Airstrikes against Yugoslavia approved

In Washington, President Clinton sought - and got - support from Congressional leaders for military action and gave a scathing description of Milosevic's treatment of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

"If you don't stand up to brutality and the killing of innocent civilians, you invite them to do more," Clinton said.

NATO Chief Javier Solana did not say when attacks would start, but more than 400 aircraft from allied nations stood ready to begin bombing within days or hours. Half a dozen U.S. Navy ships were ready to launch cruise missiles. "We must stop an authoritarian regime from repressing its people in Europe at the end of the 20th Century. We have a moral duty to do so. The responsibility is on our shoulders and we will fulfill it," Solana said in Brussels, Belgium.

In meetings yesterday with Clinton administration officials, U.S. lawmakers said they were told the strikes could come last night or today, depending on the weather, according to participants who spoke on condition of anonymity.

Citing an "imminent threat of war," Yugoslavia declared a nationwide state of emergency - the first since World War II - and began a massive mobilization of troops and equipment to keep its grip on Kosovo, a southern province where heavily armed government troops have been battling ethnic Albanian separatists for more than a year.

Yugoslavia's defense minister, Pavle Bulatovic, said early today that the country's army and police units have already been dispersed to avoid casualties during NATO airstrikes.

Belgrade authorities urged residents to go about their business normally today, and said schools, public transportation and other services would be working.

"We will keep monitoring the situation as it develops and inform the citizens of what they should do," a member of the city council, Dragan Covic, told the independent radio station B-92.

After two days of fruitless talks in Belgrade, U.S. envoy Richard Holbrooke flew last night to NATO headquarters in Brussels, where he briefed Solana and ambassadors from the 19 NATO nations.

Milosevic, he said, had not agreed to any of the measures the allies were seeking to bring peace.

"He has chosen a path whose consequences he fully understands by rejecting our reasonable, rational requests and suggestions," a somber Holbrooke told CNN.

Solana emerged from the meeting with the NATO leadership and announced he had directed NATO commander Gen. Wesley Clark to launch an air operation.

"All efforts to achieve a negotiated, political solution to the Kosovo crisis having failed, no alternative is open but to take military action," Solana said.

Clinton met top lawmakers at the White House, apparently to secure their support for military action. Lawmakers said later that airstrikes could have come as early as last night - but poor weather was being forecast for Yugoslavia today, a factor that may affect the timing of NATO strikes.

Late yesterday, the Senate voted 58 to 41 approving the decision to launch airstrikes.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair laid out the case for action earlier yesterday to the House of Commons: "We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe, from death, barbarism and ethnic cleansing by a brutal dictatorship."

NATO force is designed to force Milosevic to accept a U.S.-brokered peace plan to provide interim self-rule to the ethnic Albanians who make up 90 percent of Kosovo's 2 million people.

Holbrooke said Milosevic wouldn't even discuss two key points - a cease-fire in Kosovo and Yugoslavia's acceptance of a NATO-led 28,000 member peacekeeping force - which would include 4,000 American troops - to police the deal.

Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov, in a dramatic gesture of opposition, canceled plans to visit Washington as the crisis intensified. Primakov was over the Atlantic, en route to Washington, but turned his jet around and headed back to Moscow after Vice President Al Gore refused to promise that airstrikes would not take place.

Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev said Russia would step up its combat readiness if NATO attacks, the ITAR-Tass news agency reported. But despite Russia's bluster, Moscow has no effective means to prevent the NATO action.

More than 2,000 people have been killed in over a year of fighting in Kosovo, including hundreds since an October cease-fire Milosevic agreed to but soon violated.

The U.N. refugee agency estimates that 240,000 people are displaced within Kosovo - not counting 190,000 who already have left. It also says 25,000 have been forced from their homes in the last few days as Yugoslav troops and Serb police torched villages and farms.

Milosevic's rejection of Holbrooke's mission was delivered formally yesterday during an emergency session of the Serbian parliament.

The parliament unanimously adopted two resolutions, one rejecting NATO troops and the other expressing willingness to review the "range and character of an international presence" in Kosovo after a political agreement on the province was signed.

The general-secretary of Milosevic's Socialist Party, Gorica Gajevic, told the session: "We are not accepting foreign military troops on our territory under any excuse and at any price, even at the price of bombing."

"In case war is imposed on us, we will defend from the aggressors with all available means," she added. "And everybody must know that."

Amid the preparations for war, Milosevic sacked his military security chief yesterday and replaced him with a more compliant ally.

Major European airlines suspended flights into Belgrade yesterday and foreign embassies told their diplomats and nationals to leave. The United Nations' refugee agency prepared to evacuate its personnel from war-torn Kosovo.

Neighboring Macedonia closed its border with Kosovo, stranding hundreds of ethnic Albanian families in the snowy hills near the border.

Serb sources reported fighting yesterday in the Podujevo area of Kosovo and in the rebel stronghold region of Drenica. The northern areas have been the focus of a powerful offensive against separatists by the estimated 40,000 Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.

There also was fighting near Vucitrn in the north, the Albanian-run Kosovo Information Center said.

03-24-99