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Serbs say Yugoslav water supplies endangered
May 24, 1999
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- NATO missiles have devastated Yugoslavia's power grid and seriously threatened water supplies, Serb media reported Monday. Fifteen NATO bombs hit water pumps early Monday near the northwestern town of Sremska Mitrovica, while Belgrade's water reserves had been cut by 90 percent, reports said. Other pumping stations have been shut down by power outages caused by NATO bombs. "Every effort is being made in this difficult situation to restore power supply to priority users -- hospitals, the water company, bakeries -- in order to alleviate the humanitarian disaster being caused by NATO," Serbia's power company told the Tanjug news agency. NATO began its bombing campaign on March 24 to force Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to comply with an international agreement to resolve the conflict in Kosovo between Serbs and ethnic Albanians, who seek independence or autonomy. "Let the people of Yugoslavia be quite clear," said British Defense Secretary George Robertson on Monday. "The bombing can end at any time. It's in Milosevic's hands and he knows our conditions, which are reasonable and sensible, and nothing less than full compliance will do."
But CNN's Walter Rodgers reported from Belgrade that NATO's relentless attacks appeared to have no adverse effect on the public's opinion of Milosevic. Instead, Rodgers said, Belgrade's citizenry appears increasingly angry at NATO. The alliance, however, continued to report growing disaffection with Milosevic's policies, ranging from anti-war protests in Serbian towns to desertion of some Yugoslav troops. Milosevic balked at a provision in the Kosovo peace plan calling for an international peacekeeping force in the province with NATO at its core. The Yugoslav president has said he would accept a lightly armed force controlled by the United Nations, but NATO insists that nothing less than a fully armed contingent can guarantee the safety of ethnic Albanian refugees returning to their homes. Efforts to find a diplomatic solution to the conflict continue, with Russian Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin, Finnish President Marrti Ahtisaari and U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott scheduled to meet again Wednesday in Moscow. Meanwhile, Isa Zymberi of the Kosovo Information Center said in Brussels that "Albanians in general and Kosovars in particular are 100 percent behind NATO." In fact, he said, Albanians "continue to ask for intensification" of NATO's attacks on Yugoslavia.
On Tuesday, representatives of NATO countries will discuss a possible increase in the number of troops to be deployed as a peacekeeping force when the bombing campaign ends. NATO now has about 13,000 troops, mostly British and French, in Macedonia as part of a future force, called KFOR. The Pentagon said 45,000 to 50,000 troops likely would be needed for that operation, up from an initial assessment of 28,000. The call for an increase prompted protests from Yugoslavia's top diplomat at the United Nations, Vladislav Jovanovic, who called the possibility "a very dangerous new step in the wrong direction." "This is a disguise for invasion, which is in preparation, and nobody can call it a liberation of Kosovo," he said on CNN's "Late Edition." But NATO denied the troops were preparing to invade Kosovo. "Nobody is talking about putting in ground troops into a combat situation," said NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. "Everybody agrees that the air campaign has to run its course until such time as those Serb forces are degraded, diminished, demoralized and on their way out."
"For some time, we have asked NATO to do assessments and updates of plans -- one for entry in a permissive environment and the other, nonpermissive," said U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright on CBS' "Face The Nation" on Sunday. "We are now focusing very much on the entry into a permissive environment." However, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the BBC that NATO must be ready to "deploy troops in a permissive or a nonpermissive environment" -- meaning with or without the Yugoslav government's consent. Cook also said there are signals from Washington that the United States was no longer categorically rejecting early deployment of ground troops. In an opinion piece published in Sunday's New York Times, U.S. President Bill Clinton reiterated NATO's oft-stated view that the air campaign was working, but said he did "not rule out other military options." Also Sunday, sources told CNN that Clinton had authorized the CIA to conduct a covert operation to destabilize the Milosevic government. Correspondents Walter Rodgers, Carl Rochelle and Matthew Chance contributed to this report. RELATED STORIES: Pentagon: No plans for Kosovo invasion RELATED SITES: Extensive list of Kosovo-related sites:
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