NATO general: Milosevic may succeed

Henry C.K. Liu hliu at mindspring.com
Wed May 5 07:07:25 PDT 1999


01:32 AM ET 05/05/99

NATO General: Milosevic May Succeed

NATO General: Milosevic May Succeed

By JEFFREY ULBRICH=

Associated Press Writer=

BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) _ NATO's top general says Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic could achieve his objective of driving all ethnic Albanians from Kosovo despite a massive allied air

campaign aimed at stopping him.

Gen. Klaus Naumann, who is retiring Thursday as head of the

alliance's military arm, also said NATO, as a coalition, is working

at a disadvantage because it has had to sacrifice ``surprise and

overwhelming power,'' two key ingredients for a successful military

campaign.

The lack of those two elements has prolonged the Kosovo

campaign, he said.

``President Milosevic's mass deportation campaign appears

achievable,'' Naumann said Tuesday at a final press briefing before

he steps down as chairman of the NATO Military Committee. ``Our

military intervention can and has slowed down the efforts of

President Milosevic's instruments of ethnic cleansing ... but we

cannot stop such a thing entirely from the air.''

Air power cannot prevent a policeman with a rifle from driving

civilians from their homes, the 59-year-old, four-star German

general said.

``I think if he really wants to get them out, and if he uses in

the same way the brutal tactics he has used so far, he may have a

chance to do this,'' he said.

NATO's only recourse is to make it as difficult as possible for

the Serb forces carrying out these deportations.

``What we can do is make life for these people so miserable that they will think twice whether they should continue,'' he said.

Naumann insisted the air campaign is working, but said it is

taking time.

``Quite frankly and honestly, we did not succeed in our initial

attempt to coerce Milosevic through air strikes to accept our

demands,'' he said. ``Nor did we succeed in preventing (Yugoslavia)

from pursuing a campaign of ethnic separation and expulsion.''

Though it is still too early to begin thinking about lessons

learned from the Kosovo campaign, Naumann said the alliance was

going to have to give more thought to making war as a 19-member

coalition.

``We need to find a way to reconcile the conditions of a

coalition war with principles of military operations such as

surprise and the use of overwhelming force,'' he said. ``We did not

apply either in Operation Allied Force and this cost time, effort

and potentially additional casualties, and the net result being

that the campaign is undoubtedly prolonged.''

Still, Milosevic is in a difficult position, Naumann said. While

he has largely defeated the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, they have

not been eliminated, and their numbers are growing.

``President Milosevic is proving to be the best recruiting

sergeant for the KLA,'' he said. ``Consequently, the fighting will

go on, and, if the trend continues, over time President Milosevic

is doomed to fail.''

One of the main difficulties in waging the campaign against

Belgrade has been orders from NATO's political leadership to avoid

civilian casualties, what Naumann calls ``a most unfortunate

byproduct of our military actions.''

He said NATO has flown roughly 15,000 sorties. Of those, about 5,000 have been actual attack aircraft. Each carried an average of three weapons.

``So you end up with some 15,000 or more pieces of ordnance

being dropped, and six went wrong,'' he said. ``I think that is,

all in all, a remarkable expression of the precaution we are taking

to avoid civilian casualties.''



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