From CNN Military Affairs Correspondent Jamie McIntyre

July 12, 1999
Web posted at: 6:12 a.m. EDT (1012 GMT)

BUDAPEST, Hungary (CNN) -- U.S. Defense Secretary William Cohen warned Monday about the "dangerous environment" in Kosovo and renewed his call for NATO countries to speed up the deployment of addition peacekeepers to the province.

He made the comments after U.S. troops in Kosovo came under fire in three separate incidents over the weekend. There were no casualties among the American troops.

Cohen told a news conference in Budapest, "The situation in Kosovo remains dangerous. It is likely to remain dangerous for sometime to come by virtue of the tensions and the passion that are running very high. With every day's disclosure of the kind of slaughter Serb troops engaged in Kosovo I think those passions will be inflamed."

Cohen said the shooting incidents add urgency to his call for stepped-up deployment of the full 52,000 NATO peacekeeping force, which under the current schedule won't be fully in place until September.

Cohen said remaining KFOR forces should arrive "as soon as possible."

Cohen travels to the Taszar Air Base in southern Hungary Monday to meet with U.S. troops, including pilots who too part in Operation Allied Force, NATO's 78-day air war against Yugoslavia.

A planned trip Tuesday to Albania was scrapped because very few U.S. troops remain in Albania.

Instead Cohen will stop in Tuzla, Bosnia where some 6,000 U.S. troops are serving in a peacekeeping mission of indefinite length, and the continue on to meet more U.S. troops at the Incirlik Air Base in Turkey.

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