Reply #71: Semi-objective view

[Wendec]

Although this article quotes numerous sources, it is at least an arguably objective account of the Pristina airport situation:

Faulty Allied Teamwork Helped Russian Dash
Airport Was Lost in Command Confusion
By Joseph Fitchett
International Herald Tribune
June, 1999
http://www.iht.com/IHT/DIPLO/99/jf061999.html]

PARIS - The Clinton administration and NATO's strategic commanders wanted allied troops to mount a swift lunge into Pristina last week in time to thwart the Russian troops that gained possession of the airport there, according to U.S. officials in Washington.

The officials, who declined to be identified, said that U.S.-backed plans, including one that envisaged force, if needed, to prevent the Russians from taking control of Kosovo's major airfield, were blocked by the NATOpeacekeeping force commander, Lieutenant General Michael Jackson ofBritain.

Apparently, Prime Minister Tony Blair of Britain did not want to risk a military showdown with the 200-strong Russian contingent and the unpredictable political aftershocks in Moscow.

In providing their account, these U.S. sources said that they were reacting to what they claimed was a disinformation campaign, apparently by Mr. Blair's aides, shifting the onus from London to Washington for Western hesitations over Pristina.

There has been no evidence of any personal strain between Mr. Blair and President Bill Clinton. But with both leaders' teams apparently putting their spin on it, the Pristina episode underscored the risk that their united front on Kosovo could be weakened over how to handle the Russians.

''It's more Blair chest-pounding,'' a Clinton aide said.

What really happened, the U.S. officials said, was that the White House and top NATO military commanders in Europe framed two plans for swift military action once the Russian column was detected leaving its position and heading toward Kosovo.

Both involved using elite units from NATO's peacekeeping force, which was poised on Kosovo's border in Macedonia for the alliance's scheduled move into the province the following day.

Initially, as the Russian column moved through Serbia, the U.S.-backed plan called for a mobile spearhead of NATO troops to make the 40-kilometer (25-mile) dash to Pristina first and cut the access roads to the airport before the Russians could get there.

Later on June 11 the Clinton administration's security team, along with the two top U.S. commanders in NATO, backed a bolder but still small-scale operation, essentially a helicopter-led landing by a NATO task force at Pristina airport before the Russians there could settle in.

Both operations failed to materialize when General Jackson declined to accelerate the timetable for a peaceful entry into Kosovo or to commit the mainly British forces under his command to an airport operation.

He ''was getting his orders from No. 10,'' the Downing Street office of Britain's prime minister, according to the U.S. officials, whose accounts were based on access to high-level consultations during the mini-crisis that started early June11 when Secretary of State Madeleine Albright landed in Macedonia for what she had expected to be ''a victory lap'' among cheering ethnic Albanian refugees.

Told about the sudden, still murky move by Russian troops who had defected from the NATO-led peacekeeping operation in Bosnia, she met immediately with General Jackson and Admiral James Ellis, the U.S. officer who commands U.S. and allied forces in Southern Europe and who has overall responsibility for the theater incorporating Kosovo.
Their meeting expanded into conference calls with General Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme commander, and U.S. decision-makers roused from their beds in predawn Washington, including Samuel Berger, the national security adviser, and civilian and uniformed chiefs at the Pentagon.

Agreement was quick among the Americans that a NATO task force should be sent to seal off the airport. But General Jackson objected that the move might poison the chances for good Serbian cooperation with the peacekeeping force.

Invoking the peacekeeping accord negotiated with the Serbian military by NATO, he said that advancing the arrival of peacekeepers could violate the provision for ''synchronization'' between the Serbian forces' withdrawal and the NATO forces' entry. U.S. officials explained that the accord also named General Jackson as the arbiter on interpreting how to carry it out.

As the meeting broke up, the U.S. officials and two top NATO commanders had the impression that General Jackson had been persuaded to act. But action did not materalize in the ensuing hours and in the afternoon a second set of consultations focused on the new situation: It was too late to prevent the Russians from reaching Pristina, but NATO still had a military option- slightly riskier but still overwhelming.

A much stronger force, ferried to Pristina airport by helicopters and backed up by assault helicopters, could evict the Russians or at least establish a NATO presence on the airfield that would prevent it from being left under Russian control.

Backing this plan, NATO and Pentagon commanders said that the military risks, while tangible, could be minimized since the Russian contingent would be outnumbered.

The political implications were manageable, the Clinton security team agreed, since NATO was challenging what appeared to be a rogue Russian military action.

NATO had intercepted communications from Moscow ordering the Russian convoy not to enter Kosovo.

Preparations seemed to get under way for the NATO operation on the afternoon of June 11 when reporters in Macedonia saw British paratroops separate from the main peacekeeping force, apparently for an immediate helicopter assault on Pristina.

But the preparations were then abruptly suspended by General Jackson any public explanation.

In the U.S. officials' view, General Jackson had been told again by the British government not to proceed with an action that risked being seen by Moscow as a provocation.