WASHINGTON -- NATO allies concluded their 50th anniversary summit yesterday with a new pledge of military protection and economic aid to Yugoslavia's fragile neighbors, but they reached no clear agreement on how to ratchet up the pressure on Serbia beyond an intensified bombing campaign.
The 19-member NATO alliance "reaffirmed our determination repeatedly to intensify our actions, military and economic, until we achieve our objectives in Kosovo," President Clinton said yesterday evening. "On this, the alliance leaves Washington more united even than it was when we came here."
The summit, however, ended much the way it started: with stern statements of resolve to continue the air war over Yugoslavia, now in its 34th day, but with no significant changes in strategy. NATO leaders could not hide their differences over the introduction of ground troops or the interdiction of oil supplies heading for Serbia.
Still, holding the alliance together on the air campaign may have been the summit's main -- and most important -- objective.
"I anticipated that perhaps there might be cracks here or cracks there, or fault lines here or fault lines there," admitted National Security Adviser Samuel R. Berger. "There were no fault lines when it came to whether the 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo needed to be reversed. They stood as one."
Airstrikes continue
NATO warplanes again knocked Serbian television off the air, temporarily, while striking airfields, fuel storage depots, highway and railroad bridges, artillery and armored personnel carriers. A second wave of Apache tank-killing helicopters swooped into Albania yesterday to bolster the air campaign's firepower.
And after visiting troops in Albania, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, NATO's supreme commander, again declared that the alliance is winning its campaign against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.
Yet for all the upbeat military assessments and stern political pronouncements, Milosevic's campaign to rid Kosovo of the ethnic Albanians that once made up 90 percent of its population continues. Kosovo refugees reaching Macedonia yesterday told relief workers of Serbian paramilitaries entering villages, ordering residents out of their homes and opening fire on them.
The rebel Kosovo Liberation Army gave a rare news conference in Albania to appeal to NATO for arms and to ask that the United States' 24 Apache helicopters in Albania be sent into combat immediately. While NATO military and political leaders pledged to deploy the Apaches soon, they remained opposed to arming the rebel KLA, despite the continuing slaughter.
"As long as there are Serb paramilitaries in Kosovo, there will continue to be 'ethnic cleansing,' " conceded NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. "There will be massacres, rapes, shootings and the whole thing will go on."
Jackson to go to Belgrade
In the absence of diplomatic progress, White House aides confirmed that the Rev. Jesse Jackson was preparing to lead a delegation of Protestant and Orthodox clergy members to Belgrade as early as this week, to work for the release of three captured U.S. servicemen and to probe for solutions to the crisis.
President Clinton spoke with Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin by telephone for nearly an hour to try to soothe Russian concerns about the bombing, and to encourage Russian efforts to continue mediation. And Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott left for Moscow to discuss diplomatic efforts with Russia's envoy to the Balkans, Viktor Chernomyrdin.
Yeltsin and the Russians are "very serious about trying to find a peaceful solution," Berger told CNN. "President Clinton encouraged President Yeltsin to do so and I think there will be continuing contacts over the days ahead."
Yet efforts to go beyond the air war -- either militarily or diplomatically -- appear to be stymied, at least for now. Even German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, who has led efforts to find a diplomatic solution, said yesterday that his call for a meeting of foreign ministers of the Group of Eight industrial powers on Kosovo will not be held until Russia moves closer to NATO's position on the conflict.
The bombing campaign now seems to be the lowest common denominator for a fractious alliance that cannot agree on how to stop oil shipments into Yugoslavia, much less how to mount a ground-force invasion of the devastated Serbian province of Kosovo.
Sending a message
The NATO summit could show Milosevic what British Foreign Minister Robin Cook called "a clear platform to send the loud message to Belgrade of our determination to prevail."
"It is quite possible that President Milosevic thought this summit would shatter into 19 pieces," said British Defense Minister George Robertson. "If so, the smile on his face must have been wiped off."
Still, under intense media scrutiny, the cracks could not be kept hidden, especially after President Clinton pushed an oil blockade for Yugoslavia, including armed interdiction of ships on the high seas, if necessary. The United States and Britain claimed NATO had the legal authority to impose such a blockade because of a long-standing United Nations arms embargo targeting Yugoslavia.
But both Germany and France balked, fearing the prospect of an armed conflict with Russia, which has vowed to keep supplying Yugoslavia with fuel. Their leaders insist that interdiction would have to be approved by the United Nations Security Council.
"NATO cannot and will not be able to act without the authorization of this international organization," French President Jacques Chirac said.
A White House official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said NATO defense ministers were examining three potential avenues to stop the flow of oil, including interdiction at sea, the mining or bombing of facilities at Yugoslavia's main port in Montenegro, or the concerted targeting of supply routes from Montenegro into Serbia.
Enforcement is the problem
The foreign ministers of the European Union will gather in Luxembourg today to ratify the EU's oil embargo against Yugoslavia. But it will be up to NATO defense ministers to decide how the embargo will be enforced, and Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said he was not sure when that decision would be reached.
Chirac proposed yesterday that interdiction be limited to ships belonging to European Union countries as a way of avoiding confrontation with Moscow. But the White House remained resolute.
"Once we have a system in place we expect the Russians to comply with it, as the case [would be] for any nation," Berger said.
The question of ground troops was even more contentious, so much so that debate on the issue rarely broke into public view. German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder again insisted no invasion could take place without the United Nations' consent.
"Military interventions must be legalized by a U.N. mandate as a rule," the German leader said.
The logistics of such an invasion were further complicated by the opposition of Hungary, one of three newly elected members of NATO and the only member of the alliance that borders Yugoslavia. Military planners have concluded that Hungary's flat, open border would provide a far easier entry point to Serbia than the mountainous passages into Kosovo from Albania and Macedonia.
But Hungarian Foreign Minister Janos Martonyi -- citing opinion polls that show 72 percent of Hungarians oppose a ground war -- said yesterday that there have been no discussions of NATO troop deployments in his country. He rejected even a defensive deployment on the Hungarian border, calling it "an absurdity" that Serbia could pose a military threat to his country.
NATO leaders did appear to secure the support of seven neighboring nations bearing the economic and political costs of the air war and the flood of refugees streaming out of Kosovo. In exchange for their cooperation, NATO promised Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania and Slovenia short-term security guarantees, long-term economic support and the possibility of NATO membership.
"The nations of the region have risked, and even faced, armed confrontation with Serbia by facilitating and supporting our campaign to end the bloodshed in Kosovo," Clinton said.
Added Shea: "They need help, and we are giving it to them."
Reconstruction plan urged
H ungary's Martonyi proposed a new reconstruction agency for all of southeastern Europe, including a Democratic Serbia, as a "message to the Serbian people that there is an alternative to war."
Clinton, who has long backed a "mini-Marshall plan" to rebuild the Balkans and foster democracy, again embraced a postwar reconstruction effort that still seems far away.
"We cannot expect for people to stop being drawn back to old ways resting on ethnic and religious divisions, unless there is a far more powerful magnet out there before them," Clinton said.
Hundreds of thousands of Kosovar refugees, as well as thousands of allied troops, have poured into Albania and Macedonia. Romania and Slovenia have opened their airspace to NATO warplanes and humanitarian flights -- a gesture expected by Bulgaria today.
Croatia, Bulgaria and Bosnia-Herzegovina are cooperating with enforcement of an economic embargo against Yugoslavia. That blockade is expected to tighten in the days ahead with NATO enforcement of a "visit and search regime" on ships at sea.