EmergencyNet NEWS Service-Tuesday, March 30, 1999-09:23CST

CRISIS NEWS BRIEFS

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - Western diplomats said on Tuesday that Serbian forces backed by armor and artillery have launched a three-pronged attack on a valley in central Kosovo where 50,000 ethnic Albanian refugees are believed to be sheltering,. One unnamed diplomat said: "VJ (Yugoslav army) artillery began shelling the Pagers Valley this morning and Serbian security forces were using tanks and armored personnel carriers to support the attack."

SERBIA/RUSSIA (EmergencyNet News) - Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov held talks with Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic on Tuesday in an emergency bid to end the Kosovo crisis and NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Russian media said Primakov's team had arrived at President Milosevic's office and talks started at 0300 EST.

WASHINGTON/SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - The United States has ordered more bombers to join NATO's air strikes on Yugoslavia amid reports of atrocities in Kosovo and a flood of refugees trying to escape Serb violence in their homeland. Washington insists that it has no plans to deploy ground troops despite what it calls indications of genocide in Kosovo.

From the ERRI Watch Center

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - Western diplomats said on Tuesday that Serbian forces backed by armor and artillery have launched a three-pronged attack on a valley in central Kosovo where 50,000 ethnic Albanian refugees are believed to be sheltering. One unnamed diplomat said: "VJ (Yugoslav army) artillery began shelling the Pagers Valley this morning and Serbian security forces were using tanks and armored personnel carriers to support the attack. They are trying to break through from three directions, Malesevo, Suva Reka and Orahovac. We think the Serb goal is two- fold: to destroy units of the KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) and to drive the IDPs (internally displaced persons) into Albania."

The diplomatic sources, who are in the Balkans, have previously had access to reliable intelligence from within Kosovo. They said they considered the latest information to be accurate. The valley under attack lies about 31 miles southwest of Kosovo's capital, Pristina.

Reports that Serbian forces have launched a concerted attack on an area with so many refugees will aggravate the West's worst fears -- that Belgrade is proceeding with an explicit campaign to ethnically cleanse Kosovo despite NATO air attacks. NATO officials have vowed to hit government troop concentrations, armor and artillery with tactical air strikes to deter the Serb campaign, but poor weather and rugged terrain are hampering that effort.

The weather over Kosovo on Tuesday was better than the day before but still far from ideal for the sort of precision, "eyes-on the target" strikes that would be required to shatter a ground offensive against the Pagarusa enclave.

Ethnic Albanian guerrillas of the KLA, lightly armed by comparison with Serbian forces, could be expected to delay an offensive, at best, but not to halt it. As ethnic Albanian civilians pull back into areas "defended" by the KLA, there is an increased possibility for significant civilian casualties as a result of combat, in addition to the alleged death squad executions that have marked the past week.

NATO and Western diplomatic sources have said that the KLA's loose command and control structures, under strain as a result of a week of intense pressure from Serbian forces, appear to be intact despite the loss of several regional headquarters. Another Western diplomat said: "They're using satellite telephones run off car batteries and generators to stay in touch with one another and with us."

The KLA, about a year old as a fighting force, has got most of its weapons, including modern anti-tank weapons, by smuggling them across the border from Albania or by purchasing them on the thriving black market inside Yugoslavia itself. Believed to number 10,000-15,000 men, the guerrilla army's problems on the battlefield have stemmed more from poor tactics than inadequate weapons.

On the other side, U.S. and NATO leaders portray the Yugoslav military as a formidable foe, even though the Serb-led army has fared poorly in the three wars it fought since 1991.

Dan Goure, deputy director for political and military analyses at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, said: "One thing the Yugoslav military has demonstrated convincingly in Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia is that it's not capable of offensive operations."

During the current air assault on Yugoslavia, NATO warplanes are encountering only sporadic opposition from Yugoslavia's vaunted air defenses as they proceed to destroy the country's vital military infrastructure. This has perplexed military planners who had predicted that ferocious, Baghdad-style barrages would rise up to meet incoming planes and cruise missiles.

Even though it appears that one F-117A stealth bomber was indeed shot down by the Serbs, the relative ineffectiveness of the defense comes as no surprise to analysts who have monitored the performance of the Yugoslav military in the wars that followed the disintegration of the former federation in 1991. The Yugoslav People's Army entered those conflicts as the fourth strongest in Europe, armed and trained to defend the neutral nation from both NATO and the Warsaw Pact.

A brief conflict in Slovenia in June 1991 ended after the Serb force, mainly composed of officers, was humiliated by the newly created Slovene home guard. The army seized a third of Croatia later that year, after encountering little opposition from disparate groups of volunteers, police and local toughs who tried to defend their newly independent homeland.

