The U.S. won a short war of nerves with Yugoslavia today when Belgrade backed down on its threat to expel a top American peace monitor who has become the key to the Kosovo crisis.
Veteran diplomat William Walker had defied the order to leave yesterday by remaining holed up in a barricaded building in Kosovo’s capital of Pristina as the Yugoslav government’s deadline for his departure passed.
But early today officials in Belgrade announced the government was “freezing” the expulsion order after appeals from “several” foreign countries to let Walker remain in the separatist province.
Walker became a focal point of Western anger over Kosovo after Belgrade ordered his expulsion because he publicly accused Yugoslav troops of massacring 45 ethnic Albanians last week.
NATO officials are outraged by the slaughter, which they suspect stems from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s crackdown on the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Milosevic’s heavily armed security forces swept through villages in the north of Kosovo yesterday, searching for KLA members and exchanging gunfire with the guerrillas near the village of Shipolje.
A spokesman for Yugoslavia’s ruling Socialist Party, Ivica Dacic, said on state-run Radio Belgrade that Walker, the head of a 750-member Western mission to Kosovo, was siding with the rebels.
“No one believes William Walker any more,” Dacic said.
But in Washington, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright threatened to pull the entire monitoring team out of Kosovo if Walker was forced to leave.
That would clear the way for airstrikes against Yugoslav troops.
In the past, NATO officials have indicated the monitors could become hostages if the West acted militarily in Kosovo – so they wouldn’t order airstrikes until the monitors had been evacuated.
Walker’s status remains unclear because the Yugoslav government said the “freeze” on his expulsion would continue until “the consequences of his behavior are fully clarified.”
It did not elaborate.
Albright said yesterday NATO must be prepared to use force against Milosevic “because force is the only language he appears to understand.”
Milosevic brought the Balkan crisis to the brink of airstrikes last October when he agreed to end his crackdown against the KLA.