Agence France Presse
NATO faced deep splits over Kosovo conflict: report
LONDON, Aug 20 (AFP) -
NATO's commander in the Kosovo war, Wesley Clark, waged an internal battle against member states which tried to limit air raids during the conflict, according to a BBC programme to be screened Friday.
The US general effectively "sidelined" wavering nations like Germany and Greece, the BBC investigation says.
Appearing to back the claims, Clark told the programme: "I didn't always defer to those who wanted targets withheld."
The programme, featuring interviews with many of the top NATO figures in the air campaign, paints a picture of an alliance split between "doves" and "hawks".
Even by the end of the conflict, member states were apparently unable to reach agreement on whether to launch a ground war to force the Serbs out of Kosovo.
The disclosures leave a notably different impression to the united front NATO sought to portray as its commanders turned up the pressure on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to back down.
NATO drew up three phases in the air war: first, attacks on air defences on some headquarters; second, attacks on Yugoslav forces; third, attacks on power stations and other targets which could be called civilian.
However when Germany and Greece would not support an escalation to phase three, "the commanders simply ignored them", according to the programme.
Despite pledges by commanders only to hit strict military targets during phase two, Milosevic's party headquarters, presidential palace and the main television station were all attacked.
Washington and London combined to quash any suggestion of a suspension to the bombing, telling the reluctant Germans and Italians that there was no point in even putting the idea forward in Brussels.
In another disclosure, US Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott told the programme that splits in NATO were growing by the end of the conflict.
If Milosevic had not given way when he did, Talbott said: "I think there would have been increasing difficulty within the alliance in preserving solidarity and the resolve of the alliance."
He added: "I don't think that it was a matter of days by any means, but, I think it was a good thing that the conflict ended when it did."
The praised "special relationship" between Britain and the United States was not always so cosy either.
Mark Urban, the BBC's diplomatic editor, told the Daily Express Thursday that several non-British officials in NATO said Prime Minister Tony Blair's behind-the-scenes efforts to start a ground war exacerbated tensions.
"That Winston Blair, he was ready to fight to the very last American," a Washington-based official quipped, Urban said.
During the bombing, US President Bill Clinton refused to release Apache helicopters for use over Kosovo because he was too afraid of casualties.
=================== GUARDIAN Friday August 20, 1999 RICHARD NORTON-TAYLOR
Generals led Nato war, not politicians
Nato chiefs ordered the bombing of non-military targets throughout Yugoslavia despite opposition from allied governments, the organisation's top general has admitted.
In the clearest evidence yet that the military planners overrode their political masters, General Wesley Clark, the supreme allied commander, will reveal tonight how he worked out which governments "wanted to push harder, which ones were nervous".
He adds pointedly: "I didn't always defer to those who wanted targets withheld."
His admission in a BBC2 Newsnight Special interview reflects the growing tension during the Kosovo war between Nato's military commanders and governments such as Italy and Greece which wanted to limit the bombing.
The programme also says that when Russian paratroopers seized Pristina airfield in advance of Nato troops, General Clark told General Sir Mike Jackson, the K-For commander, to "confront them". General Jackson is said to have replied: "Not unless you're prepared to see lots of Russian bodies."
The British general has also been reported as telling General Clark: "I'm not going to start the third world war for you."
Frustrated with the high-flying bombing campaign's failure to make any serious impact on President Slobodan Milosevic's military machine, Nato strategists surreptitiously abandoned their preordained three-phase campaign, striking a range of targets, including television stations and power supplies, without the agreement of all allied governments.
Under the original plan, Nato bombers were to target air defences first, then military sites such as barracks, and only then non-military and economic targets that would affect civilians. Escalation from one phase to another was not to go ahead without political consensus among all 19 member governments.
The strategy collapsed because Mr Milosevic held back his hidden anti-aircraft missiles, making Nato's pilots vulnerable if they made low-level attacks. The failure of the air campaign led Nato's frustrated commanders to "really hurt people in Serbia", as General Sir Charles Guthrie, the chief of the defence staff, puts it.
George Robertson, the defence secretary who insisted early on in the war that Nato targeting was strictly controlled by political leaders, admits in the programme that when it became clear that the initial plan was not working, military commanders were given more authority to attack targets of their own choosing.
Well placed sources say General Clark, who claims Nato "never expected a wholesale expulsion" of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, faced a dilemma: whether to go for increasingly protracted but limited bombing or intensify the air attacks.
He opted for the latter, spurred on by fears in Washington and London that the longer the bombing went on, the greater the danger of splits in the alliance.