NATO Downs 2 Yugoslav Jets Over Bosnia

As NATO pummeled Yugoslavia for a third day, two Yugoslav MIGs confronted allied aircraft over neighboring Bosnia on Friday, but NATO jets shot them down before they could endanger U.S.-led peacekeepers on the ground there, alliance officials said.

The action in the skies over Bosnia-Herzegovina bolstered concerns that NATO’s bombardment of Yugoslavia could spread military conflict to other Balkan countries, although NATO spokesman Jamie Shea dismissed the sortie of the Yugoslav fighters as “an extremely desperate and foolish act” that he said “met with a just response.”

The incident came on a day of NATO air attacks that once again were focused heavily on Serbian air defenses. In addition to strikes by NATO aircraft, cruise missiles were also fired in the campaign, which aims to hobble Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic in his war with ethnic Albanian separatists in Kosovo.

Amid reports of stepped-up attacks by Serbian security forces against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, the Pentagon said NATO aircraft are now shifting their focus increasingly to their primary targets: those very security forces operating in the province. Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said about 40% of Friday’s targets were linked directly to these forces.

In other developments Friday:

* The State Department expressed “extreme alarm” about reports that Serbian police and military units had increased their attacks and atrocities against ethnic Albanian civilians. Among those reports was the alleged execution of a prominent ethnic Albanian lawyer, Bajram Kelmendi, who was kidnapped with his two sons Thursday in Kosovo.

* There were reports that an estimated 15,000 to 20,000 ethnic Albanian civilians were ordered by Serbian forces into a forced march in central Kosovo. State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said the government had heard the reports but was unable to confirm them.

* Rubin said the United States has begun using spy satellites and communications intercepts to gather evidence against those committing atrocities for possible prosecution at the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. “The people responsible for these kinds of atrocities, if indeed they are going on, need to understand that our resources will be made available to the tribunal for prosecution,” Rubin said. Another senior U.S. official said Rubin’s statement was meant to “put all on notice, from Milosevic down to the lowest grunt [soldier], that they will be subject to the long arm of international law.”

* In Washington, President Clinton’s national security advisor, Samuel R. “Sandy” Berger, conceded that there is no way to stop Serbian security forces from attacking ethnic Albanian civilians short of a ground intervention, an option generally acknowledged as politically impossible. However, he stressed that the air campaign remains far preferable to standing by idly and doing nothing. “I believe in the long term, the Kosovars will be better off for us having done this than us not having done this,” Berger said.

* While some civilians have begun fleeing the region under air attack, U.S. and international relief officials said the numbers leaving Yugoslavia so far remain relatively small. But the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees reported that more than 10% of Kosovo’s 2 million people--nearly 260,000--are now internal refugees, officially classified as displaced persons.

* At the United Nations, Bosnia’s ambassador called for an urgent meeting of the Security Council after the MIGs were shot down over his country. “This is an attempt to broaden the war into Bosnia and undermine the peace agreement we have worked for,” Ambassador Muhamed Sacirbey said. “What would happen to the peace process in Bosnia if we had tens or hundreds of peacekeepers attacked? It would be hard to have that outside support. . . . Our threat to peace is very real.” Members of the Security Council declined to hold a meeting on the request from the Bosnian ambassador.

* On the diplomatic front, Clinton and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright addressed the Serbian people directly in videotaped comments, stressing that NATO’s airstrikes are not aimed against Serbian citizens but are a response to the aggression of their leader, Milosevic. The White House hopes that the taped remarks will reach Serbs through the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, the Internet and other channels.

* A day after a mob of angry Serbs attacked the U.S. Embassy in the Macedonian capital, Skopje, conditions remained tense but quiet. Protesters opposed to the NATO attacks directed their anger at American sites across Europe. Up to 10,000 people in Bulgaria gathered in the nation’s capital, Sofia, to protest the NATO airstrikes. In Greece, a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, 15,000 protesters marched to the U.S. Embassy in Athens.

* Russia expelled two NATO representatives in fresh reaction to the attacks on Yugoslavia and announced plans to send humanitarian aid to Belgrade.

* In Brussels, NATO officials insisted that alliance unity remains strong despite calls by leading politicians in some member countries for a pause in the bombings. “The decision to act was taken by all 19 allies together, and all 19 allies are determined to meet our essential mission objectives,” spokesman Shea said. “Let me make clear this is not an operation that was ever designed to last for only one or two days. We are realists in this alliance. We have known from the very beginning that President Milosevic would be testing our resolve. . . . We will continue for as long as it takes to meet our objectives.”

Intruding MIGs Detected, Shot Down

Addressing the MIG-29 incident over Bosnia, officials at NATO headquarters in Brussels said the Soviet-made planes penetrated Bosnian airspace at 5:15 p.m. local time near the border town of Teocak.

Pentagon spokesman Bacon told reporters in Washington that the Yugoslav MIGs were detected by AWACS electronic surveillance aircraft on patrol over Bosnia, then followed and shot down by F-15 fighter jets about five miles into Bosnian territory.

In three days of attacks, NATO planes have shot down five--or one-third--of the Yugoslav air force’s MIG-29s, its best warplanes, Bacon said. Pentagon officials are not yet completely certain whether Friday’s incursion was an intended attack on NATO peacekeepers, a scheme to lure NATO pilots into danger, or possibly even part of a plan to defect.

