Former U.S. diplomat Christopher Hill, while giving his testimony in The Hague, explained the circumstances of the signing of the Rambouillet agreement.

During questioning by the panel, Hill said that the Kosovo Albanians’ team in Rambouillet were united and cohesive in signing the document.

 “I don’t remember this thing, but what I do remember is that the entire delegation of Kosovo Albanians agreed with the agreement; I don’t remember who signed it, but everyone agreed to sign the document and were positive about that signing agreement in Paris. I have to say that I was very pleased by the fact that people who had not sat at the same table and who did not share the same view at that moment were of one mind, they were together. In other words, they were people who for political reasons or because of their views about Rugova did not share the same approach; nevertheless in Rambouillet they were all together and after nine months I was pleased even though we did not have a baby, figuratively speaking, in our hands — for us it was a great achievement. On the other hand we also had a feeling of melancholy because Serbia was not there and we were at a very important historical point.”

Furthermore, asked why the U.S. continued with an agreement that had only one signing party, the American diplomat said that this was evidence against Slobodan Milošević’s statements, who had said that the Albanians would not agree to any deal.

“The concept at the time was to send a message to the Serbs: this will happen, so it would be good for you to become part of the process. In other words, this is the best way to guarantee Serbia’s interests — to become part of this process. Whereas Milošević had said many, many times that the Albanians would never agree to anything, and the agreement overturned his view that the Albanians would not agree to anything. He had said all along that the Albanians would not agree to anything and consequently we did not need to agree to anything, but this was a message opposite to what Milošević had said. We were telling Milošević that he was wrong — look, we reached an agreement — but now you would do well to think about what Serbia’s next move will be. That was the idea, at least not for me — not for me, because I personally think wars are very heavy and I personally have many problems with such solutions; wars carry with them many other tragedies — but there were people who said we should prepare; I was not one of them and I did not say, for example, that we should bomb Serbia and then everything will be fine afterwards, just to demonstrate to Milošević that you were bombed and then he must embrace the process. I was not one of those people,” Hill said.

We recall that Hashim Thaçi, Kadri Veseli, Jakup Krasniqi and Rexhep Selimi have been in pre-trial detention since November 2020. The former KLA leaders are accused of alleged war crimes, to which they have pleaded not guilty.