NATO escalates attack on Yugoslav sovereignty
NATO intensified its bombing of Yugoslavia on Monday after talks between NATO and
Serbian military officials in Macedonia broke off without an agreement on terms for the
withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo.
“You'll see an intensification of the campaign today, tomorrow and in the
future,” said Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon. He said NATO planes carried out 93
missions Sunday and plans called for doubling or tripling that number over the next
several days. “We're going back to a full range of targets,” another senior
Pentagon official said, implying new attacks on Belgrade and other major cities were in
the offing.
Most of the strikes over the weekend were concentrated in southwestern Kosovo near
the border with Albania, where NATO is coordinating its air assault with Kosovo Liberation
Army forces fighting Serb troops on the ground. American B-52s dropped anti-personnel
cluster bombs and missiles aimed at Serb tanks and artillery.
NATO continued to bomb civilian targets, hitting a number of villages in Kosovo
and the district of Gornji Milanovac. One civilian was killed and another seriously
injured in the attacks, according to the Serb news agency. NATO planes also hit Serb radio
and television transmitters.
As has been the case throughout the 11-week war, US and NATO
officials insisted they were not negotiating with the Serbs, but rather presenting “non-negotiable
instructions.” The price for Serb recalcitrance was more death and destruction.
Later on Monday Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic gave new assurances to NATO
foreign ministers meeting in Bonn that he intended to comply with the agreement he
approved last week, providing for the withdrawal of all Serb troops and police from Kosovo
and the occupation of the province by a NATO-led military force.
NATO leaders and the Western media are depicting the breakdown in the talks in
Macedonia as a product of Milosevic's penchant for stalling and deception. In fact the issues raised by the Yugoslav generals are entirely
legitimate, from the standpoint both of protecting their forces during a retreat from
Kosovo, and maintaining what remains of Yugoslav sovereignty.
According to various press reports on the talks, the
Yugoslav side wanted firm guarantees for the safety of its forces. This is reasonable,
under conditions in which NATO has been arming the KLA and the separatist guerrillas are
champing at the bit to occupy the vacuum left by retreating Serb forces. It is
doubly so given NATO's insistence that it has a right to use force in the event of any
Serb violation of an eventual agreement. NATO would be judge, jury and executioner in
overseeing the entire process.
The Yugoslavs also argued they would need more than the seven days allotted by
NATO to remove some 40,000 troops, tanks and artillery from the province. They cited the
difficulties created by the destructive impact of the NATO air assault on roads, bridges
and rail lines, as well as a shortage of oil caused by NATO attacks on Serb oil
facilities. They proposed a 15-day pullback period.
Another point of contention was the provision, mentioned in the agreement accepted
by Milosevic but not elaborated on, requiring Yugoslav forces to pull back beyond a buffer
zone within Serbia and Montenegro that would separate the Yugoslav military from Kosovo.
The size of this buffer zone was not spelled out, nor was any limit indicated for its
duration. This provision is, on its face, a violation of
Yugoslav sovereignty and opens up the possibility for NATO to impose a “no-go”
area within Yugoslavia similar to the “no-fly” zones the allies have imposed on
Iraq. The Serb generals, however, did not reject the provision. They merely argued
for a buffer zone of three miles, instead of the fifteen miles demanded by NATO.
A further indication of NATO's attitude toward Yugoslav
sovereignty, which is formally acknowledged in the agreement accepted last week by
Belgrade, came when Lieut. Gen. Sir Michael Jackson, representing the NATO military
leadership, instructed his Yugoslav counterparts that they were to withdraw all of their
troops to Serbia, and would not be permitted to transfer any portion to Montenegro, the
other constituent republic of Yugoslavia.
The Yugoslavs apparently balked at attempts to force them to accept the NATO
military's outline for the US-European occupation of Kosovo that is to follow the Serb
withdrawal. They insisted, citing the text of last week's agreement,
that such provisions fell within the purview of the United Nations Security Council, which
is nominally to have overall authority over Kosovo.
Both Belgrade and Moscow want to delay the withdrawal of
Serb forces until after the passage of a UN Security Council resolution on Kosovo, thereby
underscoring the legal authority of the UN, as opposed to NATO. The US and Britain,
on the other hand, want to begin moving NATO forces into Kosovo with or without—and
preferably in advance of—a UN resolution, thereby underscoring the de facto supremacy
of NATO in the Kosovan protectorate that is to be established.
According to some reports, the Yugoslav military leaders
also objected to the demand for the total withdrawal of their forces from Kosovo,
suggesting they be allowed to retain some 15,000 troops. This
apparently took NATO by surprise and suggested differences between Milosevic and his
military commanders. On Monday White House press secretary Joe Lockhart, responding
to a reporter's question, denied there were many indications
Milosevic was not in control of the generals representing Yugoslavia at the pullout talks.
Despite U.S. State Department Spokesman James Rubin’s earlier assertion that
the international peacekeeping force in Kosovo will be under a unified command, U.S. President Bill Clinton has acknowledged that Russian forces in Kosovo
will not be under NATO control. Instead, Clinton said he expected an
"acceptable level of coordination," with Russian forces playing a role similar
to that which they play in Bosnia. U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott will
travel to Moscow to work out the details.
So there is the breakthrough. NATO has consented to a
Russian presence in Kosovo, independent of NATO command. With this resolved – and
thus Serbia guaranteed that it is not simply surrendering Kosovo to NATO and the KLA
– the peace process can move forward. It will be interesting to see the
eventual size of the Russian contingent and where it is deployed. Russia has proposed
sending up to 10,000 troops to operate alongside the estimated 50,000 NATO and UN forces.
A contingent of that size could make a difference in the two key areas over which Belgrade
has expressed concern – northern Kosovo and the Kosovo border crossings. NATO
continues to reject the formal or de facto partition of Kosovo, however, and it is unclear
how returning Albanian refugees would react to Russian border guards. The Russian force
could also ease tension by moving into Kosovo ahead of NATO forces, thereby providing a
buffer for withdrawing Serbian forces. But this is unlikely to occur, since Russian forces
are not likely to be in position in Albania or Macedonia quickly enough to enter Kosovo
first.
