Despite Russian’s Visit, Clinton Firm on Kosovo

WASHINGTON — Despite a round of vigorous diplomacy mediated by a senior Russian envoy, President Clinton declared Monday that NATO intends to maintain its bombardment of Yugoslavia until President Slobodan Milosevic meets alliance demands on Kosovo.

Clinton said NATO would stop the bombing only when Milosevic provides “clear and convincing evidence” that he has begun withdrawing his troops from the Serbian province and is prepared to let hundreds of thousands of refugees back in under the protection of an international force.

Clinton made his remarks shortly before meeting at the White House with Russia’s Balkans trouble-shooter, Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, who has been trying to broker a settlement between NATO and Yugoslavia.

But nothing emerged from the meeting to suggest immediate progress toward a settlement. A senior Clinton administration official, speaking on condition that he not be identified, did not rule out progress over “some days, some weeks,” but he cautioned against expecting a “magic breakthrough in the next nanosecond.”

Chernomyrdin delivered a letter to Clinton from Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin. The senior administration official characterized the letter as containing “some ideas . . . about process, of how this might move forward.”

Emerging from his meeting with Clinton, Chernomyrdin said: “We got closer to a diplomatic solution” after discussing “the circumstances and the conditions” under which NATO would begin a bombing pause. “It’s a very complicated issue. We’ll keep on working,” the former Russian prime minister told reporters.

The meeting in Washington followed NATO’s most intense and sophisticated aerial attacks on Yugoslavia since the campaign began March 24. Using special bombs designed to create massive short-circuits without taking any lives, NATO warplanes temporarily knocked out not only much of the Yugoslav army’s command-and-control capability, but also electrical service to 70% of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic.

The new bombs detonated in the air and produced showers of highly conductive carbon filaments. “NATO has its finger on the light switch in Yugoslavia now,” NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said in Brussels, “and we can turn the power off whenever we need to and whenever we want to.”

Clinton also met Monday with the Rev. Jesse Jackson, who led the interfaith delegation to Belgrade that persuaded Milosevic to release three American prisoners of war Sunday. Jackson gave Clinton a letter from Milosevic, the contents of which were not revealed.

Administration officials were less than effusive in their praise of Jackson’s freelance diplomacy.

“He got them out, he is to be congratulated for that,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said tersely. He added that Jackson’s call for an end to NATO’s bombardment of Yugloslavia, which the civil rights leader attributed to the “arrogance of power,” did not sit well with administration officials.

“We don’t think that this represents our arrogance,” Rubin said. “This represents our response to Milosevic’s evil.”

Medical examiners said the three American POWs, who were enjoying a reunion with their families in Germany, were apparently roughed up when they were captured March 31, and in their initial days as hostages. One suffered two cracked ribs; another had a broken nose.

At the Pentagon, officials said preliminary conversations with the three soldiers supported NATO officials’ earlier charge that the three had been seized inside Macedonia, and had not wandered across the border into Yugoslavia, as the Serbian authorities had alleged.

Clinton, speaking at a joint news conference with Japanese Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi, was asked whether he thought Milosevic intended the release of the three POWs to reap a propaganda victory or to divide the NATO allies.

“Well, the truth is, we don’t know, maybe a little of both,” the president replied. In any case, he added, “you have to judge him by what he does . . . and not just with the soldiers.”

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked by reporters whether the United States might reciprocate by releasing Serbian POWs. She responded that reciprocity was “not the issue” because the American soldiers had been captured “illegally” while serving on a U.N. mission in Macedonia, near the Kosovo border.

In his news conference, Clinton asserted: “We have said that under the right circumstances, we would be willing to have a bombing pause, but we would need acceptance of the basic principles and at least the beginning of withdrawal of Serb forces.”

“Beyond that, there is a great deal to be decided and a lot to talk about,” Clinton added.

Clinton’s top aides quickly cautioned against reading into those remarks a new opening toward a cease-fire.

Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, Clinton’s national security advisor, insisted that the president stood behind the allies’ position of April 23, when NATO asserted that the bombing would not stop until Milosevic had “demonstrably begun to withdraw [his] forces” from Kosovo.

