Treaty of Rambouillet

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The Château de Rambouillet in Paris , venue between Yugoslavia and Kosovo Albanians

The Rambouillet Treaty was a draft peace treaty between the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the political leadership of the Kosovar Albanians . The treaty was drawn up by NATO and named after the place of the negotiations in Rambouillet Castle near Paris. The talks started on February 6, 1999 in Rambouillet were interrupted on February 23, 1999 and continued on March 15, 1999 at the Kléber Congress Center in Paris .

The failure of Yugoslavia to sign the treaty served NATO as a reason for the bombing of Yugoslavia that began on March 24, 1999 .

Planning the Rambouillet Conference

The Rambouillet negotiations were initiated by the 1994 international for coordinating responses to the war in Bosnia , founded Balkan Contact Group about. The contact group, consisting of representatives from Great Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Russia and the USA, had already drawn up a document based on the Hill Plan (named after Christopher Hill , the US ambassador to Macedonia) in mid-January , which ten did not contained negotiable basic principles for negotiations between Serbs and ethnic Albanians. The plan, known as the “Ten Principles” , contained proposals for the establishment of an autonomous Kosovo and for the stationing of NATO troops in Kosovo. A short time later, the North Atlantic Council issued an ultimatum to Serbs and Kosovar Albanians calling on both sides to begin negotiations on the basis of the Ten Principles . The international peace conference was scheduled for February 6, 1999 at Château Rambouillet. The parties were given three weeks to reach an agreement.

Negotiating parties

Three parties were involved in the negotiations:

  • the delegation of Yugoslavia under the leadership of the Serbian Vice Prime Minister Ratko Marković , which also included representatives of all non-Albanian population groups in Kosovo (Federal Vice Prime Minister Nikola Šainović , Federal Vice Prime Minister Vladan Kutlešić , the Serbian Vice Government Spokesman Vladimir Stambuk , the Chairman of the Socialist Party in Kosovo Vojislav Živković , member of the Cosmet Provisional Executive Council Guljbehar Sabović , the representative of the national Muslim community Refik Senadović , the representative of the Turkish national community and the Turkish democratic party Zejnelabidin Kurejs , representative of the national community of Gorans Ibro Vait , President of the Kosovo Democratic Initiative Faik Jasari , President of the Democratic Reform Party of Albanians Sokolj Cuse , the representative of the Roma national community Ljuan Koka , the representative of the Egyptian national community Cerim Abazi ), the Serbian President Wed lan Milutinović took over the leadership of the Serbian delegation when he joined the Serbian delegation at the beginning of the second week of negotiations on February 13th.

British Foreign Minister Robin Cook and French Foreign Minister Hubert Védrine chaired the conference . US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer also took part in the talks at times .

Chronology of the negotiations

February 6th - February 23rd in Rambouillet

At the beginning of the talks, the contact group submitted two documents to the two conflicting parties. The former, which contained ten non-negotiable principles, was to be signed by both parties before the negotiations. The document was accepted by the Serbian delegation, but rejected by the Kosovar-Albanian delegation because one of the principles required recognition of the territorial integrity of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Despite the rejection by the Kosovar Albanians, the talks continued. The second document was the first draft of the Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-government in Kosovo (the Rambouillet Treaty) in the version dated February 6, which had been drawn up by the contact group in the previous weeks. After telephone conversations between the 29 representatives of the contact group and representatives of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia in Belgrade, the contact group presented a second draft of the Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-government in Kosovo on February 18 . On February 23, 1999, the Rambouillet talks ended without either party having signed the contract. Both sides, however, agreed on the conditions for the autonomy of Kosovo and the convening of a follow-up conference on implementation. The final draft text, which also contained Annex B, was not submitted until February 23. To the surprise of NATO, the representation of the Kosovar Albanians also refused, so the signature had to be postponed.

