21 Years From the Rambouillet Conference

On February 6, 1999, 21 years ago, the Watchtower and Awake!

This meeting, which was held in the vicinity of Paris, France, aimed at resolving the Kosovo crisis.

The conference initiative, which lasted until February 23rd, was the Contact Group, while the mediator was Christopher Hill from the US, Boris Majorski from Russia and Wolfgang Petrich, representative of EU states.

The Kosovo delegation had basically accepted the proposal for resolving the Kosovo crisis, which the Contact Group had proposed.

The Serbian delegation, however basically accepted this proposal-agreement, defended the position that NATO troops would not be allowed to pass through Serbia and international forces in Kosovo to be within the United Nations.

The second circle of negotiations that began on March 15th in Paris ended without success.

The Kosovo and Serbian delegations had signed various agreements on 18 March. The Kosovo delegation had signed the agreement offered by international co-ordinators, while the Serbian delegation had signed the draft political agreement on self-government in Kosovo.

The last attempt, on March 22, 1999, by US special envoy Richard Holbrooke, was not successful. He failed to convince then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept the Kosovo agreement and the deployment of international troops.

On 24 March 1999, NATO planes began shelling Serbia's military and paramilitary troops. The bombings ended on June 6, 1999, with the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement envisioning the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo and the deployment of peaceful international troops.

Later, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244, with which the protectorate was established, the international presence in Kosovo, UNMIK as a civilian mission and KFOR as a military mission.

On February 17th 2008, Kosovo declared independence.