KOSOVO IN CRISIS June 12, 1998 The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript

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NATO has ordered military exercises to pressure Serbia to end its crackdown in Kosovo. Is this enough? After a background report, experts discuss the escalating crisis in Kosovo and the possible options the international community could take. Also, participate in an Online Forum on the topic.

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A RealAudio version of this segment is available. NEWSHOUR LINKS: Online Forum: Should NATO intervene in the war-torn province of Kosovo? Timeline of the Kosovo conflict. June 5, 1998 Albanian Kosovar leaders call off talks with the Serbian government. March 9, 1998 Fighting between Serbian security forces and ethnic Albanians in Kosovo leaves scores dead. April 1, 1997 Civil war spreads over Albania Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Bosnia, and Europe. OUTSIDE LINKS: NATO. The U.S. Department of State. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia Web site.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Once again a Balkan crisis is alarming world leaders. Now it's the Serbian province of Kosovo. Foreign ministers of the six-nation contact group on Yugoslavia -the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy - met in London today. They demanded that Yugoslavian President Milosevic end what Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called the "slaughter" in the Serbian province of Kosovo.

MADELEINE ALBRIGHT: We believe this is his ethnic cleansing and it must stop. Serb actions have transformed the fighting into what is clearly an internal armed conflict, and Belgrade, itself, has internationalized the conflict by taking it to Kosovo's borders. And there are now reports also that they are mining that border.

Escalating tension in the southern province of Kosovo.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: The latest escalation of violence began last month when Serbian forces launched an all-out campaign to clear the Kosovo-Albanian border region of separatist guerrillas. The offensive has flattened entire villages and driven tens of thousands of people into neighboring Albania. Kosovo is 90 percent ethnically Albanian, and it has been a source of tension since it was stripped of political autonomy by Yugoslav President Milosevic in 1989. Tensions between Kosovars and Serbs have been growing since then; but only now--in the wake of the recent Serb offensive--have western leaders begun to threaten military action against the Serbs.

TONY BLAIR: The only circumstances in which we will ensure that President Milosevic responds to diplomatic pressure is if that is backed up by the threat, the credible threat, of the use of military force.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But NATO defense ministers met in Brussels yesterday and expressed fears the map exodus of refugees and the fighting on the Albanian-Kosovo border could destabilize Albania and, eventually, neighboring Macedonia. Trouble in Macedonia could potentially draw in NATO members, Greece and Turkey, on opposite sides.

WILLIAM COHEN: Kosovo is more than an internal problem, it's one that transcends national boundaries. An ethnic conflict in the immediate neighborhood of NATO members threatens stability in the entire region.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Cohen said NATO would stage large scale air exercises near the Kosovo border in Albania and Macedonia as early as next week. The NATO ministers also ordered military planners to prepare further options ranging from air strikes to the use of ground troops.

Disagreement over how to address the crisis.

GEORGE ROBERTSON: Because the events have so disgusted the international community, NATO defense ministers have risen to the challenge. The planning is underway and the message is clear and unambiguous to Belgrade: think again; change your mind, change your tactics.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: In London today, foreign ministers of the contact group also criticized the Kosovo guerrillas' violent tactics. And the foreign ministers announced further economic sanctions on Yugoslavia and approved a set of demands that Russian President Boris Yeltsin will hand to Milosevic in Moscow next week. But Russian Foreign Minister Primakov, also in London for the contact meeting, said his government remains strongly opposed to the use of force to stop the Serbian offensive in Kosovo.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: For more now we're joined by Warren Zimmerman, Ambassador to Yugoslavia as it was breaking apart in the early 90's and now a Professor of Diplomacy at Columbia University; and former Air Force Chief of Staff, Retired General Merrill McPeak. Thank you both for being with us.

General McPeak, what sort of exercises are we likely to see in the coming days?

