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Pastimes : Kosovo -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: George Papadopoulos who wrote (11190)	6/5/1999 8:42:00 PM
From: goldsnow	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 17770

Nato's breakthrough caught the President by surprise By Hugo Gurdon in Washington The dramatic news of Slobodan Milosevic's apparent capitulation has left the Clinton government even more bewildered by the speed of the end game than it appeared during most of the war. White House aides can hardly believe their luck, for the bombing-only war appears to have succeeded just when they were about to concede, implicitly, that it was failing. The President's cautious Rose Garden welcome of developments in Belgrade was squeezed in just before his first scheduled discussion with the Joints Chiefs of Staff about the need for a ground war. "There's no point in pretending," one senior White House official said, acknowledging that none of them expected the end either to arrive or proceed so quickly. Nothing on Wednesday night prepared the White House for the dramatically good news it received shortly after 6 am local time on Thursday, that the Yugoslav dictator had capitulated. Strobe Talbott, the deputy Secretary of State, had given only a neutral assessment of diplomatic developments when he briefed Washington from Bonn. For 72 days of bombing, Mr Clinton; Madeleine Albright, the Secretary of State; William Cohen, the Defence Secretary, and Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser, repeatedly expressed confidence, increasingly often through gritted teeth, that the air war would win the day. But yesterday, when it did, even these masters of spin could not entirely contain their surprise. They had expected Milosevic to "go part of the way" towards accepting the peace deal, hoping to split Nato between doves and hawks. Once again, Mr Clinton's aides are shaking their heads at his Houdini-like escape from a tight squeeze. "He was between a rock and hard place," said one official, "because the bombing was going on and on, and Milosevic was indicted as a war criminal which made it impossible for the US to back off." It is not clear how suspicious Washington is that Milosevic is going to double cross them. Fear of a trap means that now the President has been let off the hook, he is "hanging tough", refusing to celebrate until Belgrade follows words with action. "Believe me, I'm anxious to end the bombing," Mr Clinton said on breakfast television, "but I want to know that our objectives have been achieved." He spoke to Martti Ahtisaari, the Finnish President and chief negotiator, yesterday morning and afterwards said: "I'm encouraged", but admitted: "I will feel much better about this when we have evidence that there is a real withdrawal of Serb forces and when we're moving in." Democrats praised Mr Clinton's leadership. Senator Joseph Biden, who had criticised the President's rejection of ground troops as "foolish", changed his tune. He said: "The President demonstrated the political leadership, courage and conviction to ensure that genocide and ethnic cleansing do not hide behind the international boundaries." But conservatives were sharply critical. Caspar Weinberger, defence secretary under President Reagan, said: "Certainly Nato and the United States are not a winner . . . I don't think we're anywhere near the kind of objective we should have. "The first objective should have been to get rid of Milosevic and I don't think anything short of some kind of additional military action is going to accomplish that." telegraph.co.uk:80/et?ac=000794935006921&rtmo=lSPnAbkt&atmo=rN0xbRrq&pg=/et/99/6/5/wgur05.html