Serb Desertions Reported as NATO Boosts Media War

As many as 1,000 troops have deserted Yugoslavia’s army units in Kosovo to return to their homes, in a new sign of growing internal strains on the Balkan nation’s war effort, U.S. officials maintained Wednesday.

The troops, apparently reservists, left in military vehicles after hearing that Yugoslav authorities had sought to suppress antiwar demonstrations that have sprung up this week in three towns in the dominant Yugoslav republic of Serbia, the officials said.

“You’re seeing, almost any place you look now, signs of problems for [Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic,” said White House Press Secretary Joe Lockhart.

The reports--which echoed stories aired on television in Yugoslavia’s smaller and pro-Western republic, Montenegro--came as part of a stepped-up propaganda effort by NATO officials in the United States and Europe.

Alliance officials have been giving detailed accounts of Yugoslav demonstrations held this week, and U.S. officials Wednesday also publicized a graphic videotape of what they said was a massacre of ethnic Albanians by Yugoslav forces near the town of Izbica.

On the diplomatic front, Russian envoy Viktor S. Chernomyrdin met with Milosevic in the Yugoslav capital, Belgrade, on Wednesday. Afterward, Yugoslav officials said Milosevic had accepted as a starting point for talks a vague peace proposal drafted by Russia and seven Western nations two weeks ago but wanted to participate in negotiations and continued to demand an end to NATO bombing.

NATO officials also claimed progress in the effort to destroy Milosevic’s military machine.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization warplanes have now destroyed 90% of Yugoslav artillery in Kosovo, or about 150 pieces, said Kenneth H. Bacon, chief Pentagon spokesman. The bombing also has taken out about one-third of all armored vehicles, he said. The figures could not be independently confirmed.

Bacon said Yugoslav forces have been digging in their artillery in Kosovo along its southern border, apparently to defend against a feared NATO invasion. In such fixed positions, the weaponry and troops are relatively easy for NATO pilots to find and destroy, he said.

The demonstrations in Cacak, Krusevac and Aleksandrovac were set off when residents learned that Yugoslav authorities had been withholding information on the extent of war casualties, Bacon said.

Television and radio reports in Yugoslavia have said the demonstrators, many of whom were parents of troops, were demanding that reservists be returned from Kosovo, a province of Serbia.

When information about the extent of casualties filtered out, demonstrations sprang up, Bacon said, and the government’s effort to snuff out the protests apparently caused the troops to bolt for home.

Bacon said there were signs that military authorities resisted the troops’ effort to desert, and he added that there were “disputes, if not fights,” before they left the province. Other estimates, including some by NATO officials, put the number of deserters between 500 and 1,000.

Bacon called the desertions “a sign of some disarray” but said it was too early to tell whether they were an aberration or the beginning of a broader unraveling of the Yugoslav forces in the province.

Montenegrin state television, meanwhile, reported differing versions of how the reservists returned to their communities.

In one version, according to a television report, their departure was “self-initiated,” while in another, they had official permission to return to their towns.

Montenegrin television offered some hints that the demonstrations might have set the stage for additional protests with a broader and more political tone.

A state television broadcast showed that in Cacak, top officials spoke out strongly against Belgrade’s policies at a public forum Wednesday, with one speaker, Verica Barac, the local district attorney, calling for street protests.

“All of this that is happening to us is so ugly, and somebody has to be responsible for it,” Cacak Mayor Velimir Ilic declared to an ad hoc citizens group, dubbed the “civic parliament,” in remarks that were recorded by Cacak television and supplied to the Montenegrin station.

“The one who is going to sign the deal, and we know who, will bear huge responsibility,” Ilic added, in a clear reference to Milosevic. “The Serbian people cannot forgive any longer.”

In Belgrade, Russian mediator Chernomyrdin emerged from seven hours of meetings with Milosevic and told reporters that settlement of the Kosovo conflict should rely on principles worked out two weeks ago by foreign ministers from Russia and the seven leading industrial nations--the so-called Group of 8.

Russia’s Itar-Tass news agency quoted Chernomyrdin as saying that the Group of 8 principles “should be developed,” but it did not say whether the Russian negotiator presented that idea to Milosevic or what the Yugoslav president’s reaction might have been.

Upon returning to Moscow after his trip to Belgrade, Chernomyrdin is scheduled to resume meetings today with Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, the special envoy of the European Union, to discuss a settlement for Kosovo. Talbott visited Bonn and Paris on Wednesday to confer with German and French officials and with diplomats representing the Group of 8.

Interviewed by Finnish television after talks Wednesday with Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari, Talbott said, “There is really no fundamental difference among any of the parties that were discussing this issue here today.”

However, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin acknowledged that “clearly, there are major gaps that remain” between Russia and the U.S., especially on the composition of an international force to police Kosovo after the war ends.

Regarding the videotape of an alleged massacre near the town of Izbica, U.S. officials said military analysts had matched footage of massacred Kosovo Albanians with aerial images of the village, where NATO reported mass graves last month.

The matching, based on the position of trees, fields, buildings and fresh graves, added to the evidence that Serbian forces had carried out war crimes during a campaign of “ethnic cleansing” in Kosovo, U.S. officials said.

In other developments:

* About 90 minutes after Chernomyrdin left for Moscow, two loud explosions shook Belgrade, accompanied by heavy antiaircraft fire and the sound of low-flying jets. Two more explosions were heard early today. Local media and witnesses said a hospital near a Belgrade military barracks was hit, killing at least three people.

* German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder repeated his opposition to the use of NATO ground forces. “I am against any change in NATO strategy because I believe it is beginning to take effect,” he told reporters at NATO headquarters.

* A bomb exploded near the Turkish bazaar in Skopje, the capital of Macedonia, seriously injuring two people and destroying a car. A spokesman for the Interior Ministry, which is taking the lead on the case, said the police had no idea who was responsible and were planning to conduct a series of forensic tests on the bomb fragments.

* More than 1,600 refugees from Kosovo crossed the Macedonian border. It was the second straight day in which large numbers were allowed through by the Yugoslav military. The recent flow is a change from last week and much of the previous week, when virtually no refugees from Kosovo were allowed into Macedonia. Officials with the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees said they had no idea why these refugees were allowed to cross after having been stopped.

Richter reported from Washington and Holley from Podgorica, Yugoslavia. Times staff writers Alissa J. Rubin in Skopje, Norman Kempster in Washington, Richard Boudreaux in Belgrade and Richard C. Paddock in Moscow contributed to this report.