Shultz Urges U.S. Air Strikes to Stop Serbs : Bosnia: Former secretary of state says U.N. diplomacy has failed to halt aggression.

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz declared Monday that the United Nations’ diplomacy has failed in the former Yugoslav federation and called on the Clinton Administration to launch large-scale air strikes against Serbian military targets in both Bosnia and Serbia.

“We should be ready to use air and naval power, and we should be ready to use it (against) gun emplacements, at supply lines, at military depots, at military training facilities,” Shultz said in an interview. “We shouldn’t confine ourselves to just the immediate area of fighting by a long shot.

“You’ve got to be ready to use sustained air power. You’ve got to be ready to use missiles from ships to decapitate the military capacity of the Serbs,” he added.

Shultz, who served under President Ronald Reagan from 1982 until 1989, said he believes that the United States should use force against Serbia because its government is supporting military aggression by Bosnia’s ethnic Serbs.

“The Serbs have made suckers out of the U.N.,” Shultz said.

“They have said, ‘Don’t use force, it might disrupt the U.N. negotiations.’ And at the same time they have been murdering, raping and using all kinds of force.

“Force is being used every day; it’s just that there’s no counterforce,” he said, reddening and speaking forcefully. “You can see I feel a sense of fury over this.”

His remarks echoed sentiment among some members of Congress and some high-ranking Clinton Administration officials--including U.N. Ambassador Madeleine Albright--who have argued that air strikes are necessary to stop the slaughter of Bosnian Muslims.

Other Administration officials, including Secretary of State Warren Christopher and Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, have warned that air strikes would inject the United States directly into Bosnia’s internecine war without a clear goal.

Shultz said that he, like top officials in the Administration, does not support the use of U.S. ground troops in Bosnia and said that it would not be necessary if the United States “kept pounding away” with air power “like Desert Storm,” the 1991 war against Iraq.

He accused President Clinton of waffling on the issue, saying, “The signals from the Administration have been inconsistent, practically from one day to the next.”

Shultz gave a series of interviews to promote his memoirs, “Turmoil and Triumph,” which will be released today.