GEN. MERRILL McPEAK, U.S. Air Force (Ret.): If NATO decides to go ahead and do it, I expect you'll see muscle flexing, perhaps aerial fly-overs, formation flights. We could do air-to-air simulated combat. We could fly transport aircraft across and drop paratroops. We might even do some air to ground attacks using training munitions, although I understand that in Albania, where such exercises would be conducted, at least initially, there are not any good air-ground ranges. But certainly the Albanians could make some real estate available for that purpose. So essentially we could make a lot of noise and make ourselves noticed in Albania.

Mere muscle flexing or serious threats?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Amb. Zimmerman, would this sort of noise and notice make a difference? Would President Milosevic perhaps stop the offensive?

WARREN ZIMMERMAN, former U.S. Ambassador, Yugoslavia: I'm afraid not, Elizabeth. I must say things are going in the right direction, but a show of force is not a use of force, and Milosevic is a man who isn't impressed with shows of force. I think he has read us to being a country and a coalition that is not prepared to use force. So I'm afraid what we're doing is probably not going to be enough, particularly considering his enormously considerable stake in Kosovo.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Amb. Zimmerman, what do you think needs to be done?

WARREN ZIMMERMAN: I think if this ethnic cleansing campaign goes on, we will have to use force, either in Kosovo or in Serbia, itself. I'm aware that there are many down sides to this is probably a more difficult thing to do than we did in Bosnia. But if we want to get his attention and if we want to stop the escalating war there, I think it's the only thing to do.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Gen. McPeak, what are the options for NATO at this point in Kosovo?

GEN. MERRILL McPEAK: Well, beyond-

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Beginning with the air options.

GEN. MERRILL McPEAK: Well, Elizabeth, quite frankly, I think the air option is the only one that has any attraction at all. If we try to move ground forces in there, it seems to me that it's a terribly difficult problem to support them really initially and to decide ultimately what their purposes are. At least with air forces we can establish a clear cut and limited objective. For instance, we might say our objective is to get the fighting stopped. And once the fighting is stopped, you might move ground forces in there in a peacekeeping role. So if our objective is to get the fighting stopped, we have to hold targets that the Serbians regard as valuable at risk. Not as easy to do as the Ambassador says as perhaps it was in Bosnia, but surely there are targets in Kosovo that the Serbians would rather not see destroyed. And so it's a straightforward matter to take these targets out.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What sorts of targets?

GEN. MERRILL McPEAK: Well, for instance, this is largely a police action so far-has been on the part of the Serbian-the Serbian police inside Kosovo and police reinforcements that have come in from Serbia, certainly backed by some regular Serbian forces and some heavy weapons, both tanks and artillery. So at the first flush you could say, okay, let's go after police stations. Those are buildings; they're well identified; they're located; and we can certainly attack them with some precision. Beyond that, you might try to find and take out the individual heavy weapons-the tanks, the artillery, and so forth. This would be a much-- somewhat-- harder target, because these are mobile targets and are moved quite often, at least based on my understanding. So initially, it's a problem of trying to decide what it is that the Serbians put a value on and then increasing the cost to them. I mean, so far this has been a cost-free operation. If you want them to stop what they're doing, you have to raise the ante.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Ambassador, is that how you see the options too?

WARREN ZIMMERMAN: I think General McPeak is exactly right. I think there are-- there are two real obstacles to success. One is that we almost certainly can't launch an air operation in Kosovo without some civilian casualties. In Bosnia the two-week air campaign in 1995 took no casualties. But if we kill Serbs, then because Kosovo is so important to all Serbs and not just to Milosevic.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Explain why that is, please.

Kosovo: an important place in Serbia's national consciousness.

WARREN ZIMMERMAN: The Serbs consider it very much the way the Israelis consider Jerusalem, that is it's the source of their culture, of their history, of their religion, of their Serbianness, and that's why they have supported Milosevic much more strongly on Kosovo than they ever supported him on Bosnia. And the other difficulty is if we attack in Kosovo and Serbia, we are attacking another country. In Bosnia we did it with strong support, in fact, the pleading of the government in power. In this case the government in power is against it. So the analogy here is really not with Bosnia; it's with Iraq, where we invaded against Saddam Hussein's wishes.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Amb. Zimmerman, you said this would be so much more difficult than Bosnia. You just gave a couple of reasons. But why else would it be so much more difficult militarily?