March 15 - March 23 in Paris

On March 15, 1999, the talks continued at the Kléber Congress Center in Paris . The Kosovar-Albanian delegation announced on March 15, 1999 that it would accept the Rambouillet Treaty in the form of February 23, 1999 with Annex B and signed it on March 18, 1999 after Madeleine Albright had exerted massive pressure for her through the signature of the Kosovar Albanians wanted to put the Serbs in a hopeless situation. On March 17, 1999, NATO presented FR Yugoslavia with an ultimatum to accept the Rambouillet Agreement. In the event of non-acceptance, the bombing of Yugoslavia was threatened. The revised draft agreement submitted by Serbia on March 15, 1999 was ignored. There was virtually no media coverage of the resolution passed in the Serbian National Assembly on March 23, condemning the withdrawal of observers and appealing to the OSCE for help in finding a diplomatic solution. The resolution aimed at a political agreement on a far-reaching autonomy of Kosovo with full equality of all citizens and ethnic groups while respecting the sovereignty of Serbia and the FR of Yugoslavia. On March 24, 1999, NATO began bombing Yugoslavia ( Operation Allied Force ).

Secrecy and content of Chapter 7, 8, Appendix B

The text of the Rambouillet Agreement was revised several times during the negotiations. After the negotiations had ended, it became public that Chapters 7 and 8 and Annex B of the contract had been kept secret from the public and, according to the Serbian negotiator Ratko Marković, also until shortly before the end of the negotiations from the Serbian delegation. These passages were missing from the original text discussed at the Rambouillet conference.

Chapter 7 explains the military side of the implementation of the treaty, while Appendix B deals with the status of the international armed forces ( KFOR , Kosovo Forces). In Appendix B, demands such as the free movement of NATO throughout Yugoslavia, including the airspace and the sea and their use for maneuvers, training and other operations (Article 8), the complete immunity of NATO and NATO personnel from Yugoslav authorities (Article 6) and free use of the entire infrastructure of Yugoslavia (Article 10). Also in the Dayton Agreement , these issues had been dealt with in a similar way.

The provisions contained in Appendix B in particular were deemed unacceptable by many critics. For example, after Appendix B became known , MdB Hermann Scheer said : It was wrong of the Federal Government to believe and to suggest to Parliament and the public that this contract could ever have been signed by Belgrade . Lord Gilbert , former Secretary of Defense, a representative of the British Special Committee on Defense, considered the conditions required in the Rambouillet draft to be absolutely unacceptable. According to a commission of inquiry led by Richard Goldstone , the provisions of Appendix B correspond to the usual regulations in the context of UN peacekeeping measures. Given that NATO was given the decisive role in the implementation of the agreement, Appendix B had to arouse suspicion and rejection of the Serbian government and, according to the Goldstone Commission, proved to be a "blunder" who could be politically instrumentalized by Milošević.

Ratko Marković, chief negotiator of the Yugoslav delegation, testified during the trial of Slobodan Milošević in 2005 that the Rambouillet negotiations were conducted exclusively between mediators of the contact group and one of the two delegations. According to Marković, there were no direct talks between the delegation of Yugoslavia and the Kosovar-Albanian delegation. Marković also stated that the Yugoslav delegation did not receive the full text of the Rambouillet Agreement until 9:30 am on the last day of negotiations, March 18, 1999, and that the delegation had 3.5 hours to sign the agreement had been granted. Up to this point in time, the delegation had not been able to inspect any of the chapters II, V and VII of the agreement, precisely those chapters which contained the military implementation of the agreement and the very controversial Annex B. According to Marković, parts of the agreement were also withheld from Boris Majorski, the Russian representative of the contact group. Marković's statement is supported by the answer published on March 15, 1999 by the Yugoslav delegation to the version of the Rambouillet treaty text of February 23, which goes through the text of the law in detail, deleting and making changes, but without any of the annexes to the treaty mention.

The existence and text of Appendix B of the Rambouillet Treaty were first revealed to the public on March 18, 1999 at 11 p.m. at a poorly attended press conference in the Yugoslav embassy. The British House of Commons did not learn of the Appendix B claims until April 1, a week after the bombing began. In the US, the demands contained in Appendix B were briefly touched upon at a NATO briefing on April 26; from June 3rd they were mentioned in the media.

