WASHINGTON -- Allied ships and aircraft attacked scores of military targets, from missile sites to barracks, throughout Yugoslavia yesterday in the first wave of a NATO bombing campaign designed to stop the slaughter of ethnic Albanians in the province of Kosovo.

President Clinton said the aim was to weaken the Yugoslav military to the point where it can't commit more atrocities. If the Western allies failed to act now, he said, the tragedy of Bosnia could be repeated, causing heavy bloodshed and regional instability.

"Ending this tragedy is a moral imperative," Clinton said in a televised address from the Oval Office last night.

Operation Allied Force began shortly after 8 p.m. Belgrade time (2 p.m. EST) with U.S. and British naval vessels unleashing a torrent of cruise missiles carrying 1,000-pound warheads, followed by American B-52 bombers launching cruise missiles with 2,000-pound payloads. Serbian television showed flashes in the night sky around Belgrade and burning buildings in Pristina, Kosovo's capital.

The attacks, expected to continue throughout the night, initially targeted Serbia's sophisticated air defenses to pave the way for hundreds of allied bombers and fighter aircraft.

Pentagon officials acknowledged that there was fighting between allied and Serbian aircraft, but they could not confirm a report that a Russian-made MiG-29 was shot down. All allied pilots returned safely after the first attacks, they said.

Yugoslavia's top representative in Washington, Nebojsa Vujovic, said the attacks had caused "a lot of damage."

"The bombs hit bridges, military apartments, there are many casualties," he said on CNN. "There are many deaths, too."

NATO gave unusual written assurances yesterday to five countries neighboring Serbia that the alliance would consider military strikes against them by Belgrade "unacceptable," the New York Times reported. NATO had given the assurances after Albania, Bulgaria, Macedonia, Slovenia and Romania expressed concern about potential threats from Belgrade when NATO warplanes began bombing Yugoslavia.

Allied officials said the airstrikes raised the specter of a serious breach with Russia, because the NATO alliance was attacking a Moscow ally. In a telephone conversation, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin tried but failed to talk Clinton out of military action.

Russia pressed its case before the United Nations Security Council, with Ambassador Sergei Lavrov denouncing the attacks as aggression, and withdrew at least temporarily from the Partnership for Peace program intended to foster better ties between former Cold War foes.

A range of targets

Defense Secretary William S. Cohen told reporters shortly after the initial attacks: "We are striking a range of military targets, including Yugoslavia's extensive air-defense system, its command and control system and the military forces that Yugoslavia is using to suppress the Albanians in the province of Kosovo."

The attacks on Yugoslavia mark the first time in the 50-year history of the Atlantic alliance that NATO has gone to war against a sovereign state.

German Defense Minister Rudolf Scharping said NATO planes had shot down Yugoslav aircraft during a first wave of airstrikes against Yugoslavia.

"Aircraft in the Yugoslav air force were evidently shot down," Scharping told a briefing in Bonn. He did not say how many had been hit. All four German jets involved in the strikes had returned to base, he said.

Cohen and Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, offered few details of the operation or how long it would last, saying only that it was ongoing and included an "extensive" target list.

"Military action is still under way as we speak, and the allied forces remain at risk," Cohen said at a Pentagon briefing, noting that NATO officials will provide more information as the bombing progresses.

Asked about the possibility of using ground troops, Cohen said: "What we have indicated to the Congress and the country is that this is an air operation campaign."

The Clinton administration has said it would send 4,000 U.S. troops as part of a 28,000-member NATO ground force to Kosovo -- but only after a peace agreement.

Since peace talks collapsed in France last week, more than 40,000 Serbian troops, supported by hundreds of tanks and armored personnel carriers, have massed in and around Kosovo, searching out and killing rebel forces, burning towns and villages, and driving tens of thousands from their homes. More than 2,000 civilians have been killed in the past year.

Duration up to Milosevic

The air attacks could last days or weeks, NATO and Pentagon officials said, and will stop only when Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic ends the slaughter of the Kosovars and agrees to the agreement offering greater autonomy to the province, which is 90-percent Albanian. Kosovo's rebels have already signed the agreement.

