Section B - Page 10
The University Daily Kansan
Wednesday, March 17, 1999
Downtown Lawrence-743 Mass.
Nation/World
Serbia rejects Kosovo deal
The Associated Press
PARIS — Brushing aside Western pressure and NATO threats, Serbs said yesterday that they wouldn't accept the Kosovo peace plan that rival ethnic Albanians have agreed to sign.
Milutinovic's comments at the Paris peace talks brought closer the prospect of NATO airstrikes against Serbia. Western nations sponsoring the talks have said that the military and political components of the peace plan were inseparable.
Diplomats inside the talks, speak
Serbian President Milan Milutinovic said his side refused to accept the key part of the plan — having NATO troops implement it — and would sign the political provision only if the mediators accepted all of their complaints.
Setting up new obstacles to the proposed deal during the second day of peace talks near the Arc de Triomphe, Serbs were demanding amendments to a U.S.-sponsored plan — significant changes that foreign mediators called unacceptable.
ing on condition of anonymity, said the Serbs had proposed a list of amendments that would radically limit Kosovo Albanian autonomy and significantly change the deal.
The diplomats said if there was no progress soon with the Serbs, the negotiations might end by Friday. The United States and its Western allies will then have to decide about possible military intervention to end the Kosovo bloodshed.
The agreement would give the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo wide political autonomy while keeping the province within Serbia's borders.
The plan provides for 28,000 NATO troops, including up to 4,000 Americans, to enforce it — a provision Sorb-ed Yugoslavia will not accept.
British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, who is co-chairing the talks along with French Foreign Minister Hubert Vedrine, praised the Albanian side for showing courage in promising to sign the peace plan.
"We need the Serb side to show the same courage," Cook said.
Despite international pressure.
the Serbs continued to dismiss the Albanian plan to sign.
"Unilateral signing does not mean anything." Milutinovic said.
Asked whether NATO bombing of Serbia was now more likely, he responded; "This is not out of the question, but we are not afraid of that."
In Kosovo, meanwhile, three villages were reported ablaze as Serbled government forces pushed ethnic Albanian rebels deeper into a snowy mountain range.
Senate debates scientist exchange
the Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Energy Secretary Bill Richardson urged Congress not to tamper with a foreign scientist exchange program despite the possible loss to China of secrets from national weapons labs.
abroad, including Russia
Richardson said in a Senate hearing Monday that the exchange program, which has been criticized on security grounds by some lawmakers, was not involved in a security breach at Los Alamos National Laboratory that led to the firing of one of the lab's scientists.
Thousands of scientists, including many from Russia and China, visit Energy Department weapons labs each year through a post-Cold War program that also sends American scientists to facilities
"The visitors program is not the problem - there have been no compromises from the visitors program," Richardson told reporters after testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee.
Sen. Richard Shelby, R-Ala., demanded Monday that the administration stop the program that the Clinton administration stepped up in recent years to allow foreign scientists greater access to federal weapons labs.
"Our labs are not as secure as they should be," said Shelby, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
The administration should put a moratorium on the exchange of people coming into U.S. labs and U.S. scientists going to their labs
and perhaps giving them information, he said.
Richardson disagreed. He said the exchange program was one of the most important programs that his department had in addressing the worldwide problem of nuclear proliferation.
"Let us continue running the foreign visitors, scientists program
that's one of the strengths of the department," he told the Senate panel. "We want other nations to know about our nonproliferation goals."
At the White House, spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters: "There is an element here of partisan point-scoring that's going on, and we shouldn't put an important relationship at risk to whatever the daily political battle in Washington is."