Sounds there were three incidents yesterday in which Madeleine Albright will be able to congratulate NATO for showing its moral superiority to Milosevic by killing civilians by accident rather than on purpose. (!)
NATO is giving its responses slowly no doubt at least partly to diffuse the news impact.
It sounds as if a small bridge was targetted on market day in the middle of the day, instead of a larger bridge nearby. It was hit again after 15 minutes by the time rescuers had arrived to help the earlier victims.
Then there is the attack on the sanatorium in Surdelica, with another 11 reported dead, and the attack on the convoy of journalists in Kosovo.
All these may either build momentum for an early pause in the bombing or momentum for Carter's strategy of putting more emphasis on ground troops.
Michale Pollak asked:-
>Has there been any indication that Macedonia has shifted from the position
>it has held since the beginning of the war, that it would not allow troops
>to attack Serbia from its territory? Or that Greece has shifted from its
>insistence that it will not allow Thessalonika to be used as a port of
>invasion? My impression from Tariq Ali's most recent article in
>Counterpunch is that both positions have if anything hardened. Without
>changes in those positions, an invasion from Macedonia is a fantasy. The
>only possible routes would be in from Albania, or attacking Montenegro and
>going in through there, or attacking the rest of Yugoslavia first through
>Hungary. In which case I wonder wonder what this targetting story
>represents -- ignorance, wishful thinking, posturing or secret diplomacy.
I would have thought that throughout, this war has developed through a process of movement in which NATO has not been united but Clinton and Blair have calculated at any one time how far the next move can go, and how to prepare for it.
For example less than two weeks ago, Schroeder declared a ground invasion "unthinkable". Blair and Cook got people thinking about it by proposing the scenario of what would happen if the Serb troops were demoralised, lightly armed, but not surrendering. The question was also posed about the need to give a signal to Milosevic even if not acting upon it. Last week the troops were built up to 50,000.
Although NATO continues to hold that the people of Kosovo should look only to them, as condescending saviours, and that the KLA should not be armed, the shelling by Serbs into Albania, has given an excuse for NATO planes to work in close coordination with KLA fighters on the ground in attacking Serb positions near the border. We could still see the scenario develop that if the KLA could secure some land with infantry then the Apache helicopters could move in behind this with safety from shoulder to air rockets.
The Serb repetion of an agreement with the G8 principles today suggests the possibility of an end soon.
All these different stories may contribute to NATO being able to shrug off a day of 20 or more civilian deaths without having to call a pause in its bombing.
What is the peace platform for the demonstrations planned for Washington and London for 5th June? It will not be enough to have even a moderately large demonstration in both capitals expressing moral objection to the war, because that is counterbalanced by moral objection to what the Serbs have done to the Kosovans.
Chris Burford
London