NATO Jets Mistakenly Bomb Rebel Barracks

A record number of NATO warplanes pounded Yugoslavia’s major cities and other targets Saturday as the alliance admitted another deadly targeting blunder in the two-month air war, this time against ethnic Albanian guerrillas.

Taking advantage of good flying weather over Kosovo, NATO’s fighters and bombers flew 684 sorties, the most since it launched its attack on Yugoslavia’s military and infrastructure on March 24.

But in another accidental attack, NATO admitted its bombs struck a military barracks that had been captured six weeks ago by the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA, which is fighting the regime of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, said seven of its fighters were killed and 25 injured, while independent observers put the figure at one dead and seven wounded.

In Washington, the Pentagon insisted that the swift buildup of NATO ground troops in the Balkans being urged by President Clinton is intended for peacekeeping operations and not an invasion.

Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon stressed that a rapid deployment of as many as 50,000 NATO troops--nearly twice the force originally envisioned--is needed in case Milosevic capitulates to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s demands that he withdraw his forces from Kosovo and allow nearly 1 million ethnic Albanian refugees to return home under NATO protection.

“NATO . . . plans to do this so the refugees can return home as quickly as possible after a peace agreement is signed,” Bacon said. “NATO’s policy remains the same. The air campaign will continue until Yugoslavia accepts NATO’s terms.”

The North Atlantic Council, the alliance’s policymaking body, will meet this week in Brussels to debate whether to authorize a larger peacekeeping force for Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia’s main republic, Serbia. NATO has about 16,000 troops in the region, and the proposal calls for doubling that number as a first stage.

“Once they reach a decision, that decision will have to be translated into a whole series of orders that will lead to the requisitioning of troops, and then countries will come forward and make their offerings and the force will be assembled,” Bacon said.

Diplomatic efforts to negotiate an end to the crisis appeared to be in temporary abeyance as Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott returned to Washington from Moscow after talks with Viktor S. Chernomyrdin, the special envoy who has sought to mediate between Milosevic and NATO. Talbott is expected to return to Moscow this week for further talks with the former Russian prime minister, who was appointed to his present post by President Boris N. Yeltsin.

The bombing of the barracks housing KLA fighters was the latest in a series of errant NATO attacks.

NATO cited an intelligence failure for the bomb strike Friday on the Kosare military barracks, a former Serbian base inside Kosovo that was captured by the KLA.

“It was until very recently in the hands of the Yugoslav army,’ Shea said. If NATO had known that the base had changed hands, he added, “it would have been taken off the target list.”

The separatist KLA strongly supports NATO’s role in the war, and Western journalists who have been escorted to the barracks in recent weeks have watched KLA guerrillas there place satellite phone calls to NATO military officials to report Serbian military movements. TV crews have filmed ethnic Albanian volunteers speaking English, French, German and other languages at the base.

The KLA said seven fighters were killed “in their sleep” and 25 were injured inside the three-story concrete building in a mountainous area about six miles from the Albanian border. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe, which has observers on the Albanian side of the border, said one person was killed and seven wounded.

NATO also struck a complex Friday that housed a prison where KLA commanders were jailed with other prisoners of the Serbs, according to a Times reporter who visited the site. In all, 19 prisoners and guards, plus a deputy warden, were killed. NATO officials said the complex was a Serbian military base, complete with airfield, helicopter pad and military barracks.

“And that’s what we were striking, that military installation,” Shea said Saturday. “I don’t think many Kosovar Albanians will shed a tear if that prison is not being used, because many of them have suffered very badly from their detention there.”

NATO planes also hammered parts of Belgrade, the Yugoslav and Serbian capital, and four other cities: Nis, Veliki Crljeni, Bajina and Drmno.

Army barracks, petroleum storage facilities, television and radio transmitters, and a presidential command center at Dobanovci also were targeted, NATO officials said.

