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Movement seen on various paths to peace in Kosovo
June 8, 1999
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Clinton on Tuesday predicted passage of a draft U.N. resolution mapping an end to the Yugoslav war as the Pentagon said Serbian troops appeared to be preparing to pull out of Kosovo. "I expect the U.N. Security Council will adopt it," Clinton told reporters, saying he did not expect the resolution to be vetoed. The resolution was agreed on by leading democracies and Russia in Cologne, Germany, as a path to ending the 77-day-old Kosovo war and allowing the return of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees. But caution remained the watchword at the White House. "You can spend way too much time talking about things like optimism, pessimism, what your hopes are," said White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart, adding that officials were waiting to see verification of Serbian withdrawal. Bombs may have helped pave the way to peace. NATO said Yugoslav casualties have been mounting steadily as U.S. B-52s carpet-bombed Serb troop concentrations in Kosovo. And the Pentagon said there are indications that, after 11 weeks and thousands of deaths, Yugoslavia may have had enough. "We have not yet seen signs that Serbian troops or special police forces or paramilitary are moving out, but we've certainly seen preparations for moving out," said Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon. NATO has given in to one Yugoslav demand, that Serbian forces be allowed more than one week to pull out. But NATO has told Yugoslav military leaders that they must get their 40,000 troops out quickly, using designated assembly areas, retreat routes and exit points, to ensure they are not attacked by NATO or the Kosovo Liberation Army. "The KLA has already agreed not to attack the Serb troops as they're leaving," Bacon said. As soon as the Serbian troops evacuate key "zones" in the south, NATO will order a pause in the bombing. Some 20,000 NATO troops will then fly into Kosovo and establish five zones of responsibility. British troops will be first in, taking over central Kosovo. "Everybody agrees that we don't want a security vacuum in Kosovo," Bacon said. NATO helicopters will land on mountain tops to secure the high ground, as the vanguard of the force that will eventually number 50,000 troops moves in.
Pentagon sources say 1,900 U.S. Marines will land Wednesday morning just south of Thessaloniki, Greece, to prepare to move into Kosovo as part of NATO's enabling force.
The Marines are currently on a three-ship task force headed by the USS Kearsarge off the coast of Greece. U.S. officials say the Greek government has granted permission for the Marines to land with their equipment on a beach just south of the port city. The overland trip through Greece to Skopje, Macedonia, is expected to take one day, putting the Marines in Skopje by Thursday. Pentagon sources say the current plan is for the U.S. troops to join up with 500 Italian paratroopers, and for that combined force of 2,400 to take control of the town of Gnjilane in southeast Kosovo. Eventually the U.S. Marines and other troops would be replaced by 7,000 soldiers from the U.S. Army's First Infantry Division out of Germany, who will fly in while their equipment is brought in through Greece and Macedonia. In a concession to Moscow, Clinton said Russian troops would not have to fall under NATO command if they participate in an international security force in Kosovo that would be established under the U.N. resolution. "I don't expect that to happen. But I do expect that there will be an acceptable level of coordination," Clinton told reporters during a picture-taking session with visiting Hungarian President Arpad Goncz. U.S. envoy Strobe Talbott is traveling to Moscow to try to work out an agreement similar to one reached in Bosnia, where 1,500 Russian troops work side by side with NATO forces, but with a separate commander.
Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson warned Tuesday that Kosovo could be another South Korea for U.S. troops and said President Clinton had not told the American public the true cost of the war.
Speaking as the peace agreement was being hammered out in Brussels, Jackson said the Kosovo Liberation Army would see U.S. ground forces "as interfering with their quest for independence and the Serbs see them as occupying forces. Thus, they will be in the cross-fire of a very expensive, volatile situation." "We will be there for as long as we have been in South Korea," Jackson told reporters before addressing the graduating class of Harvard's Kennedy School of Government in Cambridge, Massachusetts. U.S. troops were sent into South Korea on June 27, 1950, and have been stationed there ever since. He said that "every bomb dropped costs $1 million. Every Tomahawk missile costs $1.6 million. We'll spend $25-plus billion for this war. Twice that amount in reconstruction. An indeterminate amount in troop presence and occupation in a danger zone in that country. That's far beyond what the American people have been told to date."
RELATED STORIES: Pentagon: Belgrade bombing could double, triple RELATED SITES: Yugoslavia:
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