EmergencyNet NEWS Service-Saturday, April 10, 1999-10:59CDT 

CRISIS NEWS BRIEFS

BELGIUM (EmergencyNet News) - A NATO official said on Saturday that cloudy skies over Yugoslavia hampered overnight bombing runs by NATO warplanes and more poor weather was in store over the weekend. The official said: "It doesn't look like there have been too many strikes. There were strikes aborted because of the weather."

MACEDONIA (EmergencyNet News) - Kosovo Albanian refugees reappeared at Macedonia's border on Saturday, suggesting that Yugoslavia had reopened an escape hatch as it did at a key crossing with Albania overnight. Three days after Belgrade slammed Kosovo's international borders shut, raising fears ethnic Albanians trapped in the province might be used as human shields against NATO air strikes, about 200 families -- the entire population of a village -- flowed into Morina in northern Albania in Saturday's early hours.

SERBIA (EmergencyNet News) - Air-raid sirens sounded a brief daytime alert in the Yugoslav capital on Saturday, hours after NATO airstrikes on a TV tower knocked Serbian TV off the air in the embattled province of Kosovo. NATO sources in Belgium confirmed the strike on the relay station atop Mt. Goles near the Kosovo capital of Pristina. Yugoslavia's state-run Tanjug news agency said the transmitter was hit by several missiles, leaving viewers in Pristina unable to watch state-run television.

From the ERRI Watch Center

BELGIUM (EmergencyNet News) - A NATO official said on Saturday that cloudy skies over Yugoslavia hampered overnight bombing runs by NATO warplanes and more poor weather was in store over the weekend. The official at NATO headquarters in Brussels said: "It doesn't look like there have been too many strikes.There were strikes aborted because of the weather."

He said that despite poor visibility, NATO planes attacked a radio relay tower near the Kosovo capital Pristina. He said results of the raid were not yet known, although the Belgrade-based news agency Beta said Serbian TV's transmitter at Golec near Pristina was knocked off the air by NATO bombs. Pristina residents said three Belgrade channels and a local channel could not be seen Saturday morning. Mobile and landline telephone networks in Kosovo also were not working.

NATO says it is targeting some radio and television relay stations because they are also being used for communications between command centers in Belgrade and Yugoslav forces in the field in Kosovo.

Overnight sorties also hit oil production and storage depots near Pristina and at Smederevo and Valjevo near Belgrade. There was no assessment of the damage. There was no indication of any action against Serb forces on the ground in Kosovo.

NATO planes swept in over the Yugoslav capital overnight, with residents reporting anti-aircraft fire filling the sky and explosions west of the city. Air raid sirens sounded Saturday morning but the all-clear was later given.

Meanwhile, a group of about 1,500 ethnic Albanian refugees from Kosovo were allowed to cross late Friday into Albania. They said they had been chased from their homes by Serb forces. Heightened tensions on Yugoslavia's borders with Albania and Macedonia have also brought fears the conflict could intensify.

In Tirana, Albania, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said Yugoslav troops clashed throughout the day Friday with Kosovo Liberation Army rebels along Albania's northern border. At least four rebels were killed. U.S. State Department spokesman James Foley said the battle erupted when several hundred KLA fighters tried to slip into southwestern Kosovo from sanctuaries  in northern Albania.

NATO Supreme Commander General Wesley Clark said on Friday he planned to request more resources for military operations against Yugoslavia. Clark said: "We're going to intensify and tighten the pressure on Milosevic and his instruments of power." He declined to say what new or additional weapons or forces he would be seeking.

When asked why NATO was not striking more directly at Yugoslav government assets such as its state television, Clark said NATO's target were "evaluated by a variety of people and when we feel that its advantageous to strike them then we will."

Clark said rules of engagement for NATO pilots were restrained by the desire to avoid collateral damage, to protection of air crew and to address political considerations. He said that the air campaign was not one of "totally unrestrictive open warfare, do-or-die, take all the risks."

When asked if NATO would need ground forces in order to prevail, Clark replied: "I have my own military views and beliefs...I am looking very carefully at the mission that's been assigned, what the requirements are, and making appropriate recommendations in the chain of command. As to where the mission might take us, those are political issues which I'm not going to speculate on today. Right now the mission is the air campaign."   Speculation in several quarters continues about the use of ground troops to affect a positive change in  Kosovo.

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