But when Croats mounted an organized defense in the eastern town of Vukovar, the Yugoslavs were stopped dead in their tracks. It took massive casualties and three months of the most vicious shelling in Europe since World War II -- which pulverized the town -- before the defenders were overwhelmed.

This scenario was repeated the following year in Bosnia. The army initially seized much of Bosnia, which did not have an armed force at the outset of the conflict. They then proceeded to sit on their positions, shelling surrounded cities such as Sarajevo and inflicting huge civilian casualties. Since 1995, the military has deteriorated further. Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has starved it of resources, preferring instead to fund the huge paramilitary police force that provides his personal security.

FRANCE/SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - A French newspaper said on Tuesday that NATO special forces commandos are infiltrating Kosovo daily on clandestine missions to gather intelligence on Serb forces. The Catholic daily La Croix said separate American, British and French teams of four or five men each were entering the Serbian province with sophisticated communications equipment.

The newspaper said that their main mission was to ascertain if Serb forces were bringing heavy weapons towards the Macedonian border which could threaten NATO troops based there. The commandos were carrying out daily missions, mostly from eastern Macedonia. La Croix said the units involved were drawn from the British Special Air Service (SAS), the U.S. Navy's SEAL commandos and the French army's Special Operations Command (COS).

From the ERRI Watch Center

BELGIUM/SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - A senior NATO military source said on Monday that NATO needs more aircraft and is considering new targets in its race to prevent Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from "cleansing" Kosovo of ethnic Albanians. As was reported by ERRI on Monday, NATO is relying mainly on the U.S. A-10 Thunderbolt tank-buster plane to intensify the air campaign by attacking Yugoslav army and police heavy weapons, tanks and troops conducting military operations in Kosovo.

The U.S. Apache attack helicopter, armored like the A-10 against heavy ground fire, could carry out a similar role if NATO authorizes its use in Kosovo. Apaches are deployed at U.S. bases in Bosnia as part of the NATO-led peacekeeping mission. The multi-role helicopter carries a 30-mm cannon, laser-guided missiles and night-vision optics. It is also designed to knock out tanks and was credited with destroying 278 in the Gulf War against Iraq.

A NATO military spokesman earlier on Monday declined to say whether NATO had refused to authorize Supreme Commander Wesley Clark to bomb the Yugoslav Interior Ministry in Belgrade. The Interior Ministry Special Police (MUP) are Milosevic's chosen tool of repression in Kosovo. They are heavily armed and commanded separately from the Yugoslav Army (VJ).

Clark said on Monday on the PBS Newshour with Jim Lehrer that Milosevic had accelerated a pre-planned drive to rid Kosovo of most of its ethnic Albanian majority in a bid to "present the world with a fait accompli." Clark said that the cleansing operation was moving "very, very fast," and that he doubted that he could assemble a ground force to invade Kosovo before the Serbs would be done with their apparent mission to cleanse the province of ethnic Albanians.

WASHINGTON - U.S. Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen has ordered five B-1B Lancer bombers to Europe for NATO's OPERATION ALLIED FORCE in Kosovo. The planes will be departing the Ellsworth AFB, South Dakota and be ready for air operations no later than April 1.

The B-1B is a long-range, all-weather, strategic bomber capable of flying intercontinental missions without refueling. The B-1B is capable of flying Mach 1.2 at sea level and can carry a payload of up to 84 Mark-82 conventional 500-pound bombs as well as 30 anti-armor/artillery Cluster Bomb Unit's (CBU).

In addition to the B-1B's, four B-52H Stratofortress bombers are flying to Great Britain's Fairford Airbase from Minot AFB, North Dakota to replace some of the eight B-52Hs already stationed there.

WASHINGTON - Defense Secretary William S. Cohen has appeared on

NBC's Meet the Press to answer the question of why Kosovo so important to the United States. Cohen told NBC on March 28 that U.S. and other NATO allies were trying to halt an emerging humanitarian disaster in the region.

"We can't help every country in every situation... We try to help where we can," he said.

Since fighting began between Serb authorities and ethnic Albanians a year ago, more than 2,000 people have died in the Kosovo region. More than half a million people have now been displaced and thousands of refugee's are fleeing to neighbouring nations.

Cohen said, "we're a part of NATO and we've made it very clear that NATO security and stability really is in our interest... because of its proximity, because of our history, because of our alliance, [Kosovo] is important to us." But he added that the U.S. has no plans to commit ground troops in Kosovo and the President has no intent to place U.S. troops in the 'hostile' environment.

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