WASHINGTON -- For the first time in NATO's 10-day bombardment, its missiles struck at the heart of downtown Belgrade early today, smashing into the defense and interior ministries in an escalation of the allied campaign.
Eight 1,000-pound Tomahawk missiles, fired from U.S. and British ships in the Adriatic Sea, struck the complex that houses both ministries, as well as the Serbian Republic police headquarters, a U.S. defense official said.
After the explosions, the building erupted into an orange inferno, and the scene was broadcast on Serbian state television.
"We can confirm that targets are being hit in downtown Belgrade," said Kenneth H. Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman.
Until now, NATO aircraft and missiles have attacked mostly military targets in Serbia, from air defenses to troop headquarters and supply lines throughout the country.
But in recent days, the allies said they had expanded their target list to include bridges, roads and sites in downtown Belgrade, saying that any facility or infrastructure that aided "ethnic cleansing" in Kosovo was fair game.
The attack on downtown Belgrade was intended, defense officials said, to deliver a powerful psychological message to President Slobodan Milosevic and his nation that they will pay a steep price for the Serbs' aggression in Kosovo.
"I am shocked. ... Stop bombarding Serbia," Vuk Draskovic, Yugoslavia's deputy prime minister, told CNN after the airstrike on Belgrade, saying the Yugoslav government was working with Ibrahim Rugova, a Kosovar Albanian leader, toward a peaceful settlement.
Indeed, U.S. intelligence officials say Rugova appears to be negotiating with Milosevic to eventually become leader of a Kosovo province that has been cleansed of armed rebels and independence-minded civilian leaders, according to Pentagon sources.
The moderate Rugova held a much-publicized and unexpected meeting with Milosevic on Thursday, a meeting that some of his colleagues and Washington officials initially speculated that Rugova had attended under duress.
Intelligence reports suggest that Milosevic may be willing to stop short of completing his "ethnic-cleansing" campaign in Kosovo by placing Rugova as head of a more pliable province, now that he has eliminated much rebel resistance and killed many political leaders and intellectuals.
Milosevic could offer a Rugova-led province some limited autonomy, the reports suggest, something Milosevic would prefer to the self-rule called for by NATO or the outright independence demanded by the ethnic Albanians' Kosovo Liberation Army.
With a hand-picked leader in charge of Kosovo, Milosevic could then press for the NATO air campaign to end, intelligence officials said.
"Until we've spoken to him, we're not going to react to any purported agreements he's made," said a senior State Department official.
During a broadcast of the meeting, Serbian television said only that Milosevic and Rugova had signed an agreement calling for a peaceful end to the crisis by "political means."
Last month, Rugova was part of an ethnic Albanian delegation that signed a peace accord in France that was rejected by Milosevic, sparking the allied bombing campaign.
Rugova has long appealed for a nonviolent end to the Kosovo crisis and was twice elected as Kosovo's "president" in unofficial elections. After Yugoslavia stripped the province of its autonomy in 1989, Kosovo's majority ethnic Albanians set up a parallel government.
Yesterday, Kosovo's leading Albanian nationalist politician, Hashim Thaqi, announced the formation of a self-styled government that excluded those moderates loyal to Rugova.
Thaqi named himself the head of the government, said an announcement on Albanian television, which said Rugova's Democratic League of Kosovo had been excluded from the new government after deciding not to put up any candidates.
Some ethnic Albanians are uncertain why Rugova would sign an agreement that fails to meet their goals, saying it would amount to treason if he did so willingly.
Meanwhile, the Yugoslav state-run news agency Tanjung said military court proceedings had begun against three U.S. soldiers who the Pentagon said were on a routine patrol Wednesday in Macedonia when they were captured by Serbian forces. The investigative judge, Jovica Jovanovic, began gathering evidence, and "more detailed information will be known [today]," he told the news agency.
There has been no word on what charges the soldiers could face or whether Milosevic will let the soldiers call their families, something that Yugoslav media said he would do.
"We know precious little," said Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman.
Though Bacon said the Defense Department still believes that the soldiers were seized inside Macedonia, an investigation will seek to determine their whereabouts. Yugoslav officials have asserted that the three were captured inside Yugoslavia and were thus criminal invaders subject to prosecution.
James P. Rubin, the State Department spokesman, said he was "deeply troubled" that neither Swedish diplomats, who are acting on behalf of the United States, nor the International Committee of the Red Cross has had access to the soldiers -- access that is required under the Geneva Conventions, Rubin said.
Besides today's attack on Belgrade, NATO continued to strike supply lines and Serbian troops whose bloody campaign aimed at one of the last rebel strongholds, in a Kosovo valley, raged on. Thousands more refugees streamed into Macedonia, creating a line of more than six miles.
NATO and Pentagon officials said Yugoslavia is pressing an offensive against the KLA in the Malisevo area and Pagarusa Valley, about 30 miles southwest of Kosovo's capital, Pristina. Officials said the Yugoslav troops are using helicopters and small aircraft in the operation, though the allies are unable to strike such small targets.
"However, the [KLA] has not been defeated," said British Air Commodore David Wilby, a NATO spokesman. "They continue to gather recruits and regroup and regenerate in preparation to re-enter their struggle."
Wilby said Serbian paramilitaries and local militias are also terrorizing ethnic Albanians with looting and pillaging.
NATO and Pentagon officials said there are signs that bombing supply areas may be starting to curtail Serbian military operations: One battle group of the 549th Motorized Brigade was immobilized in the vicinity of Jakovica yesterday awaiting fuel.
Weather again hampered operations that were centered on Kosovo. But Wilby said NATO aircraft and cruise missiles were hitting a "full spectrum of targets," from bridges to military headquarters facilities and staging areas, as well as the support base of the 243rd Mechanized Brigade.
Among the other targets struck include 11 Yugoslav army and special police headquarters inside and outside Kosovo, as well as petroleum facilities, communication lines, bridges and transportation elements used to supply troops in the field.
Bacon, the Pentagon spokesman, said that when the weather clears, allied aircraft, which now include the B-1B bomber, will be able to strike more troops and armaments taking part in operations against the KLA.
The carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt is expected to join NATO forces this weekend rather than go on its scheduled deployment to the Persian Gulf, Pentagon officials said. The carrier's presence
will add 72 support and attack aircraft to the allied armada of more than 400 planes.
The Roosevelt was scheduled to relieve the carrier USS Enterprise in the Persian Gulf. Now, the carrier USS Kitty Hawk is expected to make the shift with the Enterprise, which will head back to the United States as scheduled next month.
Meanwhile, NATO officials said the refugee problem in Kosovo worsens by the day. An estimated 36,500 Kosovars were forced to leave the province Thursday, compared with 21,000 the previous day.
"At the moment, we see a 10-kilometer [6-mile] queue of people at the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia," said Jamie Shea, a NATO spokesman. "That's about 25,000 people who are stacked up, waiting to be able to leave. Many of them have died in that queue, and others have had to cross a minefield in order to get there."
Some analysts now say the bombing is moving into a punitive stage, rather than the earlier goal of curbing atrocities in Kosovo,
and that some NATO members may balk at continued attacks.
"I hope you can hold the alliance together," said retired U.S. Army Gen. George A. Joulwan, NATO's former supreme commander who has pressed for a stronger bombing and the possibility of ground troops.
"It's unfortunate. I hope Kosovo isn't NATO's Srebrenica," said Joulwan, referring to the Bosnian city that the United Nations vowed to protect, only to sit by while the Bosnian Serbs mounted a vicious attack on it.
Pub Date: 04/03/99