EmergencyNet NEWS Service-Friday, April 10, 1999-18:18CDT 

CRISIS NEWS BRIEFS

CYPRUS (EmergencyNet News) - A Cypriot envoy said he had failed in talks in Belgrade with Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Friday to win the release of three captured U.S. soldiers, and blamed continued NATO air strikes for the out-come. In a statement in Belgrade that was broadcast live on Cypriot television, the envoy said: "Under the circumstances created and the fact that the message received by the Yugoslav leadership and people is that the relentless bombardments will continue, [they] can't proceed with a new peace gesture."

MIAMI (EmergencyNet News) - The U.S. Coast Guard said on Friday that three Yugoslav sailors were ordered held under guard aboard a docked ship in Florida under a new national security policy aimed at preventing spying and sabotage. Three other ships were forced to relieve Yugoslavian crewmen of duty before they were allowed to enter seaports in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

RUSSIA (EmergencyNet News) - Russian President Boris Yeltsin got tough with the West on Friday, warning NATO not to drag Russia into Kosovo because it could spark a European or even world war. A flurry of high-level contacts between Washington and Moscow overshadowed the failure of an attempt by a Cypriot envoy to win the release of three captured U.S. soldiers.

WASHINGTON (EmergencyNet News) - The United States said on Friday it had been assured by Moscow that Russia would stay out of the Yugoslavia conflict and had not targeted NATO countries with nuclear weapons. A flurry of high-level contacts were made after Russia's Interfax news agency reported that Russian President  Boris Yeltsin had ordered strategic missiles to be aimed at NATO states bombing Yugoslavia.

WASHINGTON (EmergencyNet News) - POTUS accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Friday of presenting an "illusion of partial compliance" with NATO demands in Kosovo by declaring a cease-fire after violently chasing nearly one million ethnic Albanians from the province. The President said the ethnic rout won't stand and NATO airstrikes will continue. POTUS said: "He hopes we will accept as permanent the results of his ethnic cleansing. We will not."

WASHINGTON (EmergencyNet News) - The United States said on Friday it had reports of the systematic rape of Kosovo women at a Yugoslav army training camp and said about 20 of them had been killed. Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said: "We're getting some very disturbing reports out of Kosovo recently of young Kosovo women who are being herded into a Serb army training camp at Dakovica in southwest Kosovo where they are being raped by troops and we have reports that as many as 20 may have been killed in the course of this."

From the ERRI Watch Center

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - NATO unleashed airstrikes against a weapons complex containing the factory that makes the Yugo car. As night fell on Friday, air raid sirens sounded again in Belgrade, signaling a possible start of NATO bombings that have continued despite a Yugoslav declaration that its 14-month crackdown in Kosovo is over.

POTUS accused Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic today of presenting an "illusion of partial compliance" with NATO demands by declaring a cease-fire after chasing nearly one million ethnic Albanians from the province. He said NATO airstrikes will continue.

With the air campaign in its third week, tensions were rising along Yugoslavia's borders with neighbors Albania and Macedonia. Yugoslav forces fired heavy machine guns at Kosovo Liberation Army fighters in a seven-hour clash along Albania's northern frontier. The Yugoslav army later issued a harsh statement accusing Albania of "aggression" against Yugoslavia and saying those supporting the KLA would "have to bear the consequences for the eventual flare up of the war in the Balkans."

In a separate incident, Macedonia reported its forces fired into Yugoslavia after a Macedonian solder was shot and killed on the border a day earlier.

NATO leaders pointed to what they said were successes against Serb police and army units on the ground in Kosovo, which are blamed for many of the atrocities against the province's ethnic Albanians seeking independence from Serbia, the dominant republic of Yugoslavia. General Sir Charles Guthrie, the British chief of defense staff, said today: "Their lines of communication are being cut, their vehicles' assembly areas are being attacked, their supplies are running low and they are taking casualties. They are on a slippery slope."

