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NATO Foreign Ministers to Meet Amid Escalating
Kosovo Crisis
12 April 1999
By David Fouquet
NATO Headquarters, Brussels
Background Report Prior to the April 12 Foreign Ministers
meeting
NATO Foreign Ministers are meeting in Brussels
Monday for the first time since the start of the three week-old,
widely-debated Allied air campaign against Yugoslavia and
just ahead of what could be a major new phase in the conflict.
The meeting takes place as additional forces,
including US Apache helicopter gunships, multiple-launch rocket
systems (MLRS), and, according to one official NATO source,
Bradley fighting vehicles, are being assembled in neighboring
Albania. Reinforcement aircraft and manpower are also being
assembled in what could become a wider conflict in material
and troop staging points. The meeting also comes amid increasing
criticism in NATO countries of the limitations of air operations
and the perceived need for ground forces to be engaged Yugoslavia
itself.
Senior NATO officials underlined that they did
not expect this Monday's meeting in Brussels to be a decision-making
one but one aimed at taking stock, reaffirming a commitment
to the Alliance's first major military campaign in history,
and to discussing means of coping with the huge flow of refugees
and displaced persons.
"Don't expect this meeting to decide to send
in ground forces," noted one knowledgeable Western source.
However, sources consulted on the weekend prior
to the meeting did indicate that the Ministers would informally
discuss elements of "forward vision" or more long-term strategy
during lunch-time when they could be freer to brain-storm
than at the more formal session. Some suggested that a more
comprehensive strategy for the entire Balkan region could
be aired. Some discussion is also said to be expected on the
impact of the conflict in Yugoslavia on the planned NATO 50th
anniversary summit and long-term strategy discussions in Washington
later this month.
Other separate but related discussions will
involve the five-nation Contact Group and a US-Russian meeting
in Oslo. This meeting could seek to introduce a new diplomatic
effort with the threat of planned NATO military escalation
to press a change in Yugoslav policy.
Sources also said that much of the regular meeting
would deal with the humanitarian and refugee problems related
to the hundreds of thousands of Kosovar Albanians either expelled
into neighboring Albania and Macedonia or categorized as "internally
displaced" within Kosovo itself.
Discussion of the refugee problem is not expected
to be entirely trouble-free since there is some difference
of opinion on the strategy for dealing with the exodus. A
number of members have sought to develop plans to find temporary
shelter in the member countries as part of a "burden-sharing"
effort. Some countries, with France in the vanguard, have
sought to avoid a dispersal of the refugees. Their concern
is that airlifting them out of the region would, in effect,
implement Yugoslavia's policy of depopulating the Kosovar
Albania region and community by expelling the residents and
destroying their homes and villages. According to this line
of reasoning, creating temporary accommodations for refugees
in the region would be a way of signaling that they were expected
to reclaim their homes in the foreseeable future.
The meeting will also discuss the formation
of a proposed humanitarian assistance force of 8000 NATO troops
to be gathered from those already stationed in Macedonia.
These troops were originally there either as part of the UN
peacekeeping force, or the NATO "extraction force". This force
was organized to rescue the former unmanned Kosovo observer
force under the Organization for Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
Other troops were waiting to become part of the NATO-led monitoring
or implementation force if a peace settlement had emerged
from the Rambouillet negotiations. The "Allied Harbour" force
whose operational plans are still being prepared by NATO military
authorities is expected to be approved for the "force generation"
stage by NATO members this week and would be devoted to assisting
other international civilian organisations such as the United
Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) and others in
dealing with Kosovar refugees. The headquarters elements of
the Allied Command Europe (ACE) mobile force are to be deployed
to Tirana in the coming days to organise the operation. A
number of additional NATO Partnership for Peace countries
are also said to have volunteered contributions for this force.
NATO civilian and military officials have emphasized
that this force would be entirely devoted to civil emergency
relief in neighboring countries. But these preparations also
occur against a background of increasing proposals from outside
experts that NATO must go beyond its plans of precision air
strikes to effectively deal with the worsening refugee and
humanitarian crisis inside Kosovo. Proposals include an "escort
force" accompanying humanitarian convoys or returning refugees,
or the establishment of a new protection zone for the Albanian
community in Kosovo. One Belgian Senator, Alain Destexhe,
who is also the president of the non-governmental International
Crisis Group, has advocated that a NATO invasion force be
deployed through Hungary to topple the Belgrade Government.
The deployment of additional ground attack helicopters
and MLRS launchers based in Albania is regarded as a significant
increase in NATO firepower and as the more direct involvement
of another Balkan state in the conflict. Tirana has complained
repeatedly to Belgrade about frequent Serb shelling into its
territory, while Belgrade has charged that the Kosovar UCK
rebels are receiving assistance from Albania. Albanian and
NATO sources said over the weekend that Tirana had turned
over control of its ports, airports and military installations
to NATO, a move seen at NATO Headquarters as connected to
the deployment of the new weapons systems and the NATO humanitarian
force. Experts said the Apaches are a particularly maintenance-intensive
weapons system which would require a major upgrading of the
facilities in Tirana. The more than 100 flights related to
deployment of the Apaches, as well as the planned formation
of the 8000-strong humanitarian force, requires more professional
air control operations than the regular Tirana systems, sources
noted. The Apaches were expected to provide considerable additional
capability in addition to the A-10 Warthog tank-busters already
in action to attack mobile ground targets. These include Yugoslav
tanks, armored vehicles, and artillery which are said to have
been hidden or mingled into civilian areas after being used
in the recent weeks' attacks on Kosovar Albanian civilians.
But the move could also expose the Apache crews to Serb defensive
fire.
The MLRS, best known for its multiple salvoes,
is also said by NATO military sources to be capable of firing
single precision-guided rockets using the Global Positioning
Satellite guidance system. Asked about whether the Albanian
Government was aware and approved of its soil being used for
possible cross-border operations into Serbia, one NATO-informed
military source replied "They know exactly what they're getting
into."
Neighboring Macedonia's population, split between
Albanian and Slav ethnic communities, is concerned about the
flow of thousands of Albanian Kosovar refugees altering the
composition of its population. Macedonia has said that it
would not condone NATO forces using its soil for "offensive"
operations into Serbia. New NATO member Hungary, with several
hundred thousand ethnic Hungarians inside the Vojvodine region
of Serbia, has also distanced itself from an active or overt
role in NATO military operations.
David Fouquet is a journalist specializing
in European Security matters.
He wrote this report from NATO HQ for BASIC.
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