| NATO drawing up plans to cut off Yugoslav oil imports
Despite bad weather, NATO keeps up attacksApril 24, 1999 WASHINGTON (CNN) -- NATO military planners have been ordered to prepare for inspections of ships bound for Yugoslavia in an effort to cut off the oil fueling that country's armed forces. As NATO's assault on Yugoslavia begins its second month, its staff has been told to draw up rules for a "visit-and-search regime" aimed at ships bound for Yugoslav ports. The inspections are part of an effort to cripple Yugoslavia's military capability by choking off its oil supply. Saturday, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said the procedures for how ships will be searched, and which ships will be boarded, will be developed over the next few days by NATO Supreme Commander Gen. Wesley Clark and then approved by the alliance's political leadership. Despite bad weather, NATO launched a series of strikes late Friday and early Saturday that included an attack on an oil refinery in Novi Sad, a fuel storage facility in central Serbia, three airfields and radio and television transmission towers. Military vehicles in Kosovo were also hit, said Col. Konrad Freytag, a NATO military spokesman.
Shea said NATO considers oil "arms-related material" that is covered by a United Nations arms embargo imposed on Yugoslavia. He did not give a date for when "visit-and-search" missions to interdict oil shipments would begin. "It's very important to us to continue ... to tighten the taps -- to switch off the oil taps completely," Shea said. Yugoslavia's two oil refineries have been rendered inoperable by airstrikes and about 70 percent of its oil supplies destroyed, he said. In what NATO believes is an illustration of the growing fuel problems in Yugoslavia, Shea said there have been reports that the Yugoslavs are siphoning gasoline from cars abandoned by ethnic Albanians who have fled Kosovo. "That's the final act of robbery that they seem to be perpetrating against the Kosovar Albanians who have been forced to flee," he said. Clark also was ordered to carry out intensified attacks on pipelines and tanker trucks in Serbia -- but not to bomb facilities in Montenegro, the other, pro-Western republic that makes up the Yugoslav federation.
Also Saturday, a spokesman for British Prime Minister Tony Blair said that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has put a number of high-ranking military officers -- including generals -- under house arrest. Shea confirmed that report, characterizing the arrested generals as retired. "There are many retired generals in Yugoslavia, because Milosevic retires generals all the time. He doesn't seem to have much trust in them. I wonder if they have much trust in him, and that is the real reason," Shea said. In Belgrade, several thousand people turned out Saturday to mourn journalists and technicians who died in a NATO missile attack early Friday on the building housing Serbian state television. Yugoslav officials say at least 12 people died. And with leaders of NATO countries in Washington for the alliance's 50th anniversary summit, several hundred of pro-Yugoslav demonstrators held a rally Saturday in Lafayette Park across from the White House. They carried Yugoslavian flags, waved the three-finger Yugoslav salute and chanted anti-NATO protests, including "Stop the bombing. Stop the War" and "Hey, hey USA, how many kids have you killed today?" Many in the crowd wore T-shirts bearing bulls-eye targets, which Yugoslavs have adopted as a show of defiance.
Shea also said Saturday that NATO defense ministers have agreed to give Clark "all of the operational assets that he requires in terms of extra assets to prosecute the air campaign with maximum effect." He also confirmed that Clark has been given additional "operational flexibility" to attack a wider range of military targets without having to first seek approval from NATO's political leaders. But Shea said that does not include any decision to introduce ground forces into Kosovo. In an interview with CNN, Albanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo said his country would be willing to let NATO use its territory and facilities to launch a ground offensive against Yugoslavia. "We have a responsibility to collaborate with NATO" as a member of the alliance's Partnership for Peace program, Milo said. But Shea once again emphasized that while NATO is reviewing contingency plans for the possible use of ground troops, any talk of a ground offensive is "premature." "The air campaign is our best means of achieving our objective of degrading substantially the Yugoslav forces and obliging them to quit Kosovo," he said. "There is no other option that can do this as quickly and as decisively."
Belgrade radio said a NATO attack early Saturday morning on Nis, about 200 kilometers (125 miles) southeast of Belgrade, ripped through an industrial zone and knocked out electrical power and running water to nearby areas.
In Novi Sad, Serbia's second-largest city, an oil refinery and the last remaining bridge were attacked in what Belgrade radio said was NATO's 12th strike on the city. Two oil storage tankers were ablaze. Belgrade radio said six missiles were fired at the bridge but it appeared to have withstood the assault. In the village of Bogutovac, near the central Serb city Kraljevo, a fuel depot owned by Beopetrol was struck. Twenty explosions jolted the southwestern Serb town of Novi Pazar, near Montenegro. Belgrade radio also said 15 missiles hit Pristina, Kosovo's provincial capital, causing extensive damage to civilian areas. The Pentagon announced Friday that 2,000 more U.S. ground troops are being sent to Albania -- along with 15 more tanks, 14 more Bradley fighting vehicles and nine more anti- personnel missile systems -- to reinforce a battalion of 24 Apache attack helicopters. The additional deployments will begin next week, bringing the number of U.S. ground troops in Albania to 5,300. Correspondents Brent Sadler and Patricia Kelly contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES: NATO unleashes missile assault across Yugoslavia RELATED SITES: Extensive list of Kosovo-related sites:
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