FRANCE: ALBRIGHT ARRIVES FOR KOSOVO TALKS

(20 Feb 1999) English/Nat U-S Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has arrived in France, in an eleventh hour effort to salvage the Kosovo peace conference at Rambouillet. If no agreement is reached by Saturday NATO says it will launch airstrikes on Serb targets. U-S President Bill Clinton has warned his Yugoslav counterpart Slobodan Milosevic that airstrikes will follow if he refuses to accept a peace accord with ethnic Albanians. But in a last ditch attempt to salvage an agreement, his Secretary of State was to arrive Rambouillet only hours before the deadline. Milosevic has so far refused to accept a 28,000-strong NATO peacekeeping force, as part of an agreement to end a year of fighting in Kosovo which has killed an estimated 2,000. Cruise missiles are expected to be launched from U-S warships and other NATO ships based in the Mediterranean on Serbia, if no deal is brokered. According to the U-S military, Serb air defence missile batteries, radar sites and command and control centres, as well as key barracks, will be the first targets. President Clinton has said NATO airstrikes should reduce Serbia's capacity to take further military action against the Kosovar Albanians. Western embassies have began evacuating diplomats from Yugoslavia and plans are also in place to withdraw the 1,300 international monitors in Kosovo. About 2,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands been displaced after a year of fighting in Kosovo. Ethnic Albanians make up 90 percent of Kosovo's two (m) million population, and most of them favour independence. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter:   / ap_archive   Facebook:   / aparchives   ​​ Instagram:   / apnews   You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...