U.S. Warning: Don’t Mistreat 3 Captive GIs

The United States, outraged by Yugoslavia’s intention to try three U.S. soldiers captured near the Macedonian border, issued a stern warning Thursday to Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to provide humane treatment of the men.

During a visit to a naval base in Norfolk, Va., President Clinton warned that Milosevic “should make no mistake: The United States takes care of its own,” and said that Washington will hold the Yugoslav leader responsible “for the men’s safety and well-being.”

State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said any trial--which Yugoslav news agencies said could begin as early as today--would be “obviously ridiculous” and a violation of international law.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said later that the United States regards the three soldiers as prisoners of war, a legal status that he said entitles them to humane treatment and, “depending on the circumstances,” possibly to immediate release.

U.S. officials became alarmed when footage of the captured soldiers, broadcast on Serbian television Thursday, showed their faces bearing some bruises and abrasions.

“We’ve all seen their pictures--we don’t like it,” U.S. Army Gen. Wesley Clark, commander of NATO forces, said in Brussels. U.S. officials hinted that efforts were underway to free the soldiers but declined to provide any details.

But U.S. efforts were complicated by the fact that American officials were not sure whether the men were actually in Macedonia when they were captured Wednesday afternoon, as the Pentagon claimed late Wednesday, or had strayed north into Yugoslavia, as Belgrade contended.

Bacon said U.S. military authorities were conducting an investigation to determine that and to answer other questions, including why the Americans’ Humvee all-terrain vehicle had separated from a convoy and apparently was not guarded by helicopters.

The Pentagon identified the men as Staff Sgts. Andrew Ramirez, 24, of East Los Angeles and Christopher J. Stone, 25, of Smith’s Creek, Mich., and Spc. Steven Gonzales, 21, of Huntsville, Texas.

The uproar over the treatment of the three soldiers came as the airstrikes against Yugoslavia continued--and the Clinton administration faced mounting political difficulties in carrying out the NATO military offensive to punish Milosevic for his reign of terror in separatist Kosovo province.

In other developments Thursday:

* The Pentagon reported that U.S. forces had destroyed a key bridge in Novi Sad, one of the larger cities in the Yugoslav republic of Serbia. The news provided one of the earliest indications that NATO has widened the scope of its airstrikes from the narrower military targets that it had pursued until this week.

* An additional 30,000 ethnic Albanian refugees poured out of Kosovo into neighboring Macedonia, Albania and the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, bringing the total number of refugees in those areas to more than 200,000. Most of them have arrived during the past nine days of airstrikes.

* In Moscow, Russian President Boris N. Yeltsin delivered a nationally televised address accusing NATO of escalating the conflict in Kosovo and warning that it could lead to international tragedy. The U.S. formally rejected a proposal by Yeltsin to convene a meeting of the leaders of the Group of 8 industrialized countries--the U.S., Britain, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, Italy and Russia--to discuss the Kosovo crisis.

* U.S. officials expressed concern that Milosevic may be about to tighten control on Montenegro, which Washington previously has considered a “beacon of hope” for Yugoslav democracy.

In an ominous development, Yugoslavia’s official Tanjug news agency reported that Milosevic had removed Montenegro’s army commander and seven other top generals Thursday, in what could be the first step in a crackdown against the republic’s pro-Western government.

The State Department’s Rubin warned that any attempt to undermine Montenegro’s government could escalate the conflict with NATO. He said a takeover of Montenegro by Belgrade would “have negative implications throughout the region.”

U.S. and NATO officials also expressed apprehension about television footage showing that Ibrahim Rugova, a key leader of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, was in Belgrade on Thursday to confer with Milosevic. Rubin sidestepped questions on what transpired at a meeting between the two men.

U.S. Is Sending Additional F-117As

Meanwhile, the Pentagon announced that the United States is sending an additional 13 radar-evading F-117A Stealth fighters to take part in the NATO airstrikes over Yugoslavia. It was an F-117A that apparently was downed by a Serbian SA-3 surface-to-air missile Saturday. The pilot was rescued.

The additional aircraft are expected to leave Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico soon, in time to arrive in the Kosovo region sometime this weekend. The additions will bring the number of Stealth fighters that the United States has in the region to 24--out of more than 200 aircraft overall.