At least five surface-to-air missiles were fired at NATO aircraft, but none of the planes were hit, officials said. NATO pilots fired at 12 tanks, 11 armored vehicles, seven other military vehicles and nine artillery positions inside Kosovo, according to the allies.

Overall, NATO’s record number of sorties included 245 bombing or missile runs and 90 attacks on Yugoslav air defenses in the 24 hours ending Saturday morning. This was more warplanes than the alliance has sent aloft in a similar period since it launched its campaign, officials said.

“We took maximum advantage of the opening caused by better weather,” NATO spokesman Jamie Shea said in Brussels.

By British count, since Operation Allied Force began, NATO has flown almost 25,000 sorties--about 7,000 of which were attack missions with the remainder providing fighter cover, reconnaissance, tanker refueling, communications or other assistance.

“There will be no letup. There will be no respite for Milosevic’s troops,” British Foreign Office Minister Tony Lloyd vowed at a news briefing in London. “The NATO reaction will go on with greater intensity.”

NATO planes dropped conventional “dumb” bombs Saturday that caused heavy damage at the Kolubara thermal power plant, 35 miles south of Belgrade. Previous attacks used high-tech bombs that spray out graphite fibers designed to short-circuit, but not destroy, the electrical grid.

The private Beta news agency in Yugoslavia reported that the raids Saturday caused total blackouts across most of Serbia, including in Nis, Kraljevo, Cacak, Leskovac and Uzice, as well as partial losses of power in Belgrade, Valjevo and Jagodina.

The on-and-off refugee flow also came back on Saturday.

After an eight-day lull, armed Serbian forces pushed more than 3,650 refugees from Kosovo into neighboring Albania at Morine on Friday and early Saturday.

Most of the refugees were from Suva Reka, a town of 18,000 northeast of Prizren. Relief workers said many of the refugees were given half an hour to pack and then forced from their homes at gunpoint. Much of the town was then burned.

“We’ve had many tales of terror, shooting and robberies,” said Ron Redmond, a spokesman for the Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.

More than 2,200 other Kosovo refugees crossed into Macedonia after arriving at the border on trains and buses. Many apparently fled their homes several weeks ago and finally left Kosovo because they were unable to find enough to eat, said Lindsey Davies, a spokeswoman for the U.N. World Food Program.

NATO officials have refused to drop food or other emergency supplies into Kosovo because they are worried that planes would have to fly so low that they would be shot down and the food would be intercepted by the Serbian military.

In all, an estimated 930,800 ethnic Albanians have fled Kosovo since the start of the crisis there nearly 15 months ago, according to the U.N. refugee agency. About 760,800 have left since the onset of NATO airstrikes, the agency said.

In other developments Saturday:

* Secretary of State Madeleine Albright backed a proposal by Albanian Prime Minister Pandeli Majko for Kosovo’s divided ethnic Albanian leadership to form a national security council. Majko made the suggestion during talks with Hashim Thaqi, the KLA leader and self-styled prime minister of the province’s provisional government. Relations between the separatist KLA rebels and moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova have deteriorated rapidly since both signed a failed peace accord in Rambouillet, France, in February.

* About 1,500 reservists mobilized by the Yugoslav army in Montenegro were sent to Kosovo, a source close to the Montenegrin leadership told the Agence France-Presse news agency. It was unclear whether the units were reinforcing or relieving troops already in the province. The move came after 500 to 1,000 Yugoslav soldiers deserted from Kosovo and returned to their homes in the region of Krusevac, about 100 miles south of Belgrade. Yugoslav authorities said these soldiers were demobilized under a decision to reduce troops in Kosovo.

Dahlburg reported from Brussels and Drogin from Washington. Times staff writer Alissa J. Rubin in Skopje, Macedonia, contributed to this report.

* VITAL Help

Macedonian aid group plays key role in helping nation deal with influx of Kosovo refugees. A14

* BORDER MINEFIELDS

Land mines planted by Yugoslav troops pose an increasing danger to fleeing refugees. A14