The  taz , which allegedly was the first newspaper to publish the text of the contract for the annex on April 6, 1999, asked the Foreign Office and found Minister of State Günter Verheugen (SPD) like Ludger Volmer (Greens) and Wolfgang Ischinger completely surprised: “They were out of articles Annex B 'completely new' ”. Andreas Zumach explains in his taz article that Angelika Beer then wrote in a letter to Fischer that she would not have agreed to the NATO action if she had known this part. "Fischer did not use all diplomatic leeway in the negotiations and withheld information about the treaty."

Quotes

"The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia, was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing. Rambouillet is not a document that an angelic Serb could have accepted. It was a terrible diplomatic document that should never have been presented in that form. […] The serbs may have behaved barbarously in surpressing KLA ( UÇK ) terror. But 80 per cent of the ceasefire violations, between October and February, were committed by the KLA. It was not a war about ethnic cleansing at that point. If we had analyzed it correctly, we would have tried to strengthen the ceasefire and not put the entire blame on the Serbs. "

“The Rambouillet text calling on Serbia to allow NATO troops to march through Yugoslavia was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing. No sensible Serb could have accepted Rambouillet. It was an egregious diplomatic document that should never have been presented in this form. […] The Serbs may have behaved barbarically in the fight against KLA ( UÇK ) terror. However, 80% of the truce breaches between October and February were committed by the KLA. It was not a war of ethnic cleansing at the time. If we had analyzed the situation correctly, we would have tried to support the ceasefire and not put all the blame on the Serbs. "

- Henry Kissinger

“Holbrooke: You understand our position?

Milosevic: Yes.

Holbrooke: Do you absolutely understand what's going to happen, knowing our position?

Milosovic: Yes, you will bomb us. You are a great and powerful nation. You can bomb us if you want. "

-

Controversy

In his analysis of the contract negotiations, Norbert Mappes-Niediek comes to the conclusion that the contract as such was not unacceptable and that the provisions were not over-interpreted by Yugoslavia's diplomatic negotiators. From the context it was clear that nothing more than the stationing of an international peacekeeping force was intended. However, the military ultimatum was a diplomatic mistake and a negotiated solution was possible. "It would have been better to have an arrangement that would have allowed Milosevic to at least save face." Yugoslavia, however, was able to exploit the "propagandistic disadvantage" of the "careless formulation of maximum demands". When asked about this, Fischer and other government politicians reacted weakly "because they [...] probably did not understand the meaning of the debate themselves or (themselves) were afraid [...] to admit the tactical awkwardness."

The Spiegel editors Erich Follath , Siegesmund von Ilsemann, and Alexander Szandar describe the instrumentalization of Annex B as a result of "Fischer's secrecy and the embarrassing information policy of his ministry". According to Fischer, the text was a still negotiable "maximum demand". The contract had failed because of the harshness of the Western positions, the attitude of Russia and "above all because of the lack of insight of the Serbian negotiators and the stubbornness of the Kosovar-Albanian delegation".

