Diplomacy:
US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott arrives in Helsinki for talks with Russia's Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari representing the European Union. Tomorrow, Chernomyrdin is to go Belgrade to meet Slobodan Milosevic. He expects to make progress, he tells journalists before leaving Moscow. He is adamant, however, that NATO must stop the bombing campaign if progress is to be made.
The Finnish president is now being seen as a pivotal mediator in the quest for a political solution because of his familiarity with Balkan politics and Helsinki's good relations with both the NATO countries and Moscow.
Deja Vu:
In Britain the Tories are modulating patriotism by calling for a full official inquiry "into the events leading up to the NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia". Party leader William Hague wants a committee similar to the one chaired by Lord Franks in 1982 which investigated the run-up to the Argentine invasion of the Falklands. In a written parliamentary question, Hague asks Tony Blair to appoint a committee of privy councillors "to review the way in which the responsibilities of the government in relation to British policy towards Kosovo were discharged in the period up to the start of NATO action on March 24th". Such a review, "to be set up once the current military action is over", is expected to focus on "intelligence-gathering and analysis and the predicted impact of the NATO bombing". It's seen as significant that the then British foreign secretary, Lord Carrington, resigned over his department's failure to foresee the Argentine invasion of the islands.
Free at last:
Two Serbian soldiers held by the US arrive in Hungary on board a NATO plane from Mannheim in Germany, en route to Yugoslavia and escorted by officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross, ICRC. The two, who were captured by Kosovo rebels and turned over to the US military in Albania, were in "satisfactory condition", a Red Cross official in Budapest, Nadja Kibir, confirms.
War Crimes:
US war crimes official says at least 5,000 people, and probably many more, have been killed in mass executions in 75 villages in Kosovo. "We're simply trying to give the most conservative, confirmed figure that we can from good refugee reporting," David Scheffer, the State Department's ambassador-at-large for war crimes, tells reporters in Brussels. "We can only assume the worst and that the figure is actually much higher." About 225,000 men in Kosovo between the ages of 14 and 59 are unaccounted for, but Scheffer stresses this does not mean they have all been killed: "Kosovo represents a government-planned campaign to eliminate, either through forced deportation or killing, most of an ethnic population." Scheffer and NATO spokesman Jamie Shea say they have reports of Serb troops trying to cover up atrocities by burning bodies and forcing civilians to dig up mass graves and bury the dead in separate places.
Turkey:
Turkey's embassy in Dublin says some $5 million worth of humanitarian aid has been sent to Macedonia and Albania, courtesy of its taxpayers, up to May 12th.
Some 72 F-15 and F-16 warplanes are to be deployed in Turkey by the end of May as NATO seeks to strike Yugoslavia from all sides and step up its bombing raids.
Quote of the Day:
"If the Serbs really want to destroy the evidence [of war crimes] - all the evidence - then they are going to have to accumulate a lot of overtime in the next few days, because as fast as they try to destroy the old evidence, new evidence is being created." - NATO spokesman Jamie Shea tells Brussels press conference.