In a reversal today, NATO acknowledged today that one of its bombs from an attack on the main telephone exchange in Pristina earlier this week caused damage to a residential area. NATO said Thursday that allied bombing was not responsible for the widespread damage in Pristina, saying it was likely orchestrated by the Serbs.

By Steve Macko, ERRI Risk Analyst

RUSSIA (EmergencyNet News) - Russian President Boris Yeltsin on Friday dramatically warned NATO not to draw Russia into the conflict over Kosovo saying that it could spark a third world war.  In his most hardline comments to date the Russian president made clear that his armed forces would not stand idly by if NATO tried to invade Kosovo with ground troops, and he told the alliance: "Don't push us".

Earlier in the day, there were claims by the Communist speaker of the Russian parliament, Gennady Seleznyov, that Yeltsin had ordered Russian missiles to target NATO states. That statement was later denied by more level-headed individuals at the Kremlin, but it was indicative of the deepening anger in Russia at the continuing NATO onslaught against their traditional allies the Serbs.

Yeltsin may have spoken out because of the growing frustration within Russia at the country's inability to stop the NATO airstrikes against Yugoslavia. Truth is, unless Yeltsin and the Russians make outlandish statements, like they made today -- nobody is paying much attention to what the FORMER superpower has to say.

Nevertheless, Yeltsin's comments would appear to represent a hardening of Russia's opposition to the bombing campaign -- suggesting for the first time that Russia would intervene if the conflict escalated.

On Russian television, Yeltsin said: "I have already told NATO, the Americans, the Germans -- don't push us towards military action since that will certainly lead to a European war or even a world war...which is inadmissible."

All day on Friday, there was a flurry of diplomatic activity to seek a clarification of Russian intentions. The U.S. response was more along the lines of "we are trying to SOOTHE Russian concerns in this matter."

The British, as they have throughout the entire military campaign, took a somewhat harder line. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, at a news conference in London, insisted that the NATO action was not intended as a challenge to their position in the region.

Cook said: "There is nothing that we are doing in Yugoslavia or Kosovo that poses the remotest threat to Russia. There could be no logic and no justification in Russia increasing its military posture."

While Yeltsin's comments were not being written off, British Foreign Office sources said they believed they were in part aimed at his domestic critics in Russia who want to intervene militarily on the side of the Serbs. Even though the Russians, today, would have a difficult time invading Bulgaria, let alone fight all of NATO. It was being stressed that despite their differences over airstrikes, contacts were being maintained with the Russians at all levels.

The White House said later it had received "high level" assurances from the Russians that they would not be drawn into the conflict.

Earlier, Britain is to had sought an "urgent clarification" from Russia over reports that Moscow has targeted its nuclear missiles on NATO countries. Cook told a news conference in London that they had no independent confirmation of the reports but they were being investigated.

The British Foreign Secretary said: "We have requested our embassy in Moscow to seek urgent clarification from the government of Russia." 

Britian's Cook said the bombing campaign was taking its toll on Serbia and he predicted that Milosevic would make another "bogus offer of a sham ceasefire" over the weekend. Cook said: "He's feeling the heat and looking for a way out. It would be entirely in his character this weekend to throw out some empty gesture and pose as a man of peace."

Cook said that in the two weeks of the military campaign NATO had conducted 211 attacks on 135 sites - severely disrupting "every point in the chain" of the Serbian military machine. In the most detailed assessment to date of the bombing campaign, said half the Yugoslavian air force's MiG29 fighters had now been destroyed and all its airfields damaged.

Access to fuel has been reduced by 50 percent and attacks on oil refineries meant the Serbs were no longer able to refine crude oil into petroleum. The Serbian air defense system had been severely damaged, with early warning radar and missiles destroyed in the attacks.

The Yugoslavian command and control structure had also been severely damaged, with two of the three main army headquarters completely destroyed.  The Serbian forces are now increasingly having to rely on mobile telephones and other makeshift measures to communicate.

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