2 Pilots Killed as U.S. Copter Goes Down in Albania

A U.S. Army Apache helicopter crashed early today in Albania while on a nighttime training flight, killing both crew members, who became the first Americans and NATO soldiers to die in the alliance’s air campaign against Yugoslavia, the U.S. Army said.

The AH-64, a copter specializing in attacks on tanks and other ground targets, went down at 1:30 a.m. local time about 50 miles north of Tirana’s Rinas airport, the U.S. Army’s European Command in Stuttgart, Germany, said.

There were “no initial indications of hostile fire,” the Army said, implying that the Apache had been flying close to the border with Yugoslavia. In a release, the Army said the copter was on a training mission in support of Operation Allied Force, the 43-day-old NATO aerial bombing operation against the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic.

A flotilla of 24 Apaches has been deployed in Albania for weeks, preparing to attack the Yugoslav ground forces that are waging a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” against the Albanian majority of Kosovo. But they have yet to go into action.

The April 26 crash of an Apache during a training mission near Tirana, Albania’s capital, left the two crew members slightly injured.

The $16-million, tank-killing Apaches are armed with cannons that can fire up to 650 armor-piercing bullets a minute.

Serbian antiaircraft fire has shot down a U.S. Stealth F-117A fighter, and an F-16 went down after engine trouble. The pilots of both of those warplanes were rescued. The crew members killed in the Apache were the first casualties suffered by any of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization countries participating in Operation Allied Force.

The Army said a medevac helicopter was immediately dispatched to the crash site north of Tirana and that an investigation of the cause of the incident was already underway.

Reuters reported that one military source said, “Right now it looks as if they might have hit a power line.”

Identities of the dead U.S. servicemen were being withheld pending notification of next of kin.

Confirmation of the crash came as President Clinton arrived at NATO headquarters in Brussels this morning for talks on the Kosovo crisis with alliance Secretary-General Javier Solana and military chiefs.

The president passed by reporters at the entrance to NATO but made no remarks on the loss of the Apache and its crew.

Clinton was due later to meet Belgian Prime Minister Jean-Luc Dehaene before flying to Germany to talk to U.S. service men and women stationed there.

The president was to update NATO officials on his negotiations with Russia on the Balkan conflict.

On Tuesday, U.S. and allied warplanes claimed their most successful day of bombing in the 6-week-old air campaign, but a key NATO general conceded that there is not much the allies can do to stop Milosevic from emptying Kosovo of its ethnic Albanian population.

“President Milosevic’s mass deportation campaign appears achievable,” said Gen. Klaus Naumann, a German who heads NATO’s military committee. “I think if he really wants to get them out, he may have a chance to do this.”

NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said that during the past year about 90% of Kosovo’s 1.8 million ethnic Albanians have been driven from their homes, either into refugee camps in neighboring countries or into an apparently far more precarious existence as displaced persons unable to escape the beleaguered southern province of Serbia, Yugoslavia’s dominant republic.

The plight of the ethnic Albanians, who accounted for all but about 10% of the province’s prewar population, formed a grim counterpoint to the assessment by the Pentagon and NATO military commanders that allied bombing has mauled the Yugoslav army and can continue to do so indefinitely.

Naumann, a 59-year-old career soldier who has announced his retirement, said Milosevic cannot defeat NATO militarily. But he may well be able to achieve his political aims, Naumann said, despite massive airstrikes that so far have dropped 15,000 bombs and missiles.

At the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Charles Wald, a senior defense planner, said NATO is clearly winning the war, but he said Milosevic might not realize it.

“He probably has no idea totally how bad off he is,” Wald said. “I imagine he has a general idea, but he doesn’t travel out of Belgrade [the Yugoslav and Serbian capital], doesn’t do his own assessments.”

That may prove crucial. In a parallel diplomatic campaign, the U.S. and its allies are trying to convince Milosevic that he has no alternative to meeting NATO’s conditions for ending the bombing, which include: withdrawal of Yugoslav army and police forces from Kosovo, a return of the refugees under the protection of a well-armed international peacekeeping force that includes NATO personnel, and broad political autonomy for the population of the province.

Milosevic’s own assessment of the military situation is probably the most important single factor in the diplomatic effort.

Russian peace envoy Viktor S. Chernomyrdin met Tuesday in Washington with Vice President Al Gore and later in the day at the United Nations with Secretary-General Kofi Annan and Norwegian Foreign Minister Knut Vollebaek, who holds the rotating presidency of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, or OSCE.

U.S. and U.N. officials said Chernomyrdin now realizes that NATO will continue bombing until its key conditions are accepted. These officials say that it might be possible to negotiate some details of a final agreement but that peace proposals put forward so far by Milosevic are unacceptable.

