation should be changed by the use of force.

Today we have been very actively involved in trying to help redress the situation. Secretary Christopher has had a number of meetings here in the Department, and just a couple of minutes ago he phoned Foreign Minister Kozyrev. They had a very good talk. They agreed that the United States and Russia should work together to try to re-establish the U.N.'s authority in Croatia. They agreed that the parties should be restrained in their efforts. They agreed on the need for the Contact Group to get involved energetically on this issue in Croatia, and they agreed in all respects about their respective views on this situation today.

In addition to that, Ambassador Bob Frasure, who is our representative to the Contact Group, called Mr. Milosevic this morning in Belgrade, urged him to review the situation very carefully, and asked him, urged him, to counsel restraint upon the Croatian Serbs.

Ambassador Galbraith, our Ambassador in Zagreb, has also been quite active throughout the last 48 hours in Zagreb, trying to obviously get a handle on the situation and also to make some of the same points that the Secretary and Ambassador Frasure have been making.

Q Could you elaborate a bit on the Contact Group? When last we left that subject, the French were floating the idea of a Foreign Ministers meeting, and the U.S. thought maybe there should be a lower- level meeting first. How will the Contact Group get more active, do you think?

MR. BURNS: Well, let me just separate the issues of what is happening in Croatia with what is happening in Bosnia.

On the subject of Croatia, the Secretary and Foreign Minister Kozyrev have just agreed on the phone that the Contact Group should now re-engage quite assertively and actively in the Croatian situation.

As you know, the Contact Group and the United States had been successful in getting the parties to agree that the U.N. mandate in Croatia should be transformed, and that has taken place. We now believe that the Contact Group should become actively involved in trying to mediate the situation.

Barry, turning to Bosnia, the Contact Group met last Friday. It will meet again tomorrow in London, and on Friday in Paris. Our effort is to try to convince the parties in Bosnia to agree to a cease-fire, to work out the elements of a new cease-fire, and our offer, our long-held offer, of an arrangement whereby the government in Belgrade would recognize the Bosnian Government in return for limited sanctions relief is still on the table.

Ambassador Frasure met over the weekend with Mr. Milosevic and had good, productive discussions on this issue with him. And so we are going to keep the Contact Group actively involved this week and next on that issue, as well as the issue in Croatia.

Q How about some of those possible actions? We could run a threat again, which I guess is becoming rather hollow. You could put more monitors on the border. Anything like that in the offing?

MR. BURNS: We would like to put more monitors on Serbia's border with Bosnia. We believe it makes sense to do that. It is needed in order to enforce or at least enhance the monitoring of the economic embargo that is in place. We also obviously are going to work closely with UNPROFOR to see what we can do to beef up security for U.N. personnel in the region to make UNPROFOR more effective in its mission, which is to deliver humanitarian assistance to the people in the region.

Q On that last point of UNPROFOR and the interview with Holbrooke, he suggested that air strikes are still a possibility. I think you have been suggesting that they are not a real possibility since UNPROFOR won't pull a trigger.

Is that an accurate impression I have of the State Department view on air strikes?

MR. BURNS: Well, I think that Assistant Secretary Holbrooke was emphasizing that existing arrangements for the use of NATO air power in Bosnia remain in effect, and that is a useful reminder to the parties in the region as we proceed.

As you know, for most situations but not all, there is a "dual- key" arrangement that governs the use of NATO air power. If you are going to fly close air support and use air power to achieve certain limited objectives, there has to be the agreement of both the U.N. forces on the ground as well as NATO.

In the case of a "no-fly" zone, those rules do not apply. In the case of enforcing the "no-fly" zone, the NATO aircraft have the ability to decide -- or NATO has the ability to decide on its own that it will take action. That was not possible over the weekend. I think we discussed this yesterday in the incident over the weekend, because it wasn't possible to verify immediately the source of the bombing over the weekend.

Q Back to Croatia, do you have a clear idea of what happened in the last 48 hours and who is responsible?

MR. BURNS: Well, I think you know we have received a lot of reports about what happened over the last 48 hours, and we have relied upon our Embassy in Zagreb to discuss with the Croatian authorities what the objectives were of the fighting that took place yesterday, but essentially it was a Croatian force that attacked Krajina Serb forces in the U.N. Sector West.

There was a lot of fighting yesterday. I think you are well aware from press reports about the details of that fighting, and at approximately l0:25 this morning in Zagreb five missiles exploded in central Zagreb near a hotel, and there was a lot of fighting, additional fighting in and around Zagreb and the U.N. Sector West area. So there has been quite a bit of military activity over the last 48 hours.

Q But I think the Croats are saying anyway that they consider the operation finished. Is that your impression?

MR. BURNS: I've seen press reports to that effect, and we have begun to hear that this is going to be a limited military operation. That is certainly very much our hope and expectation.

Q Nick, you say that you would like to put more monitors on the border with Serbia. Does that mean you're going to put more monitors -- how is this --

MR. BURNS: That's one of the issues that I said is before the United Nations and it's being discussed in New York, and it's being discussed on the ground, about how we can do that and can we get the agreement of all sides that we should do that. We believe it's something that has to be done to make sure that the sanctions are effective.

Q That would mean U.S. personnel?

MR. BURNS: Not necessarily. I don't believe a decision has been made as to who these people would be or what countries they would come from.

Judd.

Q You pointedly said that Ambassador Frasure has spoken to Milosevic about urging restraint on the Croatian Serbs. Given the fact that this seems to have been initiated by an offensive of the Croats, I didn't hear any urging of Tudjman for a similar kind of restraint. Is that part of the message?