See also

Web links

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  1. ^ Constitutional Watch - A country-by-country update on constitutional politics in Eastern Europe and the ex-USSR ( Memento June 9, 2008 in the Internet Archive ) New York University School of Law, Volume 8 Numbers 1-2, Winter / Spring 1999
  2. ^ A b World: Europe Kosovo talks: The negotiators BBC, February 6, 1999
  3. ↑ Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo, Initial Draft, February 6, 1999 ( Memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  4. ↑ Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo, 2nd Draft, February 18, 1999 ( Memento of September 29, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
  5. ↑ Contact Group Statement - Rambouillet, February 23, 1999 ( Memento of September 26, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Office of the High Representative, February 23, 1999
  6. ↑ KOSOVO POLITICAL / DIPLOMATIC / MILITARY CHRONOLOGY Select Committee on Foreign Affairs Minutes of Evidence
  7. ↑ Erich Follath, Siegesmund von Ilsemann, Alexander Szandar: Kosovo (II): The slightly different war . In: Der Spiegel . tape 2 , January 10, 2000 ( spiegel.de [accessed on March 27, 2016] "Madeleine Albright was practically kneeling in front of the KLA commanders, it was an unworthy sight," says one who was there. "She was a lot in Paris She paid less attention to the elected Albanian leader Rugova and the other moderates. In doing so, she set the course for the future balance of power in Kosovo. And, finally, for the war - she wanted to finally start the bombing, and that was only possible if the fronts were clear were: there the, good Albanians, there the, demonic Serbs. ").
  8. ^ Noam Chomsky: People without Rights - Kosovo, East Timor and the West, p. 119
  9. ^ Conclusions of Serbian parliament ( Memento of April 11, 2000 in the Internet Archive ) www.serbia-info.com, March 24, 1999
  10. ↑ The NATO personnel with their vehicles, ships, aircraft and equipment should be able to move freely and unhindered and without access restrictions within the entire Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, including its airspace and territorial waters. This includes, but is not limited to, the right to set up camps, carry out maneuvers and the right to use any regions or facilities that are required for supplies, training and field operations.
  11. ↑ Persons belonging to NATO enjoy immunity from the jurisdiction of the conflicting parties under all circumstances and at all times with regard to all civil, administrative, criminal or disciplinary offenses that they may commit in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia.
  12. ↑ Norbert Mappes-Niediek: How did Rambouillet fail? In: Friday . June 8, 1999, ISSN  0945-2095 ( freitag.de [accessed March 27, 2016]).
  13. ↑ Andreas Zumach: Far-reaching provisions in the Annex to the Kosovo Agreement Die Tageszeitung, April 6, 1999
  14. ↑ Examination of witness (Questions 1080-1092) Select Committee on Defense Minutes of Evidence, June 20, 2000, item 1086
  15. ↑ Lord Gilbert - UK Defense Minister - NATO Deliberately Provoked A Fight With Serbia And There Was No Genocide In Kosovo. In: www.nlpwessex.org. Retrieved March 28, 2016 ("I think certain people were spoiling for a fight in NATO at that time, ***. If you ask my personal view, I think the terms put to Milosevic at Rambouillet were absolutely intolerable; how could he possibly accept them; it was quite deliberate. That does not excuse an awful lot of other things, but we were at a point when some people felt that something had to be done, so you just provoked a fight. ").
  16. ^ "The Kosovo Report" Independent International Commission on Kosovo, October 23, 2000
  17. ^ Andy Wilcoxson: PROFESSOR MARKOVIC TESTIFIES OF THE RAMBOUILLET NON-AGREEMENT www.slobodan-milosevic.org, January 19, 2005
  18. ↑ a b Noam Chomsky: Another Way For Kosovo? Le Monde diplomatique , March 14, 2000
  19. ^ Marc Weller: The Crisis in Kosovo 1989-1999 - FRY Revised Draft Agreement, March 15, 1999 Chapter 16, Point B2, pp. 480-490
  20. ↑ taz, the daily newspaper: - taz.de. In: www.taz.de. Retrieved March 27, 2016 .
  21. ↑ Boris Johnson: Cold War warrior scorns 'new morality' , in: The Daily Telegraph , June 28, 1999, p. 34
  22. ↑ Nelan, Bruce W .: Into the Fire , in: Time Magazine , April 5, 1999: 35
  23. ↑ Norbert Mappes-Niediek: How did Rambouillet fail? In: Friday . June 8, 1999, ISSN  0945-2095 ( freitag.de [accessed March 27, 2016]).
  24. ↑ Erich Follath, Siegesmund von Ilsemann, Alexander Szandar: Kosovo (II): The slightly different war . In: Der Spiegel . tape 2 , January 10, 2000 ( spiegel.de [accessed March 27, 2016]).