WASHINGTON -- Pentagon and NATO officials acknowledged yesterday that a U.S. Air Force F-16 pilot mistakenly struck a civilian vehicle in southwestern Kosovo on Wednesday, thinking he was targeting a Serbian military convoy.

The officials apologized for the attack, which killed an uncertain number of civilians, presumably ethnic Albanians.

But they vowed to press on with even more intensified airstrikes and said the Yugoslav government was ultimately to blame for any civilian casualties caused by NATO airstrikes.

Despite calls in Congress for NATO to consider the use of ground troops, Pentagon officials said there were still no plans to send any allied ground forces into a hostile environment.

Jamie P. Shea, a NATO spokesman, said the U.S. pilot who inadvertently attacked the civilians "was convinced he had the right target" and struck the first vehicle in the convoy.

"The NATO bomb destroyed the lead vehicle, which we now believe to have been a civilian vehicle," Shea said.

Yugoslav officials said 75 people died and more than two dozen were hurt in NATO attacks. Allied officials said they could not confirm those figures.

The incident occurred as the pilot fired on what he thought was a three-truck military convoy outside Dakovica. Pentagon and NATO officials initially asserted that Serbian forces had attacked the ethnic Albanian refugees, either from the ground or the air.

Ethnic Albanian refugees streaming into Albania have told United Nations officials that they have been targeted by Yugoslav planes.

"It has been confirmed by NATO that an error did in fact occur, but it was under extraordinary circumstances with the kind of stress placed upon pilots," Defense Secretary William S. Cohen told the Senate Armed Services Committee. "Any time there's a loss of innocent life, of civilians being killed during the course of combat, it is regrettable."

President Clinton blamed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for the civilian casualties, saying such a mistake was "inevitable" after refugees were removed from their homes and perhaps used as human shields.

"You cannot have this kind of conflict without some errors like this occurring," Clinton told the American Society of Newspaper Editors in San Francisco. "This is not a business of perfection."

Samuel R. Berger, Clinton's national security adviser, told reporters they should keep in mind that after all the sorties flown so far -- a total of 6,000, U.S. officials said yesterday -- allied pilots have suffered just one shootdown and have caused "a striking lack of civilian casualties."

Cohen and U.S. Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the bombing would accelerate.

NATO's supreme commander, U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, has asked the Pentagon for 300 more American combat and supply planes, which would bring the number of U.S. and allied aircraft to more than 1,000.

Today, the Pentagon is expected to announce the call-up of reservists from all services, primarily the Air Force. Up to 30,000 reservists will be called to active duty, Legi-slate News Service reported, an estimate the Pentagon later confirmed.

The defense secretary noted that he should have changed his written testimony yesterday to say there was a "probability" of NATO casualties rather than merely a "possibility."

Cohen also said it was "grotesque" for Milosevic to use Serbian television to characterize the accident involving the F-16 as a NATO atrocity.

"If we allow Milosevic to saturate the airwaves with these kinds of lies and vicious propaganda, then I fear that it's back to the future," Cohen said. "It's back to Orwell's '1984.' "

Asked why the Serbs still have the ability to broadcast television, Cohen said such communications facilities "are slowly being taken down." One NATO military officer said: "We're going to black them out. It's coming."

Also yesterday, Russia embraced a German proposal for a 24-hour halt in NATO airstrikes if Yugoslav forces withdraw from Kosovo, saying that ending the bombing was the key to a peaceful solution. The United States has flatly rejected the proposal.

Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, the former prime minister who was chosen Wednesday to head Russia's efforts to find a political solution to the Kosovo dispute, said he plans talks with Milosevic.

Cohen said the mistaken attack on the civilian vehicle occurred during an air mission that targeted a variety of sites. NATO pilots were coming under heavy attack by anti-aircraft artillery and shoulder-fired missiles, he said.

Serbian television showed two areas of destruction, one on a dirt road and another on a highway. Tractors were included in some of the pictures.

NATO officials, however, questioned the veracity of some of the Serbian reports because the area of attack by the U.S. pilot was along a dirt road and no tractors were seen. There was no NATO comment on any highway attack.

Cohen said information was still being collected.

"We have to make a determination in terms of whether or not Serb forces were intermingled with the civilians that they were flushing out or forcing out of Kosovo itself," he said.

The unidentified F-16 pilot, in an audio tape released by NATO officials, said that after following a line of burning villages, he spotted three green trucks, not far from "the freshest burning house."

He said he consulted with his wingman, made several passes and used infrared imagery that indicated a truck.

"And at this point -- this is about 25 minutes into building the whole picture of the destruction that is flowing from north to south into the town of Dakovica -- and I make a decision at that point that these are the people responsible for burning down the villages that I've seen so far.

"I roll in, put my system on the lead vehicle and execute a laser-guided bomb attack on that vehicle, destroying the lead vehicle."

As the pilot was set to leave the area with his wingman, he radioed another NATO pilot with information about the convoy. But the second pilot instead carried out an attack on military trucks inside an adjacent compound.

Officials are still trying to piece together what happened and have some unanswered questions.

Were Serbian military vehicles in or around civilian vehicles? What type of civilian vehicle was hit, and was it painted to resemble a military one?

Sen. Carl Levin, a Michigan Democrat, asked Cohen whether pilots would attack convoys if civilians are known to be part of them.

The defense secretary declined to specify the alliance's "rules of engagement" but said that every precaution is taken to avoid civilian casualties.

U.S. Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Wald, a strategic planner with the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters this week that military vehicles can usually be targeted if civilians are far enough away.

During their appearance before the Senate committee, Cohen and Shelton were pressed on the progress of the allied air campaign, while senators expressed wide differences on whether ground troops should be committed in Kosovo.

Sen. John W. Warner, a Virginia Republican and committee chairman, said that relying solely on airstrikes and taking the possibility of ground troops off the table sent the "wrong signal" to Milosevic about NATO's resolve.

Sen. John McCain, an Arizona Republican who has repeatedly called on NATO to begin planning for ground troops, said there are questions about whether the air war has been carried out in a "decisive manner."

"How does it make sense, General Shelton, to remove an option -- to tell your enemy before you go into a conflict, that you will not exercise whatever options are necessary in order to achieve victory?" McCain asked.

Shelton said that it was NATO's decision to commit only airstrikes and that there is no support within the alliance to even plan for ground troops.

"The air campaign is proceeding; it is working," Shelton said. "I think that we do need to give it more time."

Cohen said it was important to maintain the solidarity of the alliance, and he denied that the failure to approve troops somehow emboldened Milosevic.

"And we think that the action we've taken has the chance, we think a good chance, of prevailing," he said.

Already, Cohen said, there is "real progress" in the bombing campaign that began March 24. The allies have destroyed 100 percent of Yugoslavia's petroleum refining capacity and 50 percent of the ammunition production capability, Cohen said.

But Sen. James M. Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican, expressed the view of many lawmakers who say the United States is overcommitted in the Balkans.

"I want to do everything I can to stop us from getting into a protracted war," Inhofe said, predicting the introduction of NATO troops into what he termed a civil war. "I'm going to lose. It's going to happen."

"And I'll go so far as to say that President Clinton, even though he has denied it many times, that he's known all along that we're going to have to send ground troops in," he said.

Pub Date: 4/16/99