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Politics : Bill Clinton Scandal - SANITY CHECK -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Les H who wrote (43754)	4/24/1999 7:38:00 AM
From: JBL	Read Replies (4) \| Respond to of 67261

I think the strike on the Serb TV will not have the desired effects. In fact, I think it was a pretty stupid move from a strategic standpoint. Western journalists will probably feel uneasy about it, as well as a large part of the public in NATO nations. As for the Serbs, I don't think NATO has much credibility with them, and this may even strenghten their resolve to fight. Here is Mr. Blair's analysis : -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- TV attack entirely justified, says Blair The London Telegraph Saturday April 24, 1999 Julian Manyon in Belgrade and Ben Rooney TONY BLAIR yesterday staunchly defended Nato's attack on a Serb state-run television station, calling it "entirely justified". The strike, in the early hours of Friday, was followed later in the day by a cruise missile attack on power transformers in Belgrade, knocking out electricity to some homes. "It is a new class of target," the Pentagon spokesman, Ken Bacon, said. "I think the broad message is that they [Serbs] should put pressure on their leadership to end this." The strikes came as Nato celebrated its 50th anniversary in Washington. Alliance leaders dismissed Russia's peace proposal, refusing even to invite Viktor Chernomyrdin, Russia's peace envoy, to the United States to discuss it. Serb television was still broadcasting last night as Nato planners weighed another strike against the country's broadcasting system in the knowledge that more civilian casualties would be almost inevitable. The attack marks a clear change in Nato's policy. At a press conference on April 9, Jamie Shea, Nato's chief spokesman, had said: "Whatever our feelings about Serb television, we are not going to target TV transmitters directly." But last night, Mr Blair said: "It's very, very important people realise that these television stations are part of the apparatus of dictatorship and power of Milosevic, and that apparatus is the apparatus he has used to do this ethnic cleansing in Kosovo. It's the apparatus that keeps him in power. "And we are entirely justified as the Nato Alliance in damaging and attacking all these targets, and the responsibility for every single part of this action lies with the man who has engaged in this policy of ethnic cleansing and must be stopped." Earlier, Clare Short, the International Development Secretary, had told reporters: "You work in the business of information. You know how powerful information is. And the constant stream of completely false information in Serbia is prolonging the war. It's as simple as that." By yesterday evening 10 bodies had been found in the wreckage of the devastated television headquarters in the heart of Belgrade. Among the dead was a so-far unidentified television technician found trapped but still alive under a giant concrete beam. Doctors were forced to amputate both legs to free him but he later died in hospital. Another victim was Yelitsa Munitlak, a 27-year-old make-up artist who was burned to death in her small workroom. She was identified only by the rings she was wearing. A large section of the television complex - which has long been known as "Bastille TV" for its slavish fidelity to the government - containing the control room was flattened by the blast. When emergency workers first arrived they found two corpses in the mound of rubble. "The wall behind me almost vanished," said one survivor, videotape editor Sava Andjelikovic, his head wrapped in a blood-stained bandage. "We heard the screams of injured people." According to a Nato spokesman, the target was "radio and television nodes supporting the propaganda machine of Mr Milosevic". There is no doubt that the missile strike has greatly impaired the Yugoslav leader's ability to transmit his government's version of events to the Serbian population. This and other attacks on transmitters around the country has made television coverage patchy, a development Nato hopes will progressively isolate the regime and make resistance harder to co-ordinate. However, Serbian television was back on the air in Belgrade within eight hours of the missile attack, broadcasting an anti-Clinton propaganda video.