ambassador rudolf v. perina - Association for Diplomatic Studies and ...

Q: So what was happening with Kosovo in your time?
PERINA: Kosovo was a whole other story. The entire diplomatic corps in Belgrade
talked a lot about Kosovo but the U.S. took it most seriously. We were always worried
about Kosovo. The conventional wisdom was that it would blow up someday, but no one
knew when. The fact that it had not blown up, however, invariably led to it being
relegated to the back burner. People were just too focused on Bosnia, where an actual war
was going on, to focus on someplace where a potential war might take place. But we still
did take it more seriously than other countries, in part also because of the interest in the
U.S. Congress. The Albanian lobby in the U.S. was very effective. Probably only the
Israeli and Armenian lobbies were better.
I do not mean to imply that the Kosovo problem was somehow an artificial one, however.
It was a very real problem, and very bad things were happening in Kosovo. The Serb
approach was basically a colonial one. The Kosovar Albanians were treated brutally.
They saw the U.S. as their major protector and often showed me photographs of the
abuse: terrible pictures of people beaten, women raped, and so on. They were very good
in documenting all of this and taking their case to the international community. On the
other hand, in fairness one must say that many Serbs in Kosovo were also beaten up by
Albanians when opportunities presented themselves for this. The gulf and the hatred
between Serbs and Albanians were enormous.
I haven't started talking about the Holbrooke visits yet but one of the things that I tried to
do with Holbrooke was to get him more interested in Kosovo. I met a number of times
with Ibrahim
Rugova, the Kosovar Albanian leader who was elected President in elections that the
Serbs did not recognize. He was a very moderate, reasonable and impressive person who
did much to try to avoid an explosion in Kosovo because he knew, rightly, that the
Albanians would pay an enormous price for it. He promoted peaceful resistance to Serbia
and did so very effectively. Rugova almost never came to Belgrade but he told me that he
would be willing to come if he had an opportunity to meet Holbrooke. I tried to interest
Holbrooke in this but he turned it down. His position, both in Serbia and later during the
Dayton talks, was that one had to resolve Bosnia first, that if the two issues became
intertwined they would create a Gordian knot much more difficult to untangle. So he
wanted to stay completely away from the Kosovo issues until Bosnia was resolved. He
felt if he ever met with Rugova, even once, he would not be able to get away from it.
Q: I think he had a point there. They were two quite different issues.
PERINA: I think he was right but it was hard explaining this to the Albanians, which
became my job both in Belgrade and during the Dayton talks. While we were in Dayton,
there was a demonstration outside the base of several hundred Albanian-Americans who
came from all over the country to ask that Kosovo be put on the Dayton agenda. It was
the only demonstration during the Dayton talks, and I was assigned to go out and meet
with the leaders. They were a very peaceful and reasonable group, headed by an
Albanian-American physician from Texas. I told them very honestly that Kosovo was not
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