Unlike U.S., NATO Making Swift Decisions

Nearly two weeks into NATO’s air campaign in Yugoslavia, leaders in key alliance capitals braced for the first major test of their unity: a cease-fire offer from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

They knew it was coming, and they wanted to react decisively. Above all, they needed to act together.

The manner in which the peace overture was handled provides a revealing, and somewhat surprising, glimpse of the chain of command in the campaign to bring peace to Kosovo: In this case and others, critical decisions have sailed through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 19-member governing board in a matter of hours.

In those instances when there have been delays, critics say, the foot-dragging has occurred not at NATO headquarters in Brussels but in Washington.

On April 3, Milosevic’s anticipated cease-fire overture was the subject of a lengthy midday phone call between President Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Clinton’s closest confidant among NATO’s 18 other heads of state and government.

“They discussed how it should be handled. They talked about what they could accept and the kind of offer they needed to reject,” recalled a source familiar with the conversation who declined to be identified.

Clinton also talked that day with French President Jacques Chirac, Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien and Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar, while a few blocks away at the State Department, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright worked down her own list of calls.

Cease-Fire Option Rejected in 4 1/2 Hours

By the time Milosevic made the offer three days later, NATO’s biggest member countries were ready. Armed with clear directives from their capitals, the British, French, German and American ambassadors in Brussels consulted briefly by telephone to coordinate their response, then swiftly presented the issue at a meeting of all 19 NATO ambassadors.

About 4 1/2 hours after Milosevic unveiled his initiative, NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana announced that the 19 members had unanimously rejected it.

“The offer is clearly insufficient,” Solana declared in a written statement.

That sequence of events highlights one of the few undisputed successes of the early days of NATO’s depressingly messy war over Kosovo, the southernmost province of Yugoslavia’s main republic, Serbia. It was an example of unexpectedly swift and smooth decision-making on the part of 19 nations that are bound to act by consensus.

Indeed, one of the surprises of the Kosovo campaign is the fact that complaints about delayed decision-making and bureaucratic bottlenecks have focused on Washington rather than Brussels.

According to diplomats and other government officials on both sides of the Atlantic, two key factors, both of them informal, have expedited NATO’s decision-making process on Kosovo.

First, the conflict has produced some of the most intense--and unusual--transatlantic telephone contact ever between, on the one side, an American president and his secretary of State and, on the other, like-minded European counterparts.

White House officials say Clinton has made about 40 telephone calls to European leaders since the crisis began, mainly to Blair, Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Italian Prime Minister Massimo D’Alema also is said to get considerable telephone time because of Italy’s critical, yet delicate, role as a major springboard for NATO aircraft.

Phone Calls Offer Reinforcement

Albright, who carries primary responsibility for maintaining a solid diplomatic front, makes as many as 30 calls a day to foreign ministers within the alliance and beyond, according to one aide.

Long an ideological and generational soul mate to Blair, Clinton is now said to have become closer to Schroeder, another baby boomer, whose unexpected solidarity has helped ease the alliance’s decision-making. It is during these high-level calls, U.S. and European officials say, that NATO’s most politically controversial moves--such as the decisions to strike central Belgrade, to bomb through the Orthodox Easter and to reject Milosevic’s initial cease-fire offer--have begun to take form.

Those familiar with the content of these conversations say the talks are given an added dimension by serving as an exercise in mutual reinforcement by three relatively young leaders from the political left whose only previous experi-ence with war has been to oppose it.

“No one has had a lot of practice at this,” admitted a senior diplomat familiar with the calls. “The rhythm is cyclical. They do something tough; then they worry whether everyone’s still on board. So they ask for another [meeting of NATO ambassadors] and discover everyone is on board, so they get tough again.

“There’s lots of reality checks going on,” this diplomat added.

A second, equally informal factor has tended to expedite critical decisions: the ability of a few key nations to use high-level contacts to shape decisions, and then quickly sell them to the alliance as a whole.

“There is a firm, compact group within the alliance with the larger European countries which in a sense predigests decisions,” said Guillaume Parmentier, director of the Paris-based Foundation for Defense Studies, a French think tank. “They don’t make decisions, but they predigest. They make arrangements easier.”

Greece Has Chosen Not to Block Decisions

Diplomats say such tactics have bolstered NATO unity and reduced the posturing and token resistance that otherwise could delay decisions. Even Greece, whose strong historical and religious ties to the Serbs have made it among the most reluctant of allies in the Kosovo operation, has chosen not to block decisions.

