EmergencyNet NEWS Service-Tuesday, April 6, 1999-09:55CDT

CRISIS NEWS BRIEFS

AUSTRALIA (EmergencyNet News) - Two Australian aid workers missing in Yugoslavia may have been taken captive by the Yugoslav military near the border with Croatia. The chairman of aid group CARE Australia said on Tuesday that CARE Australia workers Steven Pratt and Peter Wallace have been missing since arriving at a Yugoslav-Croatian border post last Wednesday en route to Montenegro to help refugees streaming out of Kosovo.

FRANCE (EmergencyNet News) - NATO's top military chief acknowledged in an interview published Tuesday that alliance air strikes could not prevent Serb atrocities in Kosovo but said the bombing would go on until the oppression ended. U.S. General Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme commander, said Serbian soldiers in Kosovo were worn down and tired but still capable of "terrible atrocities against civilians."

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - NATO said Tuesday it had carried out the alliance's most intensive night of strikes in its campaign against Yugoslav military targets. Yugoslavia said at least five people were killed when three bombs exploded a residential area of a southern Serbian town.

From the ERRI Watch Center

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - A senior NATO official said on Tuesday that NATO aircraft carried out the alliance's most intensive night of air strikes so far in the campaign against Yugoslav military targets. Capitalizing on improving weather and clearer skies, allied warplanes struck at targets from the Serbian city of Novi Sad in the north to mainly Albanian Prizren in the south, hitting barracks, bridges and roads.

The official said: "We conducted four waves of strikes. All planes came back safely. We haven't done that many before. It was our most intensive night yet." He said NATO aircraft attacked a wide range of targets, including the main road from Belgrade to the Kosovo capital, Pristina, to cut off re-supply routes to army and police units conducting the violent mass expulsion of Kosovo Albanians.

Serbian media reports say at least five people were killed when NATO missiles struck a residential complex in the town of Alexsinac. They said a third Danube bridge was destroyed, an oil refinery was hit at Novi Sad and targets in or around four other cities or towns were attacked on the 13th night of allied air strikes.

The NATO official said a Yugoslav Army (VJ) Corps headquarters in the eastern city of Nis, close to the city airport, was attacked and NATO also hit fuel depots, bridges, communications centers and transport targets. Targets in Kosovo itself were also struck including a military barracks near the city of Prizren in the southwest and other ground targets. He said further details would be made public later. 

NATO military spokesman on Monday said the allied attacks were beginning to inflict pain on Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and alliance leaders warned their partners to expect a peace offer from Milosevic at any moment. The Serbian nationalist leader was in touch with South African President Nelson Mandela in an effort to arrange a mediation bid but Mandela turned him down and no details of what terms Milosevic might offer have emerged.

In France, NATO's top military chief acknowledged in an interview that was published on Tuesday that alliance air strikes could not prevent Serb atrocities in Kosovo but said the bombing would go on until the oppression ended. U.S. General Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme commander, said Serbian soldiers in Kosovo were worn down and tired but still capable of "terrible atrocities against civilians."

Clark told the Catholic daily La Croix: "I cannot say how long they can hold on," adding that NATO strikes would go on as long as the alliance needed to attain its goals. The SACEUR said: "Air strikes alone are not enough to prevent the worst atrocities. That will not work. On the other hand, we are able to attack the installations and units used by the Serbs for their oppressive actions. And that is what we are doing. We are attacking and systematically destroying their command and control centers, their anti-aircraft defenses and their capacity to attack the people of Kosovo."

Asked whether introducing NATO ground troops into the conflict could turn the tide, Clark said this was up to the alliance's political leaders rather than NATO military chiefs.

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