Clinton Pressures Milosevic; D'Alema Seeks Truce as
Bomb Strikes Hospital
By James G. Neuger
Clinton Pressures Milosevic; D'Alema Prods NATO to Stop Air War
Brussels, May 20 (Bloomberg) -- U.S. President Bill Clinton
warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to accept NATO's
terms for a Kosovo peace, or face further bombing damage to
Serbia.
''We will continue our military campaign until our
conditions are met,'' Clinton said in Washington. It's up to
Milosevic ''how much damage will be done to Serbia because of his
delay'' in pulling his troops from Kosovo and agreeing to allow
ethnic Albanian refugees to return home under protection of a
NATO-dominated peacekeeping force.
Clinton's comments came as Serb authorities said three
people died when a NATO bomb struck a hospital in Belgrade,
special Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin reported some progress
in seven hours of talks with Milosevic, and alliance leaders
tried to paper over a row over how to end the Kosovo war quickly.
U.K. leaders suggested ground troops might invade if
Milosevic's forces were too weak to fight. German Chancellor
Gerhard Schroeder ruled that out. Clinton has said all options
are on the table.
Italian Prime Minister Massimo D'Alema opened another
potential rift within the alliance, which has said the bombing
will continue until Milosevic pulls his troops out of Kosovo.
D'Alema proposed suspending the air strikes before a Serb troop
pullout, so long as Russia and the western powers agreed on a
United Nations resolution.
Hospital Hit
Military strikes would resume if Yugoslavia failed to comply
with the UN terms, D'Alema said after meeting with NATO Secretary-
General Javier Solana in Brussels.
Solana tried to dispel the impression of a strategy split,
saying D'Alema's proposal ''is not in contradiction'' with NATO
plans.
Good weather allowed NATO to step up its attacks in the 58th
day of the air war. Yet NATO also hit a Belgrade hospital in a
mishap last night, Agence France-Presse and the Yugoslav agency
Tanjug reported.
Missiles leveled the hospital's neurological wing, killing
three people, and damaged the children's and gynecological ward,
Tanjug said quoting a doctor, Radislav Scepanovic. Two women in
labor were hurt by flying glass, Tanjug said.
NATO said an investigation is under way. One of eight laser-
guided bombs aimed at an army barracks ''was misdirected for
technical reasons'' and hit a building 1,500 feet away, NATO
spokesman Jamie Shea said.
Sweden's embassy in Belgrade incurred damage from bombs that
fell nearby, though there were no casualties, and Spanish and
Norwegian embassy residences also were damaged, AFP reported.
Moscow Talks
On the diplomatic front, Chernomyrdin huddled with U.S.
negotiators in Moscow to discuss the next step in his talks with
Milosevic.
Chernomyrdin said Yugoslavia warmed to the broad formula
agreed to by the Group of Eight earlier this month, calling for
withdrawal of Serb troops from Kosovo, an end to repression of
ethnic Albanians and return of the 1.4 million refugees under
protection of a UN-backed peacekeeping force dominated by NATO.
That's a ''step forward'' -- though major sticking points remain,
Chernomyrdin said, according to AFP.
Chernomyrdin returns to Belgrade next week, and Clinton said
the U.S. is sticking to its demands. ''President Milosevic must
know that he cannot change the fundamental terms we have outlined
because they are simply what is required for the Kosovars to go
home and live in peace,'' Clinton said.
Outlook 'Promising'
D'Alema, facing growing discontent at home with the war on
the other side of the Adriatic Sea, said the outlook for the
diplomatic efforts is ''particularly promising'' and ''the
possibility of such openings should be carefully assessed.''
A draft UN resolution, bombing suspension and pullout of
Serb troops ''could probably be done practically simultaneously,
everything,'' Solana said. ''But we are unfortunately far from
that moment.''
Milosevic has vetoed a unilateral withdrawal and a NATO-
controlled international force. Western diplomats, citing a
string of broken promises by Milosevic during a decade of warfare
in Yugoslavia, say they won't break off the air campaign until
all demands are met.
At the same time, the G-8 -- the U.S., U.K., Germany,
France, Italy, Canada, Japan and Russia -- remained divided over
key planks of a UN resolution. Russia resisted NATO's demand to
control the peacekeeping force and the two sides haggled over the
timing of Serb troop pullouts and a bombing halt, a German
government official told reporters in a briefing.
Airfields Hit
NATO aircraft flew 446 sorties overnight and hit airfields
at Pristina and Batajnica, as well as a radio relay and
communications sites, army facilities, an ammunition plant and
petroleum storage facilities, the alliance said.
The U.S. is set to deploy 24 F-18 fighter planes and three A-
10 tankbusters this weekend in Hungary, which joined NATO in
March, AFP reported from Budapest.
The high-altitude air strikes have hobbled the Serb military,
prompting hundreds of troops to desert, NATO officials said.
Around 500 front-line soldiers bolted in an ''organized
desertion'' yesterday and barged through security checkpoints on
their way home, Shea said.
Yugoslav claims that returning soldiers are part of a
planned withdrawal are untrue and no tanks or armored vehicles
have been pulled back, Shea said. Yugoslav men are seeking to
avoid military service by taking refuge in the capital, where the
government has shied away from a draft for fear of public
disturbances, he added.
Yugoslav authorities have stopped staging ''anti-NATO
happenings'' such as rock concerts, a sign that the public has
stopped buying the official line, Shea said.
Aid to Rebuild
Yugoslav leaders are demanding that the West pay to rebuild
their country after the war, the Wall Street Journal Europe
reported. ''We want a fair political agreement,'' the newspaper
quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Nebojsa Vujovic as saying. ''We
want this region to be reconstructed and for those responsible
for the destruction of our economy to pay for the damages.''
Putting the economy of southeast Europe back together could
cost as much as $30 billion, according to the European
Commission. European Union and regional officials meet in Bonn
next week to discuss a German blueprint for a ''stability pact''
to rebuild the economy and underpin democracy in the region.
Aid to Yugoslavia itself is conditional on the government
adopting market and political reforms, Shea said earlier this
week. Bombs have inflicted $120 billion of damage on the country,
killing 1,500 civilians and wounding 6,000, the state-controlled
Tanjug news agency said.
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