March 25, 1999

CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS: THE OVERVIEW

NATO Opens Broad Barrage Against Serbs as Clinton Denounces 'Brutal Repression'

By FRANCIS X. CLINES

ASHINGTON -- The forces of NATO opened an assault on Serbia with cruise missiles and bombs Wednesday as President Clinton denounced the Yugoslav President, Slobodan Milosevic, for feeding the "flames of ethnic and religious division" in Kosovo and endangering neighboring countries.

	Dimitri Messinis / The Associated Press
	Flames from a Yugoslav military flare light up the Belgrade skyline after NATO cruise missiles and warplanes attacked the country late Wednesday. Slide Show  (8 photos)

The missiles began striking Serbian targets within minutes of Clinton's midday announcement that the long-threatened attack was under way. It was expected to be a broad, sustained barrage intended to stun the Yugoslav leader and punish the military for its yearlong onslaught against the ethnic Albanian separatists of Kosovo.

"Ending this tragedy is a moral imperative," Clinton declared in an address to the nation Wednesday night from the Oval Office. "It is also important to America's national interests."

He spoke several hours after the first explosions of incoming missiles erupted in the night skies of Pristina, Kosovo's capital. The Yugoslav news agency Tanjug said the city's main commercial and military airport had been hit.

[At 5:24 A.M. Thursday (11:24 P.M. Wednesday, Eastern time), all-clear sirens sounded in Belgrade, indicating the end of the raids, Agence France-Presse reported.]

CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS

Also in Thursday's Times The Attack: Early Attacks Focus on Web of Air Defense News Analysis: With Decision to Attack, a New Set of U.S. Goals On the Ground: With Flash in Sky, Kosovars Fear Local Fighting In Moscow: Russian Anger Over Attack Tempered by Need for Cash The White House: In Address to the Nation, Clinton Explains Need to Take Action In Belgrade: Televised Defiance Lost Amid Sirens, Blasts and Fireballs The Serbs: Honor Compels Opposition to Rally Around Belgrade The Alliance: NATO Assures 5 Neighbors That Fear Serbian Attack The U.N.: The Secretary General Offers Implicit Endorsement of Raids The Journalists: Serbs Crack Down on Foreigners Covering Air Attacks Television: War Minus Pictures Puts Crimp in Reports Serbian-Americans: U.S. Kith and Kin Feel the Attack Themselves Albanian-Americans: In New York, Albanians Rejoice Bombing Unlikely to Hurt Yugoslavia's Already Devastated Economy Maps and Diagrams Military Map of Yugoslavia The Attack: On the First Night The Breakup of Yugoslavia Map of Yugoslavia Map of Kosovo Video President Clinton's Wednesday Afternoon Remarks American Envoy Richard Holbrooke (March 23) Slide Shows Allied Assault Over Kosovo, 8 photos The Attack, 7 photos A Rush for Safety and Supplies, 9 photos Albanians Flee as Attacks Continue, 12 photos (March 24) Chronology Chronology of Events Relating to the Kosovo Conflict Weather in Europe Weather in Belgrade Satelite Weather Map of Europe Weapons and Forces Facts on NATO, Yugoslav Forces Descriptions of Two U.S. Bombers Text President Clinton's Evening Address on Airstrikes Against Yugoslavia Text of President Clinton's Afternoon Remarks on the NATO Attack Text of House Support for Kosovo Text of NATO Statement Announcing the Air Strikes Against Serbia Text of British Prime Minister Tony Blair's Statement on Kosovo Bombing Text of Richard Holbrooke Interview on CNN (March 23) Text of NATO Chief's Statement Ordering Airstrikes Against Yugoslavia (March 23) Issue in Depth The Conflict in Kosovo Forum Join a Discussion on the Conflict in Kosovo

The biggest allied military assault in Europe since World War II occurred after a day in which Serbian forces maintained their military pressure against the ethnic Albanian majority in Kosovo. Steady streams of alarmed residents fled toward Kosovo's borders.

Sirens sounded, and the flash and thunder of explosions cut through the night sky of Belgrade and other scattered targets, including Novi Sad, in northern Serbia, and the main airport in the Yugoslav coastal republic of Montenegro. One explosion was reported near Batajnica, the main Serbian airport and military base near Belgrade.

As he explained the NATO attack -- an attempt to solve a problem that Serbia considers purely internal -- Clinton sought to reassure the United States against a commitment to any large-scale ground war.

"I don't intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war," he emphasized. He denounced Milosevic as a dictator "who has done nothing since the cold war ended but start new wars and pour gasoline on the flames of ethnic and religious division."

"We act to prevent a wider war, to defuse a powder keg at the heart of Europe that has exploded twice before in this century with catastrophic results," the President said gravely of the military attack by the 19-member NATO alliance.

In his afternoon announcement of the military attack, Clinton said, "President Milosevic, who over the past decade started the terrible wars against Croatia and Bosnia, has again chosen aggression over peace."

A defiant Milosevic called for defense of his nation "by all means possible," terming Kosovo "only the door intended to allow foreign troops to come in and steal away our freedom."

The Belgrade Government, in denouncing what it called neo-Nazism, called upon the United Nations Security Council to condemn "NATO's criminal, terrorist, underhanded and cowardly attack."

