NATO Bombing of Yugoslavia Failed, U.N. Expert Says

NATO should admit that its bombing of Yugoslavia failed and send in ground forces to battle extremist Albanians and restore the ethnic balance in Kosovo, a U.N. expert said Wednesday.

“The bombing hasn’t solved any problems. It only multiplied the existing problems and created new ones,” Jiri Dienstbier said after presenting his report to the 53-nation U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

Dienstbier, onetime foreign minister of the former Czechoslovakia, listed the results of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 78-day air campaign to stop Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic’s repression of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians.

“The Yugoslav economy was destroyed. Kosovo is destroyed. There are hundreds of thousands of people unemployed now,” he said. “There is a very general pessimism.”

Peacekeepers in the province have only one option now--to be prepared to fight on the ground against extremist Kosovo Albanians so that the ethnic balance with Serbs and others in the province can be restored, he said.

The Kosovo Liberation Army has officially been disbanded, Dienstbier said. But its former leaders continue to wield great influence in the province, which is now run by NATO-led peacekeepers and the United Nations.

He said he found that U.S. officials in the region generally share his view.

“Some of them explain to me that this is the year of the presidential elections and it is very difficult to change politics after years of a certain policy,” Dienstbier said.