KOSOVO:

Special envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, facing criticism at home as NATO’s messenger boy, signed a May 27 op-ed piece in “The Washington Post” pointing up Russia’s differences with NATO. In particular, he stressed Russia’s insistence that the bombing must stop before negotiations can progress. Despite three long meetings over two weeks with American Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and EU representative (and Finnish president) Martti Ahtisaari, differences have not narrowed…. Russia’s foreign ministry called the indictment of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic by the United Nations war-crimes tribunal a “purely political” act. (Russia has experience in this area, having negotiated a peace agreement in 1996 with Chechen representatives who had been indicted in Russian courts for terrorism, kidnapping, murder and other offenses.)