American defense officials said their targets included missile batteries, radar installations and military communication sites in Kosovo, Belgrade and other key areas. Some air-to-air combat was reported by Pentagon officials, who said all NATO planes had returned safely.

President Boris N. Yeltsin of Russia, which has longstanding ties to the Serbs, angrily denounced the American-led raids as "open aggression." Clinton had tried to justify the military action Wednesday in a 35-minute phone call with Yeltsin. But the Russian leader recalled his chief military envoy to NATO.

After months of threats, NATO finally resorted to military action as Milosevic, far from heeding peace overtures, stepped up his latest offensive against ethnic Albanian villages and rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

Since violence began intensifying a year ago, more than 400,000 ethnic Albanians have fled their homes as Serbian forces have torched and bombarded villages, massacring civilians in some raids. In recent decades ethnic Albanians have come to outnumber Serbs by 9-to-1 in Kosovo, which Serbs long have revered as the birthplace of Serbian nationhood.

The ultimate fear about the mounting violence in Kosovo, the southernmost province of Serbia, is that it might reignite the ethnic and religious wars in the Balkans that NATO earlier worked to resolve in Bosnia with the commitment of troops.

Critics who until now accused the Administration of equivocating in facing Milosevic's assault fear that Albania and Macedonia could be drawn into a larger war or even break up if the Serbs are not prevented from an "ethnic cleansing" of the Albanian majority in Kosovo. Even beyond that, it is feared that Turkey and Greece, two NATO members, might take opposite sides.

Trent Lott, the Senate majority leader, voiced qualified support for the NATO attack. "Whatever reservations about the President's actions in the Balkans," the Mississippi Republican said, "let no one doubt that the Congress and the American people stand united behind our men and women who are bravely heeding the call of duty."

The attack was the first uninvited offensive against a sovereign nation by NATO, the alliance founded 50 years ago as the European bulwark against the cold war military power of the Soviet Union. NATO's 17 days of air strikes against Serbian forces in Bosnia in 1995 were conducted at the request of the embattled Bosnian Government against military targets of the Bosnian Serbs.

No detailed casualty reports were immediately available. But scores of Serbian military bases and depots, aircraft and munitions factories were expected to be hit by NATO forces equipped with more than 400 bomber aircraft from European bases, and missile weaponry aboard a half dozen warships in the Adriatic region. The operation marked the first combat use of the B-2 "stealth" bomber designed to elude radar, according to Pentagon officials who said two B-2's had journeyed from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri on a mission to drop dropped satellite-guided bombs.

"Clear responsibility for the air strikes lies with President Milosevic, who has refused to stop his violent action in Kosovo and has refused to negotiate in good faith," said NATO's Secretary General, Javier Solana.

The attack began after Milosevic rebuffed a final peace plea from the United States intended to restore the autonomy that Milosevic had stripped from Kosovo and its ethnic Albanian majority 10 years ago. Under diplomatic prodding, he signed a peace agreement in October but then reneged. The proposed peace plan would include the deployment of thousands of NATO peacekeeping troops in Kosovo.

Denouncing Milosevic for ethnic violence and atrocity, Clinton conceded that NATO forces risked casualties against Milosevic's modernized military. But he warned: "The dangers of acting now are clearly outweighed by the risks of failing to act: the risks that many more innocent people will die or be driven from their homes by the tens of thousands; the risks that the conflict will involve and destabilize neighboring nations."

The NATO attack was authorized after Clinton's envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, paid an 11th-hour visit to Milosevic and failed to persuade him to join the peace proposal accepted by the ethnic Albanians. The military task then was placed in the hands of NATO's Supreme Commander, Gen. Wesley K. Clark of the United States, with orders to deal with Milosevic's authoritarian assault on the Kosovo majority.

"It's the right decision, and we have to see it through all the way," said Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain.

Clinton said the action had three objectives: "to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's opposition to aggression," to deter Milosevic from "continuing and escalating his attacks on helpless civilians by imposing a price for those attacks" and "if necessary, to damage Serbia's capacity to wage war against Kosovo in the future by seriously diminishing its military capabilities."

While Congressional Republican leaders' support of the NATO attack was qualified, Senator John H. Chafee, a Rhode Island Republican, declared, "The danger of inaction in Kosovo -- of doing nothing -- greatly exceeds the dangers of the action begun today."

Representative John P. Murtha, a ranking Democrat and ex-Marine from Pennsylvania with close ties to the Pentagon's senior commanders, predicted a prolonged air war against dug-in Serbian forces. "I think it could go on for a month," he said.

Elizabeth Dole, former American Red Cross president and Republican Presidential aspirant, endorsed the NATO attack. "Because I believe this action can be instrumental in forging a peaceful solution to a dangerous, escalating military conflict, I support it," she said. "The atrocities carried out by Serbian nationalists must be halted."

Commenting on alternatives if the air strikes fail, Senator Mitch McConnell, Republican of Kentucky, said, "Arming the Kosovars would be a lot cheaper, less dangerous to American troops and wouldn't put us in the middle of a civil war."

Clinton, however, maintained that the stakes were far higher than a Yugoslav civil war.

"At the end of the 20th century, after two world wars and a cold war," he said, "we and our allies have a chance to leave our children a Europe that is free, peaceful and stable. But we must, we must, act now to do that, because if the Balkans once again become a place of brutal killing and massive refugee flights, it will be impossible to achieve."