WARREN ZIMMERMAN: Well, I think the main reason I did mention, which is the strong feeling that Serbs have toward Kosovo.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: But just militarily there were lines of-lines that were drawn by the different parties to the conflict in Bosnia. This is very different from that.

WARREN ZIMMERMAN: Yes. This is not a war of fronts. This would be a war, as Gen. McPeak said, you've got to take out police stations and so forth; you would kill people almost certainly. It would be very-and you're facing the Yugoslav Army, which is at least marginally stronger than the Bosnian Serb Army was.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: What about that, General McPeak, would you expect a serious defense from the Yugoslav Army?

GEN. MERRILL McPEAK: Yes. I think Kosovo means more to the Serbs than it does to us. And anytime you get in a fight with somebody who has survival values or cultural values at stake, I think you're asking for trouble. Moreover, there is a geographic dimension to this. I think the Kosovo geography is somewhat more difficult. You don't have a rough equivalent of the Drina river, for instance, to sort of separate Kosovo from the rest of Serbia. A lot of ambiguity there.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Ambassador, if some of these options were pursued, an attack on police stations, for example, or others, what do you think President Milosevic would do then?

WARREN ZIMMERMAN: Well, the best case would be that he would decide to negotiate over the future of Kosovo. With Milosevic we found in Bosnia that you use diplomacy after you've gotten his attention with force. So the hope would-that this would drive him to a negotiated settlement, which would probably leave Kosovo in Yugoslavia but with the Albanians having total autonomy in it.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And what would this do to the guerrillas, this kind of NATO action?

WARREN ZIMMERMAN: This is the big X factor. We support the moderate leadership of Kosovo, which has governed the Albanian part or controlled the Albanian part for over nine years. The guerrillas have radicalized the situation so that that moderate leadership is beginning to lose control. And, of course, the guerrillas don't want any compromise; they don't want any negotiations. They want a civil war that could take over Kosovo.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Gen. McPeak, has NATO waited too long to act? Wasn't there a lesson learned in Bosnia that NATO needed to act quickly to prevent the kind of fighting that we're seeing in Kosovo?

"The real question is the political problem here. What is our objective in Kosovo?"

GEN. MERRILL McPEAK: Well, we waited a long time in Bosnia, I mean, years before we got around to taking effective action to coerce the Serbs into coming to Dayton. So I'm not so sure timing is the big issue. For me, it's a question of political will. The military problem is a difficult one. There are risks. For instance, we could lose air crews in an air action; we could-as the ambassador said-we could have some collateral damage, kill civilians that we don't want to kill. I regard these risks as workable from a military standpoint. The real question is the political problem here. What is our objective in Kosovo? And do we want to see an independent Kosovo? We've said we don't. I take it at face value that we do not. And do we want to stop the fighting, do we want to stop the fighting from spreading? Do we want to consolidate the Serbian position there? What is it we're after? There doesn't seem to be a very broad political consensus on our objectives. And until you have that, you really can't answer the question of what can you do militarily.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Mr. Ambassador, do you agree with that?

WARREN ZIMMERMAN: I think Gen. McPeak has made a very important point here, and the administration has not been good at defining the objectives. Certainly we should not have a military involvement in Kosovo without a clear objective. I think what the administration would want to see is a Kosovo still within Yugoslavia but with the Albanians having autonomy. That's the best solution for preventing the spillover into Macedonia and other places that you discussed earlier in the program. It will be very hard to achieve. Both the Albanians and the Serbs are against it, but it's probably the only compromise that would not be unstable.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Well, gentlemen, thank you very much for being with us.

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