Crisis in the Balkans

NATO steps up bombing

WASHINGTON -With no end in sight to the conflict in Kosovo and diplomacy apparently at a standstill, NATO warplanes zeroed in yesterday on Yugoslav soldiers and military convoys in the rebel province, inflicting the heaviest direct damage so far on troops and weapons used to kill and purge its ethnic Albanian population.

Pentagon officials said they believe NATO's air strikes have almost completely cut off Kosovo from the rest of Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia, by destroying all rail lines into the province from the north and damaging most of the roads

NATHAN RUFFER/Daily Mechanical Engineering post doctoral fellow Loucas Louca discusses the situation in Kosovo

and bridges.

Both tactics were intended to make it more difficult for military convoys to reinforce troops already there and make slow-moving traffic more vulnerable to NATO planes overhead, Pentagon officials said in the most detailed briefings since the air campaign started March 24.

Yugoslav authorities, meanwhile, sent conflicting signals about the possibility that three U.S. soldiers captured on the Macedonian border early in the air war might be released. Veteran Cypriot politician Spyros Kyprianou arrived yesterday night in Belgrade and scheduled a meeting today with President Slobodan Milosevic on a mission to win the three Americans' freedom.

The Yugoslav information minister, Milan Komnenic told a French radio station that "good news" is coming, but declined to specify what he meant. But Yugoslav Deputy Premier Vojislav Seselj said releasing the three is "out of the question" and they should be tried as terrorists. Earlier, a Foreign Ministry spokesperson said they will be freed only when NATO stops its air strikes.

The intensifying bombardment reported by NATO did little to ease the alarm among NATO officials and relief agencies about the fate of tens of thousands of Kosovo civilians who were blocked from leaving Yugoslavia Wednesday and marched back into Kosovo to an unknown fate. "We don't know what has happened to these people, who seem to have been forced back inside Kosovo," NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said. "We are very concerned about their safety and well-being."

The plight of more than 400,000 Kosovo civilians who have fled the province or been driven out by Yugoslav security forces appeared to be alleviated somewhat. Relief agencies -aided by NATO troops and aircraft-established tent cities with food, water and sanitation in the neighboring countries of Macedonia and Albania, where the refugees flooded across the border seeking safety.

But the relief teams were hampered by bad roads, spotty electricity supplies, the sheer numbers of people needing help and the traumatized state of many of the refugees, aid officials said. Relief agencies geared up for what may be a long-term program because NATO has decided that the refugees must return to their homes in Kosovo and there is little prospect of such a development in the near future.

Despite signs Yugoslavia might be preparing an overture, there are no serious efforts under way to end the air war through diplomacy, State Department spokesman James Rubin said. The only method the NATO alliance is using to pursue its goal of getting the refugees home safely, free of intimidation by Yugoslav security forces, is continuation of the air war until Milosevic accepts the alliance's terms, he said.

Yugoslavia's state-run media said government security forces have ended their offensive in Kosovo, designed to put down a 13-month-old secessionist rebellion, and peace has been restored in the province. But allied officials rejected the claim as spurious and said small-scale clashes continue with pockets of resistance from the rebels' Kosovo Liberation Army.

Taking advantage of a fourth day of clear weather, NATO threw hundreds of planes against army and special police units operating near Kosovo's Albanian border, where the Yugoslav forces are concentrated in an attempt to rout rebel remnants and hound their population base.

Some 50 targets were struck over the last two days during operations that continued nearly round-the-clock, Pentagon officials said. For the first time since the bombing began, NATO attacks killed "a significant number" of troops, said Rear Adm. Thomas R. Wilson, director of intelligence for the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. He did not elaborate.

Yugoslav Army forces at staging areas near Istok and Decani were struck, as was a special police convoy of vehicles in Dakovica region and another military convoy near Poljanica. Army garrisons at Pristina and Urosevac were also damaged.

NATO has faced considerable criticism that its forces have not moved fast enough against the Yugoslav army and special

police units responsible for the crackdown on Kosovo's rebel forces and civilian population. Thursday, Pentagon officials

gave an unusually detailed account of the large number of NATO fighter jets and bombers that were deployed Wednesday to

destroy a convoy of about 10 armored combat vehicles and a staging area for Serb troops in the southwestern part of the

country, between Pec and the Albanian border.

Over a matter of hours, Dutch F-16s fired at antiaircraft artillery batteries and tanks, while F-16s flying off the aircraft

carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt struck at the military convoy nearby in the northern part of the area. French Super

Entendards flying from the French aircraft carrier Foch, stationed in the Adriatic, along with Dutch F-16s and British

Harriers, threw munitions at military and staging areas and armored personnel carriers to the south.

Support for sending ground combat troops to secure Kosovo appeared to grow among an 11-member congressional delegation

that accompanied Defense Secretary William S. Cohen to talks with NATO authorities in Brussels Wednesday. Senators and

House members in the group returned to Washington Thursday saying planning for the ground option should begin in earnest in

the event airstrikes fail and to put added pressure on Milosevic now.

``The option should be on the table not only because we might need to use the troops to achieve our objective ... but because

Milosevic must know we will do whatever is necessary,'' said Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., a member of the Armed

Services Committee.

But President Clinton, denying yet again that the alliance is revisiting its commitment not to send ground troops in the

absence of a settlement, said, ``I believe our present strategy will work if we can keep the allies with it.''

LA TIMES-WASHINGTON POST-04-08-99 2053EDT

yesterday on the Diag with Wolfgang Moehler, a staff member in the biophysics department.

04-09-99