In any event, he said officials considered the move to be a “serious challenge.” Reminded that NATO officials have warned of “grave consequences” if Yugoslav forces cross the border, Bacon said, “clearly, we are prepared to take action.”

In Brussels, Shea described the incident as an “apparent attempt to fire on SFOR forces,” referring to the nearly 30,000 peacekeeping troops in Bosnia enforcing the 1995 peace accords. Shea said the MIGs were intercepted and shot down by planes of the Deny Flight mission, which protects Bosnian airspace. The pilots were not found, and there were conflicting reports on whether parachutes were seen.

Some military analysts interpreted the incursion by the Yugoslav MIG-29s as part of a larger strategy by Milosevic now unfolding, one aimed at sowing fear and disruption in the region in hopes of bringing international pressure to bear for an end to the strikes.

The incident raised the prospect that nearby NATO member nations might now be potential targets in the conflict, although most of the neighboring states are well protected by NATO’s military umbrella, and Milosevic’s air force is not large.

These analysts suggested that the stepped-up attacks on ethnic Albanian civilians by Serbian military units ordered by the unpredictable Milosevic mark another piece of this strategy--an attempt to stampede ethnic Albanian refugees across the border from Kosovo, fomenting unrest in the neighboring states of Macedonia and Albania.

But the Yugoslav air force could try to hit NATO contingents in Bosnia, Croatia, Macedonia and Hungary. In addition, Milosevic might urge ethnic Serbian populations in Bosnia and Macedonia to shoot or bomb U.S. peacekeeping troops--a move that might turn the American public against the intervention.

Analysts also noted that terrorist attacks are another potential weapon if Milosevic chooses to press such a strategy.

“We’ve been putting a lot of effort into force protection, but he’s got a lot of options,” said one U.S. military official in Washington.

Janusz Bugajski, director of East European Studies at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, said Milosevic’s goal has been “to make a propaganda point: that the whole region has been destabilized by the airstrikes.”

Assessments Show Attacks ‘Effective’

In Brussels, NATO military spokesman Air Commodore David Wilby of Britain’s Royal Air Force said alliance aircraft flew about 400 sorties and struck more than 50 targets between Wednesday evening and midday Friday.

“Our battle damage assessment is showing us that our attacks have been effective,” he said.

Wilby noted a conspicuous lack of Yugoslav resistance from an air-defense system initially touted as highly dangerous by NATO planners and far more sophisticated than that faced by U.S. and British military aircraft over the skies of Iraq.

“Last night our attacks were carried out with no apparent fighter opposition. And though some surface-to-air systems were detected, only one possible launch was noted, with no success,” he said. “Perhaps that goes some way to demonstrate the effectiveness of our campaign against this sophisticated, integrated air defense system.”

NATO officials reported that Serbian repression continues in Kosovo, and that convicts have been conscripted into Serbian forces.

“There is no evidence that the ongoing Serb counterinsurgent operations will cease,” Shea said. “Fighting continues in the north and southwestern areas. . . . Serbian troops have been reported as conducting brutal and violent attacks on Kosovo Albanians, and of kidnapping leading intellectuals.”

Albanian separatist guerrillas, known as the Kosovo Liberation Army, continued to mount attacks across the main lines of communication between the various Serbian points, alliance officials said.

50 Ethnic Albanians Reportedly Executed

The KLA’s news agency, Kosovo Press, claimed Friday that Serbs have executed as many as 50 ethnic Albanians in three incidents in Kosovo since NATO launched its air attacks against Yugoslavia on Wednesday night.

Corroborating one of the apparent massacres, U.N. humanitarian aid workers interviewed 174 people who crossed the border from Kosovo into Albania and were told that on Thursday 20 men from the village of Goden, just inside Kosovo, were executed by Serbian forces.

The villagers related how they were rounded up and placed in front of a local school while the men were separated from the women and children. After the killings, the refugees related, the Serbs danced around the bodies.

Meanwhile, White House officials countered critics who complained that the Clinton administration has offered no timetable for a military operation that seems to be open-ended.

“This is not something that has a time limit on it, it has an objective limit on it,” Clinton spokesman Joe Lockhart told reporters. “When we meet our objectives, that’s when this will end.”

Dahlburg reported from Brussels and Marshall from Washington. Times staff writers Paul Richter, Doyle McManus, Norman Kempster and James Gerstenzang in Washington, Paul Watson in Pristina, John J. Goldman at the United Nations and Richard Boudreaux in Aviano, Italy, contributed to this report.

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The Damage Assessment

NATO reported striking 50 Yugoslav targets in its first nights of air attacks. Among the more than a dozen identified sites were airfields, military headquarters and missile batteries. On Friday, NATO jets downed two Yugoslav MIG-29s that apparently were trying to attack NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia.

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The Downed Yugoslav Planes

The MiG-29 is a fast, agile fighter aircraft approximately the same size as the U.S. F/A-18 Hornet. The Russians consider the MiG-29 their ‘lightweight’ fighter and have exported it to numerous countries, including Yugoslavia. Two were reportedly shot down over Bosnia Friday.

Maximum speed: 1,520 mph

Fastest rate of climb: 65,000 feet per minute

Maximum range: 1,800 miles

Length: 56 feet

Wing span: 37 feet

Height: 16 feet

Weight, loaded: 10,000 pounds

Source: Jane’s Military Aircraft, International Institute for Strategic Studies

* NATO says it has shot down five

Sources: Jane’s Military Aircraft, International Institute for Stratgic Studies