THE UNITED States and some European members of NATO are certain that television images showing a recent meeting between the Yugoslav President, Mr Milosevic and the moderate ethnic Albanian leader, Mr Ibrahim Rugova, were faked, diplomats at NATO headquarters in Brussels said yesterday.
In Washington, a special adviser to President Clinton, Mr Greg Schulte, said "some of the footage that we saw on Belgrade TV showing him and Milosevic together are file footage, old footage.
"The pictures of the Milosevic-Rugova meeting were taken two years ago during a meeting on teaching conditions in Kosovo," a European diplomat said in Brussels.
Serbian television had shown images of Mr Milosevic and a relaxed Mr Rugova meeting in Belgrade on Thursday, on the ninth day of NATO's air strikes against Yugoslavia. The two men had agreed to resolve the Kosovo crisis by "peaceful means", the broadcast said, showing a close-up of a signed document.
At NATO, several European countries now have the same certitudes as the US on the fate of Mr Rugova. "If he's still at home, he's upstairs while Serb special forces have taken over the ground floor," a diplomat said here.
The notorious paramilitary Serb leader known as Arkan denies any involvement in the ethnic cleansing campaign that has unleashed an outpouring of Kosovan Albanian refugees, Time magazine reported yesterday.
Arkan, whose real name is Zeljko Raznatovic, tells Time that reports of Serb atrocities against Kosovo's Muslim Albanian population are untrue, adding that he has never been to Kosovo. "I didn't see any Serb doing any crime," he is quoted as saying.
Arkan is best known for leading the Serb paramilitaries who swept across Bosnia and Croatia, terrorising civilians and driving them out in droves.
But Arkan tells the US magazine the only reason Albanians are fleeing Kosovo is "because you started bombing. Mr Milosevic has argued that Arkan acted alone in his alleged crimes, but the paramilitary leader told Time he was "under the command of the Yugoslav army".