“As a result of a lot of time spent with Russia, we believe the Russians have a deeper understanding for the rationale behind NATO’s demands and our conviction that without these steps--especially the full withdrawal of Serb forces and a strong international security presence--we won’t be able to achieve a lasting peace in Kosovo,” State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said.

At the U.N., Annan told the Security Council that there is an emerging consensus on the need for an international military force with Russian participation to police a Kosovo settlement. U.S. officials said such a force must have a “NATO core,” but they said they will welcome Russian participation.

Milosevic insists that he will not accept armed foreign troops.

Nevertheless, U.N. and OSCE diplomats pressed ahead with plans for postwar reconstruction and peacekeeping.

Vollebaek, the OSCE leader, said the diplomats were working on a Security Council resolution that “would give a mandate for reconstruction of Kosovo and a framework for a peace plan.”

Under the plan, Annan would appoint a temporary administrator with wide-ranging powers to take the reins of the province, but key functions--such as reconstruction of roads and restoration of the economy--would be shared with the OSCE and the European Union.

The plan would include a broad-based peacekeeping force. Security Council approval would help give the plan wide international legitimacy. Even some NATO members, such as France, have called for Security Council authorization for post-conflict peacekeeping. The Clinton administration says it does not need U.N. approval but would like to have it if possible.

NATO did not seek Security Council approval of its bombing campaign because officials knew that Russia would veto it. But if Russia and the U.S. agree on postwar plans, then Security Council authorization would be likely.

Late Tuesday, Annan asked Yugoslavia to permit a U.N. humanitarian team to assess war damage and determine how much reconstruction will be necessary. The secretary-general said the team should start in Kosovo but eventually visit all of Yugoslavia. Annan did not request a NATO bombing pause while the team was on the ground.

In a gesture to the Russians, the Group of 8 industrialized countries agreed to hold a foreign ministers meeting Thursday in Bonn to discuss the Kosovo crisis. Russia has been pressing for a session of the organization best known for annual economic summits.

In other developments Tuesday:

* NATO suggested that a firefight between Yugoslav forces and Kosovo Liberation Army rebels might have been responsible for the deaths of civilians on a bus near the western Kosovo city of Pec on Monday. “We interviewed all of the [NATO] pilots who were flying over that area yesterday,” Shea said. “We looked at all the cockpit videotape available. We looked at all of the intelligence available. And we still have no indication linking NATO to that incident.”

About 20 people, mostly civilian passengers of the bus, were killed by shrapnel from three bombs that apparently were targeting an artillery gun. A yellow canister and other fragments consistent with a cluster bomb littered the site.

* At Morine, an Albanian border post, more than 4,000 new refugees arrived from Kosovo with fresh tales of abuse at the hands of Yugoslav forces. Villagers from the area around Suva Reka in southern Kosovo said many ethnic Albanian men had been separated from their families and possibly killed.

* Belgrade said that 1,200 Yugoslavs had been killed so far by NATO bombing and that 5,000 others had been seriously injured.

* Belgrade was blacked out again today as NATO planes attacked power plants for the second time since Sunday. But residents told Reuters that electricity was restored in most districts within 30 minutes.

* Half a million children have been affected by the Kosovo conflict, many separated from their parents and suffering from mental trauma, UNICEF said.

* NATO’s air campaign received a boost from Bulgaria, where after a heated debate against a background of pro- and anti-NATO demonstrations, parliament voted to let alliance aircraft use Bulgarian airspace to strike at Yugoslavia.

* NATO said it was investigating how two of its bombs destined for Yugoslavia fell in Macedonia. Alliance spokesman Maj. Eric Mongnot said a U.S. A-10 “Warthog” dropped two 500-pound MK-82 bombs Monday near the town of Sveti Nikole, about 20 miles southeast of Skopje. “There was no injury or damage. We have no idea whether it was a pilot or technical error,” Mongnot said.

* Pentagon officials said a U.S. Air Force F-16 shot down a Yugoslav air force MIG-29 in a dogfight at 13,000 feet over Yugoslavia.

On Capitol Hill, the Senate sidetracked with a 78-22 vote a proposal by Sens. John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Joseph R. Biden Jr. (D-Del.) that would have authorized the administration to use “all necessary force” in Yugoslavia--including sending in ground combat troops--to achieve allied goals.

The measure was opposed by both Clinton and critics of his Kosovo policy. The administration said such a measure was unnecessary because it had no plans to send in ground troops.

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Dahlburg reported from Brussels, Kempster from Washington and Wilson from the United Nations. Times staff writers Art Pine in Washington and Marc Lacey in Kukes, Albania, contributed to this report.