Peace monitors, Western embassies evacuate
March 20, 1999
Web posted at: 10:38 p.m. EST (0338 GMT)
PRISTINA, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- As international peace monitors were evacuated en masse Saturday from Kosovo, Yugoslav troops pitched an offensive against ethnic Albanian rebels in the war-torn province.
In Washington, U.S. President Bill Clinton's national security team huddled at the White House to discuss plans for NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia. The United States and some other Western nations began wholesale evacuations of their diplomatic staffs in Belgrade.
As the latest fighting generated a flood of refugees from ethnic Albanian villages, leaders of the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army implored NATO to bomb the "fascist and barbaric" Yugoslav regime.
"The international community, especially NATO and the United States, should keep their promises to intervene in Kosovo," said KLA representative Jakup Krasniqi. "If NATO will not intervene, we will continue our fighting. We have not many solutions -- war or death."
On the ground in Kosovo, the situation deteriorated rapidly Saturday, a day after Western-brokered peace talks failed.
Kosovo is a province of Serbia, one of Yugoslavia's two republics. Ethnic Albanians, who make up 90 percent of the population in the province, have been pushing for autonomy or even outright independence for Kosovo -- which Serbs have vowed to prevent.
Intense fighting was reported in the northern reaches of the province Saturday, hours after reporters saw a huge column of Yugoslav tanks and other armored vehicles move out from Pristina, the provincial capital.
Thousands of refugees also crowded the Glogovac area west of Pristina, fleeing a Yugoslav offensive that appeared to extend for dozens of miles.
Witnesses said squads of armed Serbs, clad in white uniforms and black ski masks, swept through the town of Srbica. Refugees -- many with nothing but the clothes on their backs -- straggled for miles along the road between Srbica and Vojnik.
Fleeing civilians claimed there had been at least nine summary executions, but there was no independent confirmation. Journalists who briefly entered the southern end of the town saw houses burning and armor and police in the streets, but no bodies.
Machine-gun and mortar fire rang out to the immediate south, suggesting the army and KLA guerrillas may have been fighting along a road between Srbica and Komorane.
Fernando del Mundo, a spokesman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, said two villages, with 3,700 residents, were virtually emptied as ethnic Albanians fled.
The main road between Pristina and Belgrade was closed by government security forces. Yugoslav officials blamed KLA snipers for the closure.
Yugoslav authorities insisted the KLA provoked them into Saturday's action. They reported that rebels had attacked three police stations near Mitrovica overnight.
On Saturday, the last of the international monitors from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe crossed the border into Macedonia.
"We left behind a very troubled province," said William Walker, head of the OSCE mission. "For me and the 1,380 people that came with me, this was a very painful moment that we wished would never come."
The unarmed monitors had been in Kosovo as part of a previous cease-fire agreement between the OSCE and the Yugoslav government, reached in October. Their presence in the province had served as a buffer to prevent massive attacks on civilians.
Their departure removed an important obstacle to NATO airstrikes. There had been fears that the Yugoslavs might hold them as bargaining chips or human shields against NATO military action. But the monitors departed the country without incident.
On Saturday, the U.S. State Department ordered all nonessential personnel to evacuate the U.S. Embassy in Belgrade and said that "deterioration of the security situation could lead to further reductions in staff and/or suspension of embassy operations."
U.S. nationals in Yugoslavia were warned that they "could be singled out in sporadic acts of violence."
At least four other countries -- Britain, France, Canada and Australia -- began evacuating embassy staffs and their families from Belgrade. Most traveled by car to neighboring Hungary.
Some international humanitarian organizations, including the U.N.'s refugee agency, said they would stay in Yugoslavia. But some of them decided to reduce their staffs, slowing deliveries of desperately needed supplies to refugees.
In Washington, Clinton's national security team met Saturday at the White House. A senior administration official refused to characterize it as an emergency meeting but said, "We're deeply concerned about the situation on the ground."
The United States is expected to provide the bulk of the firepower for any NATO strikes on Yugoslavia. Roughly 200 U.S. planes and six warships are in the region.
Any bombardment is expected to begin with cruise missile attacks on Yugoslav air defenses. Administration officials have told CNN that the earliest any airstrikes would be launched would be next week.
Clinton said Friday that the goal of NATO strikes would be to weaken the Yugoslav army's ability to attack the Kosovar Albanians. He said the Yugoslavs had already killed enough civilians to merit NATO action.
"The threshold has been crossed," he said. "I would hate to think we would have to see a lot of other little children die before we could do what seems to me to be the right thing to do to prevent it."
But Clinton's moves toward a military confrontation with Yugoslavia have met with concern and skepticism by some legislators on Capitol Hill.
Correspondents Matthew Chance, Chris Burns and Chris Black, The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.
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RELATED SITES: Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - Facts
Kosova Crisis Center
NATO Official Homepage
Kosova Liberation Peace Movement
The Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)
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