Clinton prepares nation for imminent attack on Serbs
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6.31 p.m. ET (2331 GMT) March 23, 1999 By Barry Schweid, Associated Press
Clinton prepares nation for imminent attack on Serbs 6.31 p.m. ET (2331 GMT) March 23, 1999 By Barry Schweid, Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Clinton prepared the American people on Tuesday for an imminent attack on Serb targets, acknowledging U.S. forces would be put at risk. Congress fell in behind him, shelving a move to keep the American troops away from Yugoslavia.
"I want to level with you,'' Clinton said in a speech to a union group and the American public at large. "This is like any other military action. There are risks in it.''
But he said that patient American diplomacy had reached a dead end and that Serb troops were terrorizing and murdering civilians in Kosovo. "We have to take a stand now,'' Clinton said. "If we don't do it now, we will have to do it later.''
NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana gave the go-ahead Tuesday for the airstrikes, saying all efforts to achieve a negotiated settlement had failed. But it remained uncertain when the bombardment would occur.
Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov dramatically registered Moscow's opposition to the attack by canceling a visit to Washington even while his plane was in the air.
The Senate had been scheduled to take a key procedural vote Tuesday on legislation by Republican leaders designed to keep Clinton from using U.S. military power in the Balkans crisis without support from Congress first.
But after Clinton called senior members of the Senate and House to the White House to receive a report on envoy Richard Holbrooke's failure to budge Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic on Kosovo, Senate leaders shifted gears.
"That is a debate for another time. We are at a critical hour,'' Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., a potential presidential candidate in 2000, told the Senate after the meeting. He said with a bombing campaign imminent, it was no time to undermine Clinton's role as commander in chief.
At the White House meeting and later at a Democratic Senate meeting with members of Clinton's national security team, lawmakers were told to expect the strikes Tuesday evening or Wednesday, depending on the weather, according to participants who spoke on condition of anonymity.
House Speaker Dennis Hastert, R-Ill., invited Clinton to appear before a joint House-Senate session after the attack to explain his decisions on Kosovo. Clinton said he would consider it, said House Republican officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Later, Clinton sent a letter to Congress expressly asking for congressional support for the upcoming airstrikes.
"Mr. Milosevi should have no doubt about our resolve,'' Clinton wrote. "Therefore, without regard to our differing views on the Constitution about the use of force, I ask for your legislative support as we address the crisis in Kosovo.'
Earlier Tuesday, with the airstrikes all but inevitable, Primakov abruptly called off a long-scheduled meeting with Vice President Al Gore. According to White House accounts, Gore called Primakov to inform him of the "worsening situation'' in Yugoslavia and the prime minister had the plane turn around over the Atlantic and head back to Moscow.
Russia, with historical and cultural ties to the Serbs, has long opposed any attack on the Serbs even while joining with the United States and four European nations to formulate the self-rule plan for Kosovo that Milosevic rejected.
In Belgrade, Yugoslav officials declared a state of emergency — one step below a state of war — mobilizing troops and putting the army on a high state of alert. It was the first such nationwide declaration since World War II.
Foreign airlines were halting flights to Belgrade, and the U.S. Embassy, along with most European Union embassies and the U.N. humanitarian agency, prepared to close Wednesday.
"A great tragedy is unfolding here,'' Richard Miles, the ranking American diplomat in Belgrade, cabled Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, referring to the shuttering of the embassy. "This does not make any of us happy,'' Miles said as the 22 remaining American diplomats prepared to evacuate.
Sweden took on a caretaker role, promising to look after any urgent needs of any remaining Americans.
Albright conferred twice by telephone with Solana, the NATO chief, on Tuesday and talked separately with Foreign Ministers Hubert Vedrine of France, Robin Cook of Britain and Joschka Fischer of Germany.
Solana's orders directed Gen. Wesley Clark, supreme allied commander in Europe, to initiate action with the more than 400 allied aircraft and a half-dozen missiles carrying ships at sea.
Solana, speaking at NATO headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, said the attacks would be directed at weakening the Serb army and special police forces and reducing their ability to cause humanitarian catastrophe.
More than 2,000 people have died and hundreds of thousands have been driven from their homes in nearly 13 months of conflict in Kosovo, the southern province of Serbia.
Of the NATO air force of 350 to 400 aircraft, fewer than 200 are American, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said. He did not expect more U.S. planes to be added to the mix of bombers, fighters, refuelers, electronic warfare planes and other aircraft already in Europe to participate in possible airstrikes.
Holbrooke, who in the past brokered a settlement to ethnic warfare in Bosnia and last October talked Milosevic into a cease-fire in Kosovo, reported the Yugoslav president refused to accept a six-nation plan to end conflict in Kosovo with the ethnic Albanian majority. The plan would have included the stationing of 28,000 peacekeepers, including 4,000 American troops in Kosovo.
Clinton, in his speech Tuesday to the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, all but announced the attack would soon begin.
"If you don't stand up to brutality and the killing of innocent civilians, you invite them to do more,'' the president said.
While declaring his nature was to shy away from using force, Clinton said, "We have tried to do everything we could to solve this peacefully,'' but Holbrooke "got nowhere'' in his talks with Milosevic on Monday and Tuesday in Belgrade. |