"I don't see this as a long-term operation," said Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright, predicting that it would end in "a relatively short period of time."

Albright said Milosevic could get the allies to halt the airstrikes if he stopped his assault on Kosovo, stopped "massing his forces" there and indicated he was willing to accept the peace accords mapped out at a peace conference at Rambouillet outside Paris. She left unclear whether a cease-fire or withdrawal was required.

"In Milosevic's case, words don't mean anything," Albright said.

But she said diplomatic channels remained open if Milosevic was willing to take action to satisfy NATO. U.S. envoy Christopher Hill is in contact with Milosevic's national security advisers, she said.

Key to any solution would be Yugoslav acceptance of a peace plan and a willingness to allow a NATO-led force carry it out.

The intent of the action is to "degrade and deter," Albright said, referring to the aims of weakening the Yugoslav military and preventing continued attacks on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians.

U.N.'s Annan critical

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan indicated that he believed that the United States had violated the United Nations charter by acting without Security Council approval.

"Under the charter, the Security Council has primary responsibility for maintaining international peace and security, and this is explicitly acknowledged in the North Atlantic Treaty," he said, referring to NATO. "Therefore, the council should be involved in any decision to resort to force."

Pentagon officials were uncertain whether the attacks by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo on civilians and rebels had been halted by the bombing raids yesterday.

"We remain hopeful that President Milosevic will reverse his course," said Shelton, "but unless and until he does, NATO forces will continue to reduce his ability to use violence against the civilian population in Kosovo."

Cohen and Shelton declined to say how many missiles were launched or the number of sorties flown by aircraft. Pentagon officials said fewer than 100 sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles were fired from more than six U.S. ships in the Adriatic Sea that included the guided missile cruiser USS Philippine Sea. One British naval vessel, the submarine HMS Splendid, also fired cruise missiles.

Fewer than 50 missiles were fired from the B-52s, which flew south from a British air base and unleashed their missiles several hundred miles outside Serbian airspace, an official said. Additional sea- and air-launched cruise missiles were expected to be fired last night, officials said.

Also included in the first wave were a pair of B-2 bombers, a $2 billion radar-evading aircraft making its debut in combat. Officials said the planes flew 15 hours from Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri, aided by midair refueling, and were returning to the base after dropping their bombs. Cohen said the B-2 "performed according to its capabilities."

"It's a stealthy aircraft that can fly in all weather with considerable ordnance aboard," Cohen said. Pentagon officials said the bat-shaped B-2 can drop 1,000-pound or 2,000-pound precision-guided munitions.

After the initial attack phase by the B-52 and B-2 bombers, other aircraft would take part, including the F-117 stealth fighter. The EA-6B Prowler, a radar-destroying jet, would also be used early in the operation.

Some 200 U.S. planes were part of the 400-plane NATO attack force from 11 countries. The British said eight Harrier jump jets were used in the first phase of the campaign. Wave after wave of U.S. attack jets, including F-15s and F-16s, were expected to hit targets throughout Yugoslavia after attacks on the Serbian air defenses.

Despite initial successes by NATO, officials cautioned that allied pilots could be lost in the continuing operations.

'A considerable threat'

"The air defense system in Yugoslavia is very capable, and it poses a considerable threat to NATO aircraft involved in the operation," said Shelton. "We continue to take all measures to reduce the risk to our pilots and aircrews. But there is no such thing as a risk-free military operation."

Milosevic has hundreds of surface-to-air missile sites and anti-aircraft artillery hidden in the rough, forested mountains.

Among the surface-to-air missiles is the SA-6, which has a range of 33,000 feet and was used to shoot down Air Force Capt. Scott O'Grady over Bosnia in 1995. "That's the one we fear the most; it's the most mobile and most lethal," said one military officer.

Milosevic has been moving his missile sites in the past several days to avoid detection by allied aircraft, officials said.

Pub Date: 3/25/99