Despite the continuing difficulties, both U.S. and NATO officials insisted that the 19-member Western alliance will maintain--and escalate--its air campaign against Serbian targets, with no plans to send in ground troops to stop reported “ethnic cleansing.” by the Serbs.

In Norfolk, where he accompanied Clinton on Thursday, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said the president had “made the right choice” when he ordered the airstrikes over Kosovo, and added: “We intend to stay this course.”

And in Brussels, Clark and NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana told reporters at a briefing that the airstrikes were beginning to have a major impact on Milosevic’s forces. “The ring is closing,” Solana said. “This is an effective operation.”

Few Details About 3 Soldiers’ Capture

The Pentagon provided few details Thursday to explain how the three U.S. soldiers had been caught and whether they were technically in Macedonia or in Yugoslavia. The men were part of an earlier U.N. force in Macedonia that has stayed on to monitor the Yugoslav border.

The soldiers belong to the 4th Cavalry Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division based in Wuerzburg, Germany. They arrived in early March to relieve another contingent.

Army officials said the three men had been part of a convoy Wednesday of three Humvees that eventually split up so the soldiers could cover more territory.

Bacon said Thursday that U.S. helicopters and 80 to 90 troops had conducted a search for the men after hearing their distress call over their radios Wednesday afternoon but had been unable to locate them. The units had been on a reconnaissance patrol.

Although the Pentagon had said late Wednesday that the captured soldiers were three miles inside Macedonian territory, Bacon said Thursday that officials did not yet have sufficient evidence to determine their location. Belgrade claims that the men were three miles inside Yugoslavia.

Some current and former military officers say the decision to separate the Humvees was contrary to good rules of “force protection,” which is supposed to be of paramount concern for forces in the field, and may have been the result of improper supervision.

Asked whether U.S. forces would mount a rescue effort to extract the captured soldiers, Army Gen. Henry H. Shelton, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters Thursday that the Pentagon had “some initiatives that are ongoing” but declined to provide any details.

On Thursday, clusters of Humvees, armored Land Rovers painted in camouflage and jeeps patrolled the roads of Macedonia, including the Kumanovo region where the U.S. soldiers were captured.

A steady stream of the vehicles left the base adjoining the international airport in Skopje, Macedonia’s capital. It was not clear if any of the vehicles were American. Some were clearly marked with French flags and the flags of other nations.

The Kumanovo area is rugged foothill terrain. The border is marked clearly on the roads but not in off-road areas. Serbian and Macedonian soldiers reportedly have a gentleman’s agreement to allow each other leeway for accidental border crossings.

Even though locals suggested that accidental border crossings are possible, soldiers representing NATO troops based in the region said they would find it startling if the captured U.S. soldiers were close enough to cross the line.

It is well-known that Serbian forces are posted en masse just over the border.

“It would be utterly unthinkable” for a NATO vehicle to cross the border, especially on purpose, said British Capt. Anthony Kennaway, who spoke to reporters at the entrance of the camp where most of the NATO troops are based.

The captured U.S. soldiers were part of the now-defunct U.N. peacekeeping mission in Macedonia, which was formally shut down a month ago when China vetoed an extension of its mandate in the Security Council.

As of Wednesday, there were 420 U.S. military personnel in Macedonia, including 350 from the Camp Able Sentry charged with dismantling the U.N. force.

In the U.S., meanwhile, Cohen dismissed newspaper reports that the administration had defied warnings by U.S. intelligence agencies that the Serbs would intensify their “ethnic cleansing” if NATO launched its airstrikes. Cohen called such reports “completely fictitious.”

“The consequences of this action were, indeed, considered,” Cohen said. He added that authorities also had to consider “whether or not we could sit on the sidelines and watch indifferently while 40,000 [Serbian] troops went on a rampage . . . while NATO took no action.”

Pine reported from Washington and Dahlburg from Brussels. Times staff writers James Gerstenzang in Norfolk; Elizabeth Shogren in Kumanovo, Macedonia; Robyn Dixon in Moscow; David Holley in Sarajevo, Bosnia-Herzegovina; Marc Lacey in Washington; and Paul Watson in Pristina, Yugoslavia, also contributed to this report.

Video excerpts from Serbian TV showing the captured U.S. soldiers and from President Clinton’s speech addressing the welfare of the three GIs are on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/yugo.

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