A L S O+T O D A Y Limp Willy? By Frank Smyth Clinton's critics blast Kosovo "genocide," but disagree about deploying ground troops "Pec is burning! Where are the ground troops?" By David Brauchli An AP photographer who fled Yugoslavia at the 11th hour reports on the horror in Kosovo Humanitarian enclave? By Daryl Lindsey Experts debate NATO's options for protecting Kosovar Albanians without a massive commitment of ground troops Soldiers missing in action NATO and the Pentagon report that three U.S. troops may have been captured during a reconnaissance mission   T A B L E+T A L K Kevorkian's conviction: Was it a boon or a bomb to the assisted suicide movement? Join in the fray in the Social Issues area of Table Talk   Find deep discounts and great selection on the books you need to read at barnesandnoble.com Search by:  Keyword Title Author       R E C E N T L Y Beginner's guide to the Balkans By Laura Rozen A week ago, few Americans could find Kosovo on a map. What's behind the crisis Clinton's committed to solve Kosovo update By Laura Rozen Macedonian officials leave hundreds of Kosovo Albanian refugees stranded Bombing the baby with the bath water By Veran Matic Each missile worsens the humanitarian disaster that NATO is supposed to be preventing Milosevic's proposal The Yugoslav president says he's ready to stop his campaign against Kosovar Albanians and take his place at the negotiating table, but only if NATO halts its airstrikes Endgame? By Jeff Stein As the crisis spirals out of control, everybody scrambles for a quick solution. Everybody but Milosevic (03/30/99) - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Browse the Newsreal Archives - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
		ARM THE KLA? | PAGE 1, 2 - - - - - - - - - - While KLA commanders like Remi say the best bet for stopping this flood of killing lies in arming them, many in the U.S. human rights and foreign policy community are still hoping for NATO ground troops to go into Kosovo. Several senior U.S. foreign policy experts, including Morton Abramowitz, Frank Carlucci, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Helmut Sonnenfeldt and William Howard Taft IV, called for deployment of NATO ground troops to "end the genocide being carried out by Serbian forces" at a press conference in Washington Wednesday. Though NATO officials say they are stepping up their air campaign against Yugoslavian military targets, bad weather and heavy cloud cover have prevented them from using some of the laser-guided missiles that would allow them to take out the Serbian forces currently threatening Kosovar Albanian civilians. NATO officials also worry that their forces face threats not just from Serbian military air-defense systems, but from Serbian civilians who have been armed with rocket-propelled grenades and other equipment that will make it dangerous for low-flying A-10 planes and Apache helicopters to target more dispersed Serbian military assets on the ground. Though the stunning brutality of Serbian forces in Kosovo has helped keep the 19-nation NATO alliance united in support of continued airstrikes against Serbia, the airstrikes also drastically accelerated the pace of killing and displacements on the ground in Kosovo that they were intended to slow. It is not clear that by the time NATO finishes decimating Serbian military targets that there will be much of Kosovo left at all, or many Kosovar Albanians still living there. Whole cities -- Pec, Prizren, parts of Pristina -- are being systematically "cleared" of Kosovars, according to statements by numerous refugees and human rights observers. After turning around a trainload of Kosovar Albanians yesterday, the Macedonians let a train containing 2,000 refugees cross Wednesday afternoon, and another large group entered Wednesday morning. But a few kilometers east of the main border-crossing at Blace, the Macedonian military prevented a group of about 2,000 Kosovar Albanians walking from the town of Kacanik to enter the country, because it was not a legal crossing point. They also kicked out a humanitarian organization that was trying to provide medical relief to that group of displaced people. Hashim Thaci, a leader of rebel ethnic Albanians in Kosovo, told Germany's ZDF television that Serbs had created three concentration camps, including one in a Pristina stadium, which, he said, was holding 100,000 people. German defense minister Rudolf Scharping told a news conference: "We have serious reports that there are concentration camps like there were in Bosnia." Some 2,000 people from the southern Kosovo city of Urosevac (Ferizai in Albanian) made it to safety in Macedonia Wednesday afternoon. One 80-year-old blind man was led by his grandson on the four-hour walk. He sat cross-legged in the long line of Kosovars registering in a tent for refugee status in Macedonia. Another woman, whose passport showed her to be 96 years old, sat almost entirely covered by a head scarf. Refugees coming from Urosevac told me Wednesday that residents of the Dragodan neighborhood of Pristina had been rounded up in the last few days by the military, and while some were known to be staying in other parts of city, others were reported to have been killed. Several of the refugees said Serbian police had destroyed their passport and identification papers before they reached Macedonia. NATO forces said destruction of Kosovar birth certificates, marriage licenses and other identity papers was being conducted systematically by Serbian forces to make it impossible for ethnic Albanians to return to the province after the conflict ends. As NATO spokesman Jamie Shea told reporters in Brussels, "This attempt to rewrite history reminds me of George Orwell's '1984,' which I used to believe was fiction but which now seems to be happening in reality." SALON | April 1, 1999 Laura Rozen is covering the Kosovo crisis from Macedonia for Salon. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - War in Kosovo Salon's complete coverage.