MR. BURNS: It is. I've said a couple of things this morning. I'd be glad to repeat that particular point. We certainly condemn the rocket attacks on Zagreb this morning because innocent people were affected -- killed and wounded by those rocket attacks.

At the same time, I said previously that we do not believe that the situation ought to be changed by force on the ground, and therefore we call on both sides -- both the Krajina Serbs and the Croatian Government -- to withdraw their forces from the area and to respect the U.N.'s authority in the area.

Q Whose rocket attacks?

MR. BURNS: These were Krajina Serb rocket attacks.

Q The rocket attacks were theirs?

MR. BURNS: That's right. We believe they were, yes.

Q Where would they get these kinds of rockets, Nick? Where do you suspect they would get these kinds of rockets?

MR. BURNS: There are all sorts of theories as to how they could get them, but I don't know how they got these particular missiles. They're believed to be M-87 Orcon missiles with anti- personnel cluster bomb warheads, and to fire them at a city in which civilians are residing is simply not right, and it is contrary to everything that's decent. So therefore we condemn that kind of attack.

Q If I'm not mistaken, those missiles are manufactured in Yugoslavia?

MR. BURNS: Sid, I'm sitting here in Washington. These attacks just took place a couple of hours ago. I can't draw you a line as to where these particular bombs came from.

Q Do you suspect that these -- the Yugoslav army -- Serb army - - regular Serb army is involved in this, in resupplying the Krajina Serbs, that they might be behind some of this?

MR. BURNS: In the past, we've had concerns about that type of supply operation and that link. But I can't tell you that this particular -- that the ordnance used in the attack this morning came from that supply -- that source of supply. I just don't know.

It's obviously something that the United Nations forces in the area are going to look into and have to look into, and I'm sure will look into, and we'll be interested in their report to us.

Q Why are you urging restraint for Mr. Milosevic in this situation? What do you not want him to do?

MR. BURNS: We have urged, in Ambassador Frasure's telephone call this morning, Mr. Milosevic to use his influence in the area with the Serb communities to pull back their forces from the fighting. He's someone who does have influence throughout the region, not just in his own area.

Q Nick, when you say you call on both sides to withdraw forces, does that mean you're urging the Croats to restore the status quo ante in Sector West, or whatever you call it? In other words, to give up the land that he's captured in this offensive and to allow the Serbs to restore their de facto control over it?

MR. BURNS: We believe that the U.N.'s authority in Sector West ought to be not only respected but re-established, so the answer is yes.

Q Nick, is it my remembrance that air strikes -- that the air strike agreement that currently exists is for Bosnia and not for Croatia?

MR. BURNS: The "no-fly" zone pertains to Bosnia but not to Croatia, yes. And the incident that occurred this weekend that we discussed yesterday took place in Bosnia, not in Croatia.

Q So if they wanted to call in -- if this escalated and U.N. troops were at risk, could raids be called in in Croatia?

MR. BURNS: We hope it doesn't come to that. We hope that we're going to be able to achieve through diplomatic means very quickly, working through Mr. Akashi, an agreement that there will be a cessation of the fighting in U.N. Sector West.

The U.N. has a responsibility to protect its soldiers, its military and civilian personnel in the area, and that's very much in the minds of the U.N. leadership and Mr. Akashi today.

Q Are you planning to intervene unilaterally in any case?

MR. BURNS: In Croatia?

Q In the Bosnia (inaudible) area.

MR. BURNS: In Bosnia?

Q Where the U.N. forces on the ground --

MR. BURNS: The United States is not contemplating any kind of unilateral action. We are working through the Contact Group, and we're working closely with the Contact Group. That's one of the reasons why the Secretary decided to call Foreign Minister Kozyrev just a couple of minutes ago, because he thought it was important to be in touch personally, because we're quite concerned about, not only the situation in Bosnia, but the new fighting in Croatia.

Q In the same interview, Mr. Holbrooke stated inter alia that the U.S. lobbied for Cyprus to be invited to European Union membership. Since the island could only join the EU as a federation, if that is the case, what would happen to the UDI -- the Unilateral Declaration of Independence -- which has been declared illegal by the Turkish side, separating the fact of Cyprus. Can you comment on that?

MR. BURNS: I think I'm going to let Assistant Secretary Holbrooke's comments stand as they were given to the Washington Times editorial board yesterday. I have no reason to question those comments or to second-guess them. He's one of our senior diplomats, and we have great confidence in him.

[...]

Q You have said in the past that what would motivate Serbia to accept the latest Contact Group proposal is that it will at some point want to re-enter the world community. That motivation doesn't seem to have stirred Belgrade.

Why does the Contact Group then persist in this course of action if there doesn't seem to be any motivation for the other side to even look at it further?

MR. BURNS: We don't want to emulate Sisyphism. If we didn't think this proposal had any chance of acceptance in the region, we would not pursue it.

On the basis of Ambassador Frasure's talks over the weekend, we believe there is at least the possibility that not only Belgrade but other parties in the region would want to point towards and agreement along the lines that I discussed earlier in this briefing, and so we think it's worth trying.

We don't have the option of just walking away from this. We've got to remain engaged, because a lot of our allies have troops on the ground, and we have a continuing American interest in seeing that this terrible conflict can some day in the future be resolved peacefully rather than through fighting. That's our overall objective in Bosnia, as it is in Croatia.

[...]

Q On Skopje. Former Secretary of State James Baker in an article in the Los Angeles Times for the security of Skopje favors inter alia the use of force with well-armed troops on the ground supported by air power.

Any comment on that?

MR. BURNS: I don't -- I am still working through the piece. I have seen the piece. I don't have any official comment from the U. S. Government on that piece.

Q Okay, thank you.

MR. BURNS: Betsy?

[...]

(###)