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on the agendas of the un Security Council, nato, and other prominent
international organizations.
By 1998, there was no doubt as to the direction in which events
in Kosovo were headed. Western countries tried through mediators
u.s. ambassador Christopher R. Hill and Austrian ambassador Wolfgang
Petritsch (the European Union’s Special Envoy for Kosovo) to
bring about a settlement of the Kosovo crisis based on the province’s
pre-1989 autonomy. In its quest for a solution that would satisfy both
sides to the dispute, the international community was frustrated by
the complexity of the situation, as well as by the fact that Kosovo had
experienced a prolonged period of state-sponsored repression.
ATTEMPTS TO STOP THE ESCALATION OF VIOLENCE
Clashes broke out in January 1998. The massacre of fifty-eight
Albanian civilians in the village of Prekaz in February was of decisive
importance to the escalation of war. During the next few
months, fighting drove more than 300,000 people from their homes.
After Milošević cracked down on the civilian population of Kosovo
in 1998, internally displacing about 250,000 (the other 50,000 fled
abroad), the un Security Council responded with Resolution 1199,
which demanded that all the parties cease hostilities at once, start a
meaningful dialogue without preconditions, and help the un High
Commissioner for Refugees (unhcr) and the International Committee
of the Red Cross (icrc) ensure the safe return of refugees and displaced
persons.
In September 1998, nato announced that it would launch air
strikes to enforce Serbian compliance with Resolution 1199. Richard
Holbrooke, wielding this threat, hammered out an agreement
with Milošević in October 1998 that halted the Yugoslav Army offensive
in Kosovo, averted a possible humanitarian catastrophe, enabled
deployment of an unarmed civilian osce mission in Kosovo to verify
compliance with the agreement, prepared the ground for the later