Greek Foreign Minister George Papandreou told The Times that his country has decided to use the leverage of its veto power to emphasize humanitarian issues in the Balkans: rebuilding the destroyed countries and dealing with the ethnic hatreds.

“When you’re living next to a war, you have a different perspective,” he said. “We’ve chosen to make our impact not as the prosecutor of the war, but on the prospect for peace.”

Another key example: A potentially controversial decision to base AH-64 Apache ground attack helicopters in Albania sailed through a meeting of the 19 alliance ambassadors in just four hours.

“Normally, a decision [of this type] takes 24 to 48 hours--or more,” one NATO diplomat said.

Such experience has, at least for now, silenced those NATO critics who had long predicted that trying to run a war through a 19-member committee was a potential recipe for disaster.

Critics of the Clinton administration say that NATO’s decision-making performance is all the more remarkable in light of what they see as hesitant leadership from Washington.

Specifically, outside analysts blame the administration for procrastinating on the request for Apache helicopters made by NATO’s military commander, U.S. Army Gen. Wesley K. Clark, at the onset of the crisis. They also blame Clinton for failing to order at least active preparations for the possible deployment of ground forces.

Ivo Daalder, who served as a senior White House foreign policy advisor during the early Clinton years, said that the administration has been consistently slower than NATO to make up its mind at key moments in the Kosovo crisis.

“From the summer of 1998, the administration has argued . . . the problem is in Brussels and nowhere else. But that’s never been the case,” Daalder said. “The allies were more willing to use airstrikes before we were, and the same is true of ground forces.” ’

Daalder has a similar view about the Apache helicopter decision: “It took a full week for the United States to decide on the use of 24 Apaches. It took Brussels four hours.”

The White House rejects such assertions. It presents a picture of a president fully engaged, meeting almost daily with his national security team, on the phone with alliance leaders, personally approving sensitive “target sets,” yet not bogged down in the kind of sand-model detail that came to obsess Lyndon Johnson during the Vietnam era. (However, one presidential aide acknowledged that Clinton frequently pores over maps and satellite photos brought in by Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Henry H. Shelton.)

White House spokesman David Leavy said that Clinton did not delay the Apache helicopter decision but that the president agreed April 3 to send the choppers, “the day it got in front of him” during an informal chat with Cohen, Shelton and National Security Advisor Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger after a White House meeting of the president’s national security team.

White House Worried About Political Risks

Other evidence, however, suggests that Clark’s initial request for the helicopters had already been stalled in Washington for more than a week. Moreover, it had been debated among key Clinton advisors, who were worried about the political implications of a move that would place Army personnel and equipment on the ground in the Balkans and could be misread as the first step toward a ground deployment.

“It took some discussion,” said a senior White House official who declined to be identified. Clinton, the source added, “was pretty engaged” in the decision.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal last week, Clinton’s 1996 Republican presidential opponent, Bob Dole, blamed the Apache delay on “foot-dragging by the Pentagon.” But even he seemed unsure whether the fault ultimately lay with the country’s military leaders or the White House.

Critics, including some senior diplomats from alliance countries, also fault Clinton for a decision not made: his refusal to at least begin serious planning for a possible ground deployment in Kosovo.

One diplomat suggested that the White House was thrown off balance by unexpected public and congressional support for ground forces, while others questioned whether the president might be a captive of advisors who are overly wary of the political risks involved in such a strategy.

Among those closest to Clinton, both Berger and Vice President Al Gore are believed to be against the use of ground forces. Cohen, who before joining the Clinton Cabinet argued strenuously for withdrawal of U.S. forces from Bosnia-Herzegovina, is also viewed as an advisor who errs on the side of caution. Only Albright is known to push for bold moves, and the weight of her opinion is said to have diminished, according to White House insiders.

With no pressure from Washington for ground forces, NATO’s strategy remains anchored in an air campaign that so far has failed to achieve any of its stated objectives.

“Clearly, the idea of ground forces is a very difficult issue,” Daalder said. “But that’s not the same as saying if the United States says yes, that the French, the British and others wouldn’t follow.”

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Marshall reported from Washington and Dahlburg from Brussels. Times staff writers Joel Havemann in Brussels and James Gerstenzang, Paul Richter and Doyle McManus in Washington contributed to this report.