Marines Rescue U.S. Pilot Downed by Serbs in Bosnia : Balkans: Airman whose F-16 was shot out of sky last week is found near Bihac and taken to an American ship. Congress remains wary of President’s plans.

Capt. Scott F. O’Grady, the pilot of the U.S. F-16 downed over Bosnia last week, has been rescued by Marines, NATO officials said today. “The pilot of the F-16 has been successfully rescued,” said Maj. Pakis Pheodorakidis at NATO headquarters in Naples, Italy.

He was taken to a U.S. amphibious assault ship, Pheodorakidis said.

Commander Adm. Leighton Smith said on Cable News Network today that O’Grady was found 20 miles southeast of Bihac.

U.S. forces had been searching for the pilot since his plane was shot down Friday over Serb-controlled territory. The Pentagon says a Serb SA-6 missile slammed into its belly, cutting the plane in half.

The Pentagon disclosed Monday that it had picked up intermittent signals that may have been coming from the pilot’s emergency homing beacon.

In Washington on Wednesday, the Clinton Administration sought to allay concern in Congress over its Bosnia policy, but many lawmakers remained firmly opposed to President Clinton’s plan to consider using American ground troops to help rescue United Nations forces.

In hearings before Senate and House committees, Defense Secretary William J. Perry said American troops would be used only to cover a full withdrawal of U.N. forces or to rescue U.N. peacekeepers whose lives were at risk. He called the latter prospect “extremely unlikely.”

But at the same time, Perry admitted that Clinton’s pledge last week to send in U.S. troops to help rescue peacekeepers who may be in danger amounted to “an expansion” of previous U.S. policy.

He warned that if Washington did not act and U.N. troops were forced to pull out of Bosnia, the Balkan combat could spread “beyond Bosnia” and ultimately “threaten our vital national interests.”

Members of the Senate Armed Services Committee and the House National Security Committee, which held separate sessions, appeared unconvinced, with many calling instead for withdrawal of U.N. troops and an end to the U.N. arms embargo against Bosnia, which critics say penalizes the Muslim-led Bosnian government, not the generally better-armed Bosnian Serbs.

“I remain deeply concerned about the path the Administration appears to be taking in Bosnia,” Sen. Strom Thurmond (R-S.C.), chairman of the Senate panel said. “The best way to meet our obligation to our allies is to cover the withdrawal of their U.N. troops.”

Later, after the House hearings, Perry and Gen. John M. Shalikashvili, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, left for Brussels, where they are to take part in a meeting of NATO defense ministers called in part to help hammer out more details of what the West will do militarily to help contain the fighting in Bosnia.

In the Balkans on Wednesday, at least 108 U.N. peacekeepers were released from captivity as intense fighting resumed in and around Sarajevo.

Sniper fire and fierce battles in and around the Bosnian capital killed three people and injured at least 19 others. One man was killed by a sniper’s bullet as he lay in a hospital bed recuperating from mortar blast wounds.

U.N. officials said it was the worst fighting since two air strikes by North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces last month against a Bosnian Serb ammunition dump near Sarajevo sparked heavy shelling of the city and the Bosnian Serbs’ taking of the U.N. hostages.

As for the 100 or so hostage-peacekeepers reported freed early Wednesday, they were ushered across the border in blue and white buses from Bosnian Serb territory to the Serbian town of Novi Sad. From there, they were to be taken to Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital, then flown to Zagreb, the Croatian capital and headquarters of the U.N. Protection Force.

But the arrival of the British, French, Ukrainian and Spanish detainees in Croatia was put off several times, and by early evening U.N. officials were predicting that the troops’ return would be delayed until early today.

U.N. sources said the peacekeepers were being held up because the Bosnian Serbs were about to release more of the approximately 150 soldiers still being detained.

Serbian state security chief Jovica Stanisic said Wednesday night that three U.N. military officers held hostage--one each from France, Spain and Brazil--would be flown by helicopter to Belgrade to join the other released soldiers.

Earlier in the day, Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic said the remaining hostages would be let go in the next few days, while the Serbian news agency BETA, which has accurately predicted other hostage developments, quoted Bosnian Serb sources as saying that as many as 50 more soldiers would soon be released.

“They are in good spirits, considering the very long journey they had,” Ivor Roberts, the British charge d’affaires, told reporters after visiting the freed soldiers in Novi Sad. “They were extremely tired and extremely hungry. . . . They lived on very humble rations, soup and bread without any meat.”

Manuel Cortes Mendez, a Spanish military observer who was among the released hostages, said he was kept as a human shield in a mobile armored command post on the tarmac at the Banja Luka airport in north-central Bosnia. “It was so hot inside the armored vehicle that I prayed for rain to fall,” he told reporters in Novi Sad. “And luckily, it rained quite often. . . . “

In Washington, Wednesday’s full day of hearings followed a week of seemingly conflicting statements by Administration officials, with top officials from the President on down voicing explanations of the new White House policy that were retracted only a few hours after they were made.

The major point of confusion came when Clinton, in a speech May 31, said U.S. ground troops might be used “temporarily” to help consolidate U.N. peacekeeping forces by moving them to more easily defensible areas such as Sarajevo--a significant expansion from previous policy.

White House, State Department and Pentagon officials spent a week explaining, clarifying and retreating from the position taken in the speech but apparently failed to clear up the controversy.

As late as Tuesday evening, the Pentagon asserted that a troop deployment it had announced on Monday was now being reviewed.

In an obvious effort at damage control, Perry conceded to the lawmakers Wednesday that “it is an expansion--I do admit it,” but insisted that “it is not a part, as has been suggested [of] a routine reconfiguration or repositioning.

“We’re only considering [the use of U.S. troops short of participation in a full-scale withdrawal of U.N. forces] in the event of an emergency,” he said, “. . . if one of our allies needs our help.” He also said there were no plans to have U.S. troops rescue hostages.

Perry and Shalikashvili also sought to cover systematically all the major issues that lawmakers raised. Besides insisting that having to use U.S. ground troops to rescue embattled U.N. forces was unlikely, they also vowed that:

* Any operations in which American forces would be deployed will be under U.S.--not U.N.--command, and under rules of engagement that would enable troops to defend themselves fully.

* The British and French rapid-reaction forces now being created to come to the aid of U.N. peacekeepers who find themselves in trouble will be under U.N. military commanders, not Yasushi Akashi, the U.N. political envoy who has vetoed the use of force in the past. The head of the U.N. peacekeeping efforts, however, contradicted this view in a briefing for reporters in New York late Wednesday. He insisted that the rapid-reaction force would follow orders from the existing chain of command.

* Clinton’s statement that he might permit the use of U.S. ground troops to “reconfigure” U.N. peacekeeping forces no longer is in force. “If they [the allies] do that, they will do that with their own” troops, Perry said. “We are not signed up to do that.”

Under questioning from lawmakers, Perry said the “only situation” in which U.S. troops might be sent in, short of having to cover a full withdrawal of all U.N. forces, would be a “true emergency,” in which peacekeeping troops were under attack and had asked NATO for help.

But he insisted that such a prospect was not likely, and noted that it would take a substantial period of time for NATO officials to give their approval for such a rescue operation.

The Administration was not entirely bereft of supporters at Wednesday’s hearings. Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia, ranking Democrat on the panel, noted that Washington had played a major role in setting U.N. policy in Bosnia, and bears “some responsibility” for what has happened there.

Pine reported from Washington and Murphy from Zagreb. Times staff writer Sonni Efron in Moscow also contributed to this report.

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