Officials Say NATO Pounded Milosevic Into Submission

In the past week, Yugoslav army officials began to shift from President Slobodan Milosevic’s unwavering stand on the Kosovo war toward open rebellion, forcing him to accept NATO’s peace terms, U.S. officials believe.

The allied bombardment, which caused more damage in the past seven days than in the first two months of airstrikes, reawakened old frictions between Milosevic and an army establishment that had never fully trusted him, the U.S. officials say, though they would not disclose their sources.

A key moment in the Yugoslav military’s disillusionment came this week as thousands of troops, lured into the open by ethnic Albanian rebels near Mt. Pastric in western Kosovo, took their most concentrated pummeling from NATO warplanes since the air war began March 24, say the officials, who requested anonymity.

The other pivotal element in Milosevic’s shift, say the officials, was pressure on the Yugoslav oligarchy from the bombing of utilities and economic targets near the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade--a tactic that some in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization strongly opposed. Airstrikes on economic targets were threatening to bankrupt Milosevic’s family and friends, while pounding of the electrical system raised the possibility that Belgrade would be freezing this winter even as ethnic Albanian refugees in the south warmed themselves with NATO-supplied stoves.

These cumulative pressures brought the turning point, one U.S. official says, convincing Milosevic that suddenly “time was on the West’s side.”

Though the U.S. officials did not disclose the source of their information about divisions within the Yugoslav army, they are known to be receiving intelligence reports from sources that include electronic intercepts. They discussed Milosevic’s apparent change of heart at a time when Pentagon officials are beginning to think about gathering data for the “after-action reviews,” analyses they undertake after each war.

NATO and Pentagon officials have boasted about the increasing pace of their air campaign since late March. But the most dramatic expansion of strike power has come since the end of May, as improved weather allowed more attacks and hundreds of new warplanes arrived.

A NATO force that had been sending out about 50 bombing sorties a day in late March has recently been dispatching more than seven times that number. And, defense officials said, the “forward air controllers” who direct pilots to targets are now very familiar with the Kosovo theater, sharpening the lethal impact of the operation.

The battle between Yugoslav forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army near Mt. Pastric has provided one of the clearest demonstrations for Milosevic’s army of the damage NATO’s 1,082 planes can inflict.

A Yugoslav armored brigade, based in Prizren, emerged from camouflaged positions at the beginning of the week to block the rebels’ advance with troops, tanks, personnel carriers and artillery.

The Yugoslav troops needed to concentrate their forces to hold off the rebels’ advance; yet, because they were in the open, they gave NATO “the best opportunity so far in the air campaign to hit Serb forces hard,” German Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz, a NATO spokesman, said in Brussels. On Wednesday alone, NATO hit the brigade with nearly 150 sorties, knocking out 32 artillery pieces, nine armored personnel carriers, six armored vehicles and eight mortar positions.

Asked to explain the Yugoslav leadership’s turnabout on a peace deal, Kenneth H. Bacon, the chief Pentagon spokesman, said Friday that “the pounding [Milosevic’s] forces took during the past week had to have a huge impact on his determination to continue the fight. We know that it had a big impact on the morale of the forces.”

There had been increasing reports of lack of food, fuel and will, and “increasing dismay with the leadership not only of the forces, but of the country.”

Citing “anecdotal reports and other sources of information,” Bacon said the forces had a growing feeling that there was “no way out” and that the situation was going to grow steadily worse.

The dissension within the army hierarchy, if the U.S. reports prove true, fulfills predictions that have been coming for some time from NATO and outside analysts.

Milosevic has had sporadic conflicts with the Yugoslav army, an institution more associated with the federalist traditions of the late Yugoslav leader Marshal Josip Broz Tito than with Milosevic’s divisive Serbian nationalism. In November, Milosevic fired Gen. Momcilo Perisic after the officer signaled an unwillingness to have the army carry out the government’s harsh policies in Kosovo.

Perisic, who was replaced with the more loyal Gen. Dragoljub Ojdanic, also had publicly disclosed his fears that a war with NATO could destroy the Yugoslav army.

Milosevic has repeatedly favored the federal security police over the army. Some police officers are paid twice the earnings of their army counterparts.

Another pressure point on Milosevic has been the small circle of family members and friends who control much of the country’s wealth. NATO has been blasting their earning power for weeks, hitting dual-use targets that serve some military function yet also affect civilian and economic life.

In taking out Yugoslavia’s two refineries and oil storage sites, NATO hurt Dragan Tomic, a Milosevic ally who is director of Yugo Petrol. Last month, NATO blew up the Zastava auto plant in Kragujevac, ostensibly because army equipment was made at the facility. But it is run by Milan Beko, a former subordinate of Milosevic.

NATO also struck a tobacco factory and warehouse in Nis, supposedly because of its proximity to a military site. But the building is owned by Milosevic’s son, Marko.