- Title: FRANCE: KOSOVO CONTACT GROUP TO HOLD FRESH PEACE TALKS.
- Date: 13th February 1999
- Summary: RAMBOUILLET, FRANCE (FEBRUARY 12, 1999) (REUTERS - ACCESS ALL) 1. GV/CU: EXTERIOR OF CHATEAU WITH POLICE OUTSIDE BY BARRIERS (3 SHOTS) 0.09 2. GV: VARIOUS GROUPS OF DELEGATES WALKING IN GROUNDS OF CHATEAU/ MEDIA (3 SHOTS) 0.29 3. GV/MV: PRO-SERB DEMONSTRATION IN TOWN WITH BANNERS AND FLAGS (2 SHOTS) 0.40 5. CU/PAN: FRENCH PHILOSOPHER A
- Embargoed: 28th February 1999 12:00
- Keywords:
- Location: RAMBOUILLET, FRANCE
- Country: France
- Reuters ID: LVAE7G68D42ASOK6FYPZME1YKA61
- Story Text: The six-nation Kosovo contact group will hold fresh
talks this weekend on whether to extend the faltering
Rambouillet peace negotiations.
After a week-long period of intense negotiations the
Serbian and Albanian delegations had failed to reach any
conclusive deal at the end of talks on Friday (February 12).
The talks, which started in a chateau at Rambouillet last
Saturday, were scheduled to last for a week, but British
officials said the Contact Group was likely to conclude the
talks should continue for a further week unless they had
totally broken down.
Pro-Serb demonstrators assembled in the town earlier in
the day on Friday and waved flags and banners in support of
Serb sovereignty and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
At a press conference, European Union negotiator Wolfgang
Petritsch said: "I'll be honest with you there are, and there
remain, deep divisions on some of the very important parts of
the negotiations and things move on sometimes quite slowly but
we are reaching ahead."
An exhausted Christopher Hill, another negotiator,
described the negotiation process as "tough" and refused to be
drawn on what chances of success he felt the talks had for a
political breakthrough.
The U.S.State Department said in a statement on Friday
that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright would travel to
Paris on Saturday to assess how negotiations were proceeding.
The statement did not mention a ministerial meeting of the
Contact Group, and the United States has said it would only
take part in such a meeting if it were well-prepared.
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