The Rambuje Conference was held 24 years ago, on February 6, 1999. This meeting, which was held near Paris, France aimed at resolving the crisis in Kosovo.

The initiator of the conference, which lasted until February 23, was the Contact Group, while mediators were Christopher Hill from the USA, Boris Maiorsky, Russia and Wolfgang Petritsch from the EU.

The Kosovo delegation had accepted in principle the proposal-agreement for the resolve of the crisis in Kosovo, which the Contact Group had proposed. The Serbian delegation, although in principle accepted this proposal-agreement, defended the position that NATO troops should not be allowed to pass through Serbia and that the international forces in Kosovo should be within the framework of the United Nations.

Even the second round of talks that began on March 15 in Paris ended without success. The Kosovar and Serbian delegations had signed different agreements on March 18. The Kosovo delegation had signed the agreement offered by the international interlocutors, while the Serbian delegation had signed the draft political agreement – the agreement on self-government in Kosovo.

The last attempt, on March 22, 1999 by the US special envoy, Richard Holbrooke, was not successful either. He failed to convince the then president of the RSFJ, Slobodan Milosevic, to accept the agreement on Kosovo and the deployment of international troops.

On March 24, 1999, NATO began bombing Serbia’s military and paramilitary forces. The bombings ended on June 6, 1999 with the signing of the Kumanovo Agreement, which provided for the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from Kosovo and the deployment of international peacekeeping troops.

/k.s/