Milosevic Not Home as NATO Bombs One of His Residences

NATO warplanes on Thursday bombed one of the Belgrade residences of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, in the most vivid demonstration yet that the Western alliance is increasingly targeting the Yugoslav leadership and civilian sites to heighten pressure on the Serbian elite.

Milosevic and his family were not at home in the city’s exclusive Dedinje area during the predawn raid, but the attack badly damaged the residence, a graceful two-story structure once owned by Yugoslav leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito.

The strike came during a week when, in intensifying attacks, NATO warplanes blasted radio and television facilities, a Belgrade high-rise building that housed the headquarters of two political parties, along with factories that made civilian products.

In an interview, a senior administration official said the North Atlantic Treaty Organization will now aim at more “national assets” and “national targets,” while continuing to pound the military infrastructure and field forces it has routinely bombed in the last month.

In Belgrade, the Serbian and Yugoslav capital, images of the Milosevic residence on television showed concrete rubble, twisted reinforcing rods and blackened windows. The home was hit by three laser-guided bombs, including one that landed in the main bedroom, Serbian officials said.

At a news conference in Belgrade, an angry Goran Matic, a Yugoslav minister without portfolio, denounced the attack as “an assassination attempt on the president of Yugoslavia.”

In public pronouncements in Washington, U.S. officials said they had struck the home only because it contained “elements” of the military command and control system, including an underground bunker. They said the strikes didn’t violate an executive order signed by former President Ford and every U.S. president since that prohibits the assassination of foreign leaders.

Yet the strike was clearly intended to send a signal to the Serbian leadership that their property--and lives--may be in danger so long as Milosevic’s government continues its campaign to scour Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population.

Clinton administration officials have said from the start of the campaign that, although they intend to spare Yugoslavia’s civilian population as much as possible, they would go after targets that Milosevic “held dear.” The U.S. has followed much the same approach with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. U.S. warplanes have bombed his residences and presidential compounds intermittently, beginning with the 1991 Persian Gulf War, though U.S. officials have insisted that they were not seeking to assassinate him.

U.S. warplanes in 1986 also hit the home of Libyan leader Moammar Kadafi, killing his 15-month-old adopted daughter and others.

Some analysts said Thursday’s more aggressive strikes by NATO may be an attempt to defuse criticism that its air campaign is ineffective, as NATO leaders convene in Washington today for a three-day meeting amid rising pressure for the use of Western ground troops in Kosovo province.

“They’re increasingly frustrated, and they want to up the ante by going after more lucrative targets in Belgrade,” said Charles Kupchen, a former senior National Security Council aide in the Clinton administration. U.S. officials hope “this will take the steam out of the ground forces idea,” he said.

In future strikes, NATO may go for more official residences, leadership bunkers, government ministry offices and the huge network of businesses owned by Milosevic’s family and inner circle, experts said.

On Tuesday, NATO warplanes struck a 23-story Belgrade building housing the headquarters of Milosevic’s Socialist Party of Serbia and his wife’s Yugoslav United Left party. In the same building are facilities of four TV stations, including one operated by Milosevic’s daughter, Marija.

NATO attacks on TV facilities in Novi Sad have interrupted broadcasts to the 400,000 residents of that city. Alliance airstrikes also hit the Serbian state television building early today, taking all three of its channels off the air, Belgrade residents said.

NATO warplanes have damaged businesses owned by members of the Milosevic inner circle: A tobacco concern partly owned by Milosevic’s son, Marko; petroleum refineries controlled by Milosevic ally Dragon Tomic, who is speaker of the Yugoslav federal legislature; and an auto plant controlled by former Minister Milan Beko.

NATO officials have insisted that these were all fair game because they were “dual-use” facilities that provided support to the military as well as products for the civilian population.

And they have said it is difficult to avoid hitting the businesses of Milosevic’s family and cronies because so much of the country’s wealth and power is concentrated in those hands.

The broadening of targets comes after rising complaints that the U.S.-led coalition has been too cautious in choosing bombing targets. Critics noted that the air campaign has been far more restrained than the bombardment that opened the Persian Gulf War, which took out electricity and water supplies.

The decision to bomb Serbia’s main television transmitter came only after a long debate inside the Clinton administration and NATO. Some officials were reluctant to bomb the television station because of the high probability of civilian casualties. But others had urged the move because the television station has delivered Yugoslavs a one-sided diet of pro-Milosevic information and propaganda.

“The most glaring mistake we have made is not taking out Serbian TV on Day One,” one senior administration official said.

Some of Milosevic’s internal political opponents have contended that NATO should be focusing more on the regime and less on targets that hurt average Serbs.

Janusz Bugajski, of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said the strike on the president’s house had the virtue of showing that the Yugoslav leader, rather than the population at large, is the real target.

And Bugajski noted news reports from Yugoslavia that some political foes of Milosevic, though united in their opposition to the NATO bombing, were privately “cheering” that NATO was finally homing in on their adversary.

Washington Bureau chief Doyle McManus contributed to this report.