HC Deb 25 October 1999 vol 336 cc731-2W
Sir Richard Body

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs if he will publish the proposals made by the Yugoslav Parliament in answer to the draft agreements made at Rambouillet; and what the differences were from the agreement reached on 3 June. [94127]

Mr. Vaz

The Rambouillet Agreements on Kosovo were presented to the FRY/Serbian delegation and the Kosovo Albanian delegation on 22 February, after two and a half weeks of intensive negotiation. Both sides agreed to attend a second round of talks to discuss implementation of the agreements. However, on the first day of the second round of talks, in Paris on 15 March, the FRY/Serbian delegation presented their own proposals for a Kosovo agreement. The Contact Group (the Governments of the UK, US, France, Germany, Italy and Russia) took the unanimous view that only technical adjustments to the draft agreements presented at Rambouillet could be considered. The proposals presented by Belgrade amounted to an extensive and unacceptable revision of the draft agreements presented at Rambouillet.

The proposals presented by the FRY/Serbian delegation and subsequently endorsed by the Serb Parliament were published recently in "The Crisis in Kosovo 1989–1999, International Documents and Analysis, Vol 1", as was the text of the Rambouillet Agreements signed by the Kosovo Albanian delegation on 18 March.

On 3 June, President Milosevic and the Serbian Parliament accepted an agreement, presented by the EU and Russian special envoys, which specified the principles for a resolution of the crisis in Kosovo, notably: the end of violence and repression; withdrawal of all FRY/Serbian forces; deployment of international civil and security presences in Kosovo; and return of refugees and displaced persons. The agreement also called for a political process, taking full account of the Rambouillet accords, to provide substantial self-government for Kosovo.

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