TARGETING SERB TV

	April 23, 1999
	Correspondent Tom Bearden provides a summary of today's bombing-related events along with an update on the NATO summit.

TOM BEARDEN: NATO wrecked the headquarters of Serbia's state television last night as viewers were watching a Houston television station's taped interview with President Slobodan Milosevic. Yugoslavian officials said ten people were killed and twenty were believed buried in the rubble. A TV station employee said when the bombs exploded, she fell through the floor of one studio into another one beneath it. The RTS Network was off the air for six hours, but is now back on the air. The European Broadcasting Union, made up of 68 broadcasters in 49 countries, expressed concerns about the attack. It noted the center had been used to transmit reports by international as well as local media, but NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea said RTS is a propaganda tool, not a news organization. JAMIE SHEA: We had nothing against the media, but RTS is not media. It's full of government employees who are paid to produce propaganda and lies. To call it media is totally misleading. Its function is not to produce news and information; its function is to incite hatred and to distort reality, not to reflect reality, but to distort it. And therefore, we see that as a military target. It is the same thing as a military propaganda machine integrated into the armed forces. We would never target legitimate, free media. Let me make that point clear. But please, and I'm sure you're not doing this, do not confuse RTS with CNN Center in Atlanta, or BBC Milbank House, or La Masion De La Radio in Paris. They don't have anything at all in common. TOM BEARDEN: At the Pentagon this morning, Spokesman Ken Bacon briefed reporters on last night's strike missions over Yugoslavia. Sea-launched Cruise missiles struck two electric power transformers in Belgrade last night, marking what some viewed as an escalation of the air campaign. KENNETH BACON: It is a new class of targets, and the philosophy behind this was that these were dual-use facilities that powered command and control and other military facilities in the area. REPORTER: Ken, are you increasingly going after what's going to more directly affect the civilian population? KENNETH BACON: The reason that these were selected was because we believe that they are directly tied to powering command and control centers and other parts of the military infrastructure. TOM BEARDEN: Earlier this week, NATO claimed to have destroyed Yugoslavia's capacity to refine petroleum, and Yugoslavia said that's caused an ecological catastrophe. In a letter to the UN, the Yugoslav foreign minister said attacks on chemical, oil, and pharmaceutical industries have released huge quantities of hazardous substances and that thousands of Yugoslavs have been forced to seek medical assistance. SPOKESPERSON: The right honorable Tony Blair, prime minister - TOM BEARDEN: This afternoon the NATO summit meeting in Washington got underway. What was originally planned as a 50th anniversary celebration of the founding of the alliance has turned into a three-day meeting on the Kosovo conflict. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana welcomed the leaders to the opening session. JAVIER SOLANA: The founding fathers of this alliance would be proud of what we have done and what we are doing. Fifty years after its creation, the Atlantic Alliance continues to demonstrate that for us, values have meaning. Even half a century after its founding, NATO remains a community that faces up to challenges. And this is the central message of our anniversary summit, a message that will reinforce the many initiatives that this historic meeting will generate, a message worthy of our Atlantic community. Thank you very much. (applause) TOM BEARDEN: President Clinton told the leaders that after having won the Cold War, the Alliance is now facing new challenges. PRESIDENT CLINTON: As we look to the future, we know that for the first time in history we have a chance to build a Europe truly undivided, peaceful, and free. But we know there are challenges to that vision in the fragility of new democracies, in the proliferation of deadly weapons and terrorism, and surely in the awful specter of ethnic cleansing in Southeast Europe, where Mr. Milosevic -- first in Croatia and Slovenia, then in Bosnia, now in Kosovo -- has inflamed ancient hatreds to gain and maintain his power. He is bent on dehumanizing -- indeed, destroying -- a whole people and their culture and in the process driving his own people to deep levels of distress. But we are fundamentally there because the alliance will not have meaning in the 21st century if it permits the slaughter of innocents on its doorstep. This is not a question of territorial conquest or political domination, but standing for the values that made NATO possible in the first place. TOM BEARDEN: The NATO leaders signed a joint statement at the conclusion of their three-hour private session this morning, reaffirming NATO's determination to prevail against Milosevic. It did not mention the possibility of sending ground troops into battle, a subject on which alliance leaders are divided. Late this afternoon, German Chancellor Gerhardt Schroeder told reporters the issue of whether to send ground troops to Kosovo had been taken off NATO's agenda. Protesters opposed to NATO's air strikes gathered at the Washington Monument. They want NATO to stop bombing and seek a peaceful resolution in Kosovo. On the diplomatic front, Russia's Balkan envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin said he expected to meet with NATO representatives tomorrow to build on what he hailed as a breakthrough in negotiations. Chernomyrdin met with President Milosevic yesterday and announced afterward that Yugoslavia had agreed to the deployment of foreign troops in Kosovo. But Belgrade later said it had discussed only a possible unarmed UN presence in the province. Western leaders dismissed the Yugoslav offer as inadequate. Living conditions for refugees along Kosovo's southern borders remain arduous. US officials have outlined the start of a long-term food aid plan for the Balkans. The open-ended commitment is expected to meet about 70 percent of the needs of a refugee population that could eventually reach 1.6 million people.