How the bloody Serb army fled Kosovo 20 years ago

A little over two decades ago, a word brought relief to Serbia. Peace! After 78 days of bombings and four dramatic days of negotiations in Kumanovo, the UN Security Council Resolution 1244 is signed.

The withdrawal of Serbian forces and NATO's entry into Kosovo in the summer of 1999 were largely a loss of Serbia in fighting the most powerful military organisation in the world.

The military-technical agreement by Kumanovo carries the weight of a key document that still affects the situation in Kosovo. However, the public still does not know enough details, Croatian media write.

The facts are the following: On the evening of June 9th, General Svetozar Marianovac on behalf of the Yugoslav Army, Obrad Stevanovic on behalf of Serbia's MPB, and British General Michael David Jackson, who negotiated on behalf of NATO, signed the end of the war and new security architecture in Kosovo.

Signings in the document “The Military-Technical Co-operation Agreement between the UJ and KFOR” were introduced at 23:45, when deadlines for its application began.

The same act was confirmed moments later in the NATO Council, which provided conditions for the UN Security Council session. The same evening, Marinanovic and Jackson issued statements to the media.

A member of the Serbian delegation, then Colonel and later General Dragan Paskas, recalls that the biggest fights at the negotiating table in Kumanovo were made for the time and security of soldiers and people.

We went into negotiations on June 5th, with cars from Belgrade and the working version of the agreement, written in Brussels, we got it before Nis. Our column, with security from the military police, was always under satellite surveillance. The base was at the Vranje Banja where we went every morning to Kumanovo Airport. A large air - conditioned tent, cold and dexterious Jackson, an atmosphere of distrust, and an extremely unfavourable work document, he said.

The talks were conceived so that on behalf of the Army, Marjanovic negotiated, on behalf of the MPB Stevanovic and chief diplomatic and political role had an official of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Nebojsa Vujovic.

He was also the main link to the head of state. On the other side of the table was General Jackson with his associates.

He negotiated on behalf of NATO only technically. He had a satellite phone in his hand, and after each of our proposals, he left the tent and invited someone, perhaps Brussels-based command, which made decisions”, Paskas said.

The first meeting of the two delegations was held in Blace, not far from the border crossing point Hani Elez. As a site of the NATO summit chose a nearby café called symbolicly '%Europe, but since the route through the Kachanic's Gorge was difficult and dangerous for communication, negotiations moved quickly to Kumanovo's sports airport.

Paska believes that NATO, despite technological superiority, has not had a rough assessment of the presence of the Serbian Army in Kosovo.

This was clear from deadlines for the withdrawal of troops from Kosovo, there was no way that quickly we could extract people and extract weapons. When we asked for more time and reasoned the application, NATO generals looked silently, while Jackson received his”, he said.

First, NATO set a five-day withdrawal requirement, and in Kumanovo they negotiated between 7 and 11 days for removing Serbian forces from Kosovo.

According to Serbian criminal Nebojsa Pavkovic's war diary, only the Third Army with subordinates in Kosovo at the time had 130,000 officers and soldiers, 400 tanks, 409 armoured personnel carriers, 446 antiaircraft missiles and 335 artillery weapons.

The initial document also demanded that the Land Security Zone along the Kosovo border be 25km, which was reduced to five at the table along with the 25km no-fly zone.

One of the Serbian side's most important demands was the suspension of shelling.

For me as commander, it is unacceptable that our team signed the agreement without the approval of a UN resolution regulating the end of the bombings and only then to launch withdrawal”, writes General Pavkovic in his war diary.

A compromise was reached at the provision that the bombings would stop when the first Serbian entity left Kosovo.

Bombings stopped when a Serbian artillery unit withdrew from northern Kosovo. For the Serbian army and criminal police, the dramatic days of abandoning positions followed, marching, taking the barracks destroyed in garages in Vranje, Nis, Prokuplje, Kursumli, Rashka.