Although diplomats elsewhere have managed to stay around the table, a frenzy of shuttling back and forth between the capitals of the combatants has thus far failed to achieve a breakthrough. U.S. envoy Strobe Talbott met into the early hours of Friday with Viktor Chernomyrdin after the Russian envoy return from Belgrade without much to offer from President Milosevic. Chernomyrdin and Talbott were joined by emerging mediator Finnish president Martti Ahtisaari, who said on his return home that the negotiations "just keep getting better." He meets with U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan Saturday, while Talbott returns to Moscow Monday. Progress was scant Friday in resolving differences between Moscow and Washington over when to halt the bombing and NATO's role in a Kosovo peacekeeping force, but all was not lost. "The fact that they went on into the early hours and that Talbott is returning on Monday suggests that there's some movement," says TIME Moscow correspondent Andrew Meier. But until the shuttling diplomats can find a way to choreograph an end to bombing and Serb withdrawal from Kosovo, dessert in Belgrade will remain a course best taken in the safety of a bunker.
Diplomacy Across and Under the Table
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Mats Staffansson could be forgiven for feeling picked on by the world's mightiest military alliance. Wednesday night he was relaxing at home when bits of debris from a NATO bomb came crashing into his house. The following evening, Sweden's ambassador to Belgrade was contemplating his dessert at an elegant dinner thrown by his Swiss counterpart when the windows came crashing down, blown in by four cruise missiles that landed 300 yards away. "I, the Slovak ambassador and the Vatican ambassador threw ourselves under the dining room table to avoid the flying glass," Staffansson was quoted as saying. The Indian, Spanish and Norwegian embassies also have been damaged in this week's bombing.