Cook, left, and Rugova
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May 14, 1999
Web posted at: 5:20 a.m. EDT (0920 GMT)

In this story: Revising plans Report: Russian, Finnish envoys expected in Belgrade U.N. human rights official visits Belgrade RELATED STORIES, SITES

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (CNN) -- Rejecting a reported Yugoslav pullout from Kosovo as a "theatrical withdrawal," NATO renewed its airstrikes against Yugoslavia overnight, carrying out its most intensive round of airstrikes of the war during the last 24 hours.

NATO warplanes flew 679 sorties with attacks concentrated on Serbian forces, tanks, armored vehicles and other military vehicles, artillery units and troop bases, officials said.

NATO planes targeted Serbia's electrical power grid, cutting power in several districts of Belgrade, Nis and Novi Sad. The cities of Leskovac, Pirot and Sabac also reported blackouts. Allied planes have been dropping special graphite bombs in recent days that cause short circuits without destroying power grids.

Serbian TV on Friday reported a bridge in the residential area of Vrbas, a town in Vojvodina, and an area near the town of Uzice were hit overnight Djakovica, Pec and Urosevac were also targeted, the TV reported.

The bombing came hours after a contingent of Yugoslav troops -- about 150 men -- left Kosovo on Thursday. The Yugoslav army announced several days ago that it would withdrawal half its forces from the Serb province, but Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz, NATO's military spokesman, said the alliance did not believe Thursday's movement meant a large number of troops were pulling out.

"However, we strongly believe that effectiveness of our recent airstrikes against ground forces in Kosovo has caused some tactical redeployment in the forward areas, probably to seek better refuge or to regroup," he said.

Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon said there was no sign of a legitimate withdrawal.

"Taking out a couple hundred soldiers here and a couple hundred soldiers there is not what we consider a withdrawal. We consider that to be theater," Bacon said.

NATO officials estimated there were about 40,000 Yugoslav forces in Kosovo, including some 300 armored vehicles, when the war began March 24.

The Pentagon is revising its plans for a peacekeeping force to be deployed in Kosovo once the fighting ends, because Clinton administration officials have concluded the original estimate of 28,000 troops won't be enough.

"Everybody now believes that that force is probably too small and that a larger force will be required to go in as a peacekeeping force," Bacon told reporters Thursday.

About 4,000 of the 28,000 were to have been Americans. Bacon said new figures have not been nailed down, either for the total planned force or for U.S. participation.

"We don't know whether it'll be twice as large or three times as large or 50 percent as large as we initially planned," Bacon said.

At least one classified assessment of peacekeeping needs circulated at the Pentagon this week, one official said, but the document did not include specific numbers.

Meanwhile, Russia's Balkans envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari plan to visit Belgrade next week to try to end the Yugoslav conflict, Itar-Tass news agency said on Friday.

Tass, quoting Chernomyrdin during a trip to Helsinki, said the visit would probably take place after next Tuesday, allowing time for the two men to hold a joint meeting with U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott to coordinate their views.

Serbia's Beta news agency said Chernmoyrdin and Ahtisaari would probably visit Belgrade on May 18.

Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin could not immediately confirm the reported trip but told Reuters: "This would be in line with Russian efforts to find a political settlement to the crisis as soon as possible."

Ahtisaari is emerging as the West's point man on Yugoslavia, where NATO has been waging an aerial bombing campaign since March 24 to try to force Serbian forces from Kosovo and allow the return of hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees.

Chernomyrdin, who paid a brief trip to Helsinki on Thursday evening, told Tass that Ahtisaari would be named as one of the United Nations' special envoys on Yugoslavia "literally within days."

Ahtisaari's office gave no details on the president's talks with Chernomyrdin, which Tass said lasted an hour longer than planned.

"We discussed all questions, all views, and I am very glad that our vision of the problem coincides," Tass quoted Chernomyrdin as saying in Helsinki.

Earlier this week, Ahtisaari met French President Jacques Chirac and Talbott, who also held talks with Chernomyrdin in Moscow on Wednesday and Thursday.

Talbott is in Brussels to brief NATO officials on his mission.

Russia, which has strongly opposed NATO's bombing campaign against its Slavic, Orthodox Christian brethren in Yugoslavia, has indicated in recent days that its patience is wearing thin.

President Boris Yeltsin, who appointed Chernomyrdin as his special Balkan envoy last month, said Russia might even pull out of the peace process if the bombing campaign continued unabated.

But President Chirac, who met Yeltsin in Moscow on Thursday, brushed aside Russia's tough rhetoric, saying he saw no intent on Moscow's part to halt its mediation efforts.

Meanwhile, British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova are meeting for talks on the crisis in London.

"I have assured Dr. Rugova of the resolve of our government and of our allies to complete the task to which we set our hand, to reverse that ethnic cleansing of Kosovo, so that the people in the refugee camps can return and that Dr. Rugova himself can return from exile," Cook said.

U.N. Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson left the Yugoslav capital on Thursday after a trip to gauge the impact of the war in Yugoslavia.

While recognizing suffering on both sides, Robinson leveled the harshest criticism against Milosevic and his policies in Kosovo, which she described as a campaign against ethnic Albanian civilians.

"It is a devastating pattern of ethnic cleansing. The suffering of the Kosovar Albanians is terrible and direct and cruel," she said. "And the suffering of the civilian population in this country is also very real and very cruel."

Yugoslav officials told Robinson more than 1,200 people have been killed and 5,000 hurt during the fighting. Milosevic did not meet with her despite repeated requests.

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