In other developments Monday:

* U.S. Defense Department officials signaled that A-10 “Warthogs” had become the first NATO attack planes to fly lower than 15,000 feet, where they are vulnerable to Yugoslav antiaircraft fire. The Warthogs, officials said, had begun using their tank-busting 30-millimeter cannons, which are effective only at low altitudes.

One A-10 was hit by Yugoslav antiaircraft fire but landed safely in Skopje, Macedonia. No injuries to the crew were reported.

* U.S. Defense Department spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon announced that the first 400 Kosovo Albanians to be allowed refugee status in this country will arrive Wednesday in Fort Dix, N.J., to be followed by another 400 on Friday. The U.S. has agreed to take 20,000 of the hundreds of thousands of refugees who have been expelled from their country.

In Brussels, NATO spokesman Shea said that disrupting the power supply of the Yugoslav army and Serbian police, even temporarily, “complicates their life. . . . The more they are focused on keeping up their command and control, the less able they are to focus on causing mayhem in Kosovo.”

It also complicated the lives of the millions of people who lost their power. Hospitals got by with back-up generators--NATO officials said they had made sure such power sources were available--although many canceled all but emergency operations.

The attack on the electrical facilities late Sunday night appeared to have sent Serbian morale to a new low and bitterness toward NATO to a new high.

“NATO is saying, ‘OK, we won’t drop the bomb on your head, but we’ll kill you slowly,’ ” said Milan Bozic, Belgrade’s deputy mayor. “To deprive a city of 2 million people of power is as good as a death threat--at least for patients on kidney dialysis and babies in incubators.”

Ten of the capital’s 12 largest bakeries, all dependent on electricity, baked no bread overnight. Belgraders are accustomed to fresh bread in the morning, and long lines of angry shoppers formed outside the few functioning bakeries.

“NATO is trying to provoke a riot,” said the 35th person in line at a bakery on Maxim Gorky Street, who identified herself only as Rasa, a 33-year-old doctor.

“This is ugly psychological warfare against a whole nation,” said Sasa Kostic, 32, who did a brisk business selling batteries at a produce market not far from the bakery. “They’re trying to hurt a single man [Milosevic], but they’re hurting the whole nation.”

By midday Monday, engineers had restored nearly half the capital’s power and water supplies, but the power grid broke down again from overload as people ignored broadcast appeals to turn off electric ovens, water heaters and other major appliances.

In Macedonia, whose refugee population is second in size only to Albania’s, 6,000 more refugees crossed the border from Kosovo on Monday, including 2,000 who had spent the past six weeks hiding in the mountains, said Paula Ghedini, a spokeswoman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees. Most of them were housed in a new refugee camp that had been intended for 5,000 but whose population was fast approaching 20,000.

The new arrivals complained of spending weeks under gunfire, either in their villages or in forests. “We were eating grass,” said Bashkim Nika, 26, from the Drenica region of Kosovo.

Nika said he and his family were lucky to have enough money to buy their way onto a bus headed for Macedonia. “A paramilitary man told me, ‘When we are done, there will be nothing left alive in Drenica,’ ” Nika said.

Feride Misini, 35, lost her 14-year-old son in the mayhem of hiding in villages and the woods to keep away from Serbian security forces. Misini, her five children, and her brother-in-law and his family all left their home in the village of Stimlje a week ago.

“We had one choice: Run away or be killed,” Misini said.

Some refugees arriving in Macedonia reported that masked Serbian gunmen had gone on a day-long rampage of slaughter and arson in their village of Slovinje, 10 miles southeast of Pristina, Kosovo’s capital. They said Serbian forces killed at least 32 villagers, buried them in mass graves--then dug them up and forced residents to dig individual graves for the decomposing bodies.

Staff writers Paul Richter and Art Pine in Washington, Alissa J. Rubin in Landstuhl, Germany, T. Christian Miller in Brazda, Macedonia, and Elizabeth Shogren in Cegrane, Macedonia, contributed to this report.

POWs MEET FAMILIES

Freed U.S. soldiers are reunited with their families. A14

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How Bombs Zap Power Grid

NATO dropped spring-loaded bomblets the size of soda cans over Serbia, knocking out about 70% of power across the republic.