"MORAL COMBAT : NATO AT WAR" A BBC2 special, 9pm Sunday 12 March 2000 Reporter Allan Little ALAN LITTLE It is almost a year since NATO went to war in Europe. CAPTAIN PAT MCKENZIE, USAF It was an amazing feeling. I felt very proud to be doing what I was doing. A war not for self- interest, but for a noble ideal. PRESIDENT CLINTON ON TV Our Mission is clear - to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's purpose.. LITTLE This is the story of the bitter divisions which emerged among those tasked to fight it.. LT GEN MIKE SHORT COMMANDER, ALLIED AIR FORCES I thought, I just cant I can't do this anymore. I don't, I don't believe that we're doing this right President Clinton On TV ..to deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo. LITTLE .. of those who'd learned the stark and terrible lesson that liberation would require sacrifice.. DUGI GORANI KOSOVO ALBANIAN NEGOTIATOR Every single Albanian realised that the more civilians die, intervention comes nearer.. LITTLE …of how a moral crusade brought a last frenzy of terror. VALENTINA HAKLAJ He tell me if you don't call your father I will kill you, or your family. I will kill all of you… UPSOF PILOT There's cloud in the area, but you may be able to get the drop in - okay. TONY BLAIR BRITISH PRIME MINISTER The moral purpose was very simple. A gross injustice had been done to people, right on the doorstep of the European Union, which we were in a position to prevent and reverse, and we had to do that… LITTLE It is the story of a bold experiment to match military might to moral purpose, .of how that experiment spun dangerously out of control, and of how high ideals, in the end, walked hand in hand with revenge. Kosovo, November last year. Five months after NATO won its war to end the oppression of one group by another, a Serbian family drove, by chance, into a crowd celebrating Albanian Independence Day. Anonymous woman This group flipped over the car, set the gas tank on fire, the car started to burn, so my parents had a choice either to burn alive in the car or to get out. These bunch of people just grabbed them and started to hit them with fists, punched them, with metal bars with everything … the rest were just standing watching and cheering. It was a lot of people, it was a big crowd. They were determined to kill them. And then somebody shot my father. LITTLE Her father died instantly. His wife and her mother were beaten to unconsciousness. One British UN police officer saw the mob make murder part of their festivities. BERNIE COWAN UN POLICE It was like a victory for them, the fact that this - they were celebrating their independence for the first time for so many years - this was like the icing on the cake for them and you could see it in their faces. LITTLE Vengeance has been unleashed in Kosovo - in streets patrolled by NATO troops. BERNIE COWAN That night I just thought these are three innocent Serbian people. Just how could they do that to three innocent people? LITTLE Dragoslav Besic was a professor of civil engineering who'd taught at the Universities of Oxford and Berkeley. Anonymous woman It was basically a highlight of their celebration. It was a lynch. It was not an ordinary killing. BERNIE COWAN They were chanting UCK! I found out, later on, through one of the interpreters, that they had been chanting: "three more Serbs dead". LITTLE UCK is Albanian for KLA, the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA hold the whip hand here now. There is a state of lawlessness that grew directly out of the manner of Kosovo's liberation. The KLA sprang from the desperation of a brutally oppressed people for whom peaceful resistance had failed. The war in neighbouring Bosnia taught them the value of a resort to the gun. Even the children understand it. VETON SURROI KOSOVO ALBANIAN POLITICAL LEADER There is a message that is being sent to the Kosovars - if you want to draw international attention you have to fight for it. That is exactly it. You need to use violence to achieve your goals. LITTLE From the remote wooded hillsides of rural Kosovo, they embarked on a strategy to draw the world's most powerful military alliance into their struggle. They began in the villages from which they sprang, a shadowy civilian militia force emerging from - and melting back into - the civilian population that sustained them. They aimed to make the roads that held Kosovo together too dangerous for the Serb forces to control them. DUGI GORANI KOSOVO ALBANIAN DELEGATE It was a hit and run strategy, done usually by very small groups of three to four people and the aim of these ambushes was to promote themselves. GENERAL NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC COMMANDER, YUGOSLAV ARMY IN KOSOVO We saw the KLA as a serious threat as something which could endanger the Yugoslav army. LITTLE They began to ambush Serb patrols, killing policