WASHINGTON -- President Clinton and other U.S. officials said yesterday that they would "spare no effort" to gain the release of the three U.S. soldiers who were seized while on patrol near the Macedonia-Yugoslavia border, and they vowed to continue the intensified bombing campaign against the Serbs.
Yugoslavia television showed the three soldiers, wearing their camouflage uniforms and appearing bruised and battered. Officials in Belgrade said the soldiers would face trial as criminal invaders in a military proceeding today.
The three were captured Wednesday after radioing that they had come under small-arms fire. Their last transmission: "They're all around us. ... We can't get out."
The soldiers were identified as Staff Sgt. Andrew A. Ramirez, 24, of Los Angeles; Staff Sgt. Christopher J. Stone, 25, of Smiths Creek, Mich.; and Spc. Steven M. Gonzales, 21, of Huntsville, Texas.
The Pentagon said the three, armed with M-16 rifles, were seized inside Macedonia, less than two miles from the Yugoslav border, while driving their Humvee vehicle near the village of Kumanovo. An investigation of their exact location at the time of their capture is being conducted.
Yugoslavia's deputy prime minister, Vuk Draskovic, asserted that the three soldiers had been taken inside Yugoslav territory. They will be treated humanely, Draskovic added.
Yesterday, visiting service members and their families at the naval base in Norfolk, Va., Clinton declared: "There was absolutely no basis for them to be taken. There is no basis for them to be held. There is certainly no basis for them to be tried."
The president drew cheers and applause when he added, "President Milosevic should make no mistake: The United States takes care of its own."
Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said: "We will spare no effort to secure their safe return."
'Prisoners of war'
Yugoslav authorities did not specify charges against the soldiers, saying they would face an investigation by a military court in Pristina, Kosovo's capital.
Cohen said officials did not consider them prisoners of war but rather "illegal detainees." But his spokesman, Kenneth H. Bacon, later in the day described the soldiers as "prisoners of war" and thus subject to protections of the Geneva conventions.
James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said, "We will hold Belgrade authorities responsible for their safety and treatment." Rubin said the Geneva conventions apply "whether or not we're at a state of war."
"Under the Geneva Convention, to subject them to some phony trial, called a court-martial, is just ridiculous," he said.
Rosie Gonzales, the mother of Gonzales, said it was a "great relief" when she saw her son on Serbian television.
"However, of course we realize he's in a bad situation," she said at a news conference in Texas. "They're innocent young men who were over there as part of their duty to their country. It's just not right."
The soldiers were members of a 350-member U.S. force that was part of a United Nations observer mission in Macedonia that ended last month. Those American troops are now performing other duties, including reconnaissance and protection against Yugoslav forces for the 10,000 NATO troops who are in Macedonia as the vanguard of a proposed Kosovo peacekeeping force, officials said.
Administration criticized
The capture led one of Clinton's key Senate allies to bluntly criticize the administration, complaining that the soldiers had not been adequately protected.
"It is incomprehensible to me that the U.S. military would send a three-man patrol near the borders of Serbia," said Sen. Robert G. Torricelli, a New Jersey Democrat. "It was a virtual invitation."
One retired senior officer with experience in the Balkans who spoke on condition of anonymity also expressed surprise that the U.S. soldiers in Macedonia were so lightly armed and that their commanders did not take greater precautions.
"It's strange to me how you'd let soldiers get that close to the border when bombs are falling," this officer said. "It's not business as usual."
One Army colonel in the Pentagon defended the routine patrols, saying the soldiers were experienced in the region, had apparently been a good distance from the Yugoslav border and had never encountered trouble on their previous patrols. "You get a feel for a place," the colonel said.
Asked whether the incident amounted to a breakdown in force protection for the continuing patrols by U.S. troops in Macedonia, Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman, said such a question would be part of an internal Defense Department review. Security provisions for the troops, Bacon said, have been stepped up as a result of the incident.
Allied airstrikes continued yesterday on a wider range of targets. In addition to attacks on Yugoslav troops, armor and air defenses, the expanded list will include roads, bridges and tunnels, along with possible sites in downtown Belgrade.
Clinton said NATO's armada of ships and more than 400 planes will "continue to carry out our mission with determination and resolve."
"Our bombing campaign is designed to exact an unacceptably high price for Mr. Milosevic's present policy of repression and ethnic cleansing, and to seriously diminish his military capacity to maintain that policy," Clinton said.
A NATO diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity conceded that the soldiers' capture would make the allied military task more difficult. But, the diplomat said, "to allow [the capture] to deter the campaign only puts other people at risk."
Target list lengthens
On the ninth day of allied attacks, bombs destroyed a major bridge over the Danube River, in Novi Sad, Yugoslavia's second-largest city, and aircraft attacked Yugoslav military units in Kosovo.
"The degradation of the fielded forces is under way," said U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the supreme allied commander. "This machine is going to be increasingly taken apart as the days continue."
Yugoslav forces, however, continued to pound soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army in a valley southwest of Pristina, where about 50,000 refugees were trapped. Allied aircraft succeeded in attacking some of those Yugoslav troops and armaments.
"What we've seen on the ground yesterday and this morning is a continuation of the general pattern of ethnic cleansing and the attacks by heavy forces, tanks and artillery and armored fighting vehicles, against essentially unarmed refugees, particularly in the Pagarusa Valley area," Clark said.
The United States is sending additional warplanes to the area. Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman, said 13 more radar-evading F-117A Nighthawk stealth fighter-bombers were being added to a force that will include 224 U.S. planes.
Pentagon officials are still weighing Clark's request that the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt be added to his armada. The carrier is expected to arrive in the Mediterranean this weekend, though it is scheduled to continue on and relieve the carrier USS Enterprise in the Persian Gulf.
Yugoslav troops mopping up
Yugoslav troops are fast mopping up areas of resistance by the KLA, defense officials said, and NATO's bombing attacks are revealing the difficulty of fighting a 40,000-member force exclusively from the air.
Maj. Gen. John Druvenkovic, a British member of the now-defunct Kosovo observer force, said NATO planes reportedly destroyed four Serb tanks and an artillery position Tuesday as Serb troops attacked the Kosovar town of Malisevo, forcing the Serbs to break off the attack.
But the next day, Yugoslav forces broke through KLA lines and began clearing the town. Serbs are now concealing tanks and artillery inside civilian buildings, possibly using refugees as human shields, Druvenkovic said. Some armor is reportedly being hidden in a monastery.
Two trains jammed with more than 10,000 refugees arrived yesterday at the Macedonian border, where U.N. refugee officials described scenes of pandemonium, officials said.
Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said the KLA had asked for airdrops of humanitarian supplies. But it was unclear what areas the KLA still controls and whether the delivery planes would come under fire.
Despite the dire situation, there was still no talk of sending NATO ground troops into a hostile situation.
"We have no plans for an invasion or to fight our way in, nor could we possibly credibly claim to have such a capacity in anything short of a couple of months," said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, echoing comments from American officials.
Meanwhile, the United States voiced increasing concern that Milosevic will try to topple the democratic government in the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, further destabilizing the tinderbox Balkan region.
Sun staff writer Jonathan Weisman contributed to this article.
Pub Date: 4/02/99