Serb exodus from Kosovo sparks concern among U.S. officials

U.S. troops patrol the roads in Kosovo VIDEO CNN's Wolf Blitzer looks at the conditions contributing to Serbian flight from Kosovo Windows Media 28K 80K

American troops forced into police role in volatile province

August 5, 1999
Web posted at: 10:38 p.m. EDT (0238 GMT)

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- The flight of 150,000 Serbs from Kosovo in the face of attacks from ethnic Albanians is raising the possibility that the battle to prevent the province from becoming ethnically pure is being lost, with serious ramifications for American policy makers.

U.S. military officials say most of the Serbs still remaining in Kosovo are in the U.S.-controlled sector. And the commander of American forces in the province, Gen. John Craddock, says he is being forced to use U.S. troops as a police force to stop the violence because U.N. police forces have been slow to arrive.

"I have 16 U.N. international policemen in the U.S. area right now, and they are administrators preparing the way for those who will follow," Craddock said Thursday. "But we don't expect them for some time yet, so in the absence of those police and in the absence of an indigenous police that has yet to be established and trained, we are the only police around."

Only about 50,000 of the estimated 200,000 Serbs who lived in Kosovo remain. Craddock said his forces are doing everything possible to try to convince them to stay.

Ethnic Albanian revenge attacks have left Serbs in Kosovo terrified

"They don't want to leave," he said. But he noted that an average of two Serbs are being murdered each day, which is intimidating those who remain.

The White House is not yet ready to concede that NATO's policy of building a peaceful multi-ethnic Kosovo has failed.

"I think it's the goal there to build the kind of stable society and government that will protect all people in Kosovo, including the Serb minority," said White House spokesman Joe Lockhart.

However, some Balkan analysts believe that it will be difficult to achieve that vision.

"It's not realistic to think that person-to-person, door-to-door violence can be stopped, especially in a place that's so raw from the wounds of war and when people have so many natural desires for revenge," said Michael O'Hanlon of the Brookings Institution.

The prospect of a Kosovo that is 100 percent ethnic Albanian is of grave concern to high-ranking U.S. and NATO officials. They fear that such a Kosovo will inevitably push for complete independence from Yugoslavia or seek unification with neighboring Albania, either of which would be destabilizing to the region.

Publicly, the Clinton administration denies that the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army is behind the campaign of violence against the Serbs, blaming instead splinter groups. Privately, though, many officials fear the worst -- that the KLA's leaders have quietly given the green light to convince the Serbs to leave by any means necessary.

Correspondents Wolf Blitzer and Jamie McIntyre contributed to this report.

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