(14 Mar 1999) English/Nat

As a last-ditch effort to find a peaceful solution to the conflict in Kosovo draws near in Paris, some forty Serb supporters in the United States staged a protest outside the White House in Washington D-C.

The demonstrators are calling on the U-S and NATO not to send troops into the region.

They are also saying they do not want Kosovo to be granted independence.

The protestors braved poor weather to send a strong message - no troop deployment in Kosovo and no independence.

The protest in Washington mirrored protests in Paris, where more peace talks between Serbs and ethnic Albanians are to begin on Monday.

Last month in Rambouillet, France, a Serb delegation sat through seventeen days of peace talks with ethnic Albanians in an attempt to end the war in Kosovo.

But the negotiations failed with Serbs strongly opposed to NATO troop deployment as peaceful policing force.

The U-S backed peace proposal calls for NATO troops to monitor the peace, which the demonstrators said they strongly oppose.

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"We want to send a message to president Clinton that if he sends U-S airplanes to Kosovo, first of all he'll be bombing the sons and daughters and mothers and father of a million Serbian-Americans and for what reason? To support an Albanian separatist movement the K-L-A which are Albanian terrorists, so-named by the State Department this is what the Clinton administration is supporting NATO's troops for. This is not what America is about."
SUPER CAPTION: Danielle Sremac, Demonstrator

SOUNDBITE: (English)
"For the price of one bomb we can support the price of a democratic movement in Serbia, instead we've decided to support Milosevic who is a communist ruler."
SUPER CAPTION: Natalija Djurickovic, Demonstrator

With these new rounds of talks, the ethnic Albanians reportedly are willing to put their names to the existing plan, even if they will not achieve complete independence, as they wanted.

In the event the Serbs continue to refuse the proposed stationing of 28-thousand NATO troops on its soil, the threat of NATO airstrikes still looms.

Over the last year, fighting has claimed at least 2-thousand lives and turned scores of others into refugees.

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