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Feuding factions of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian community, including the Kosovo Liberation Army, have hammered out a joint program to build a free-market democracy during three days of closed-door talks at a Northern Virginia resort.
The program, which did not include any representatives of Kosovo's embattled Serbian minority, calls for a referendum on independence from Yugoslavia, a "multi-ethnic society that includes equal opportunity for all," an independent judiciary and a free press, and a transformed KLA that would become the territory's "national defense force."
Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, addressing the delegates at the State Department at the conference's close yesterday, praised the so-called "Lansdowne Declaration." But she bluntly warned that ethnic tensions in the Yugoslav province and continued attacks on minority Serbs and Gypsies could undercut their work.
"As your friend, I will say plainly that you must combat the temptations of revenge, corruption and criminality," Mrs. Albright said, with KLA political director Hashim Thaci listening silently through translation headphones in the first row.
"You must do everything you can to prevent the killing, terrorizing and expulsion of Serbs and other minorities," Mrs. Albright added. "Acts of terror harm your own interests."
More evidence of the tensions in Kosovo in the wake of NATO's 11-week air war came yesterday, when gunmen fired on a convoy of Serbs trying to return to their homes in eastern Kosovo, killing one and wounding two, according to a NATO statement.
In Belgrade, the regime of President Slobodan Milosevic, whose campaign of terror against Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority sparked NATO's intervention, condemned both the attack and NATO and U.N. plans to reform rather than completely disband the KLA.
The KLA faces a Sept. 19 disarmament deadline. Many of the rebel force's fighters will be incorporated into the new Kosovo police and civil emergency forces.
And the 39 Kosovo Albanian delegates recommended yesterday that the KLA be transformed into a "national defense force" integrated into NATO's Partnership for Peace alliance.
In Russia, Col. Gen. Leonid Ivashov warned yesterday that Russia may reconsider its participation in the international Kosovo peacekeeping force, saying the United Nations and NATO were acting to create an independent Kosovo.
The meeting at the Lansdowne Conference Center near Leesburg, Va., included representatives from Kosovo's four main political groups, including the KLA and the rival Democratic League of Kosovo, headed by Ibrahim Rugova, journalists, academics, economists, and civic activists.
Mr. Rugova was not present.
The workshop was conducted for the Department of State by the U.S. Institute of Peace, a nonpartisan, independent organization funded by Congress.
Although the declaration itself included few specifics, U.S. organizers counted it a success because political divisions within the majority ethnic Albanian community have plagued Western governments and aid groups.
U.S. officials said Kosovo's Serbs were consciously excluded so that ethnic animosities would not dominate the effort to establish a political and economic blueprint for Kosovo.
"In this setting, the [Serbs and the Albanians] would have spent the whole three days on that one topic," said James Dobbins, the State Department's ambassador on Kosovo.
The meetings also continued a delicate dance between the United States and the Kosovo Albanians over the prospect of an independent Kosovo.
Every major Kosovar Albanian political figure favors a formal break with the Belgrade regime, and the Lansdowne Declaration specifically calls for "self-determination based on a referendum conducted under international auspices."
But the NATO-dictated peace deal Mr. Milosevic accepted in June calls for Yugoslavia to retain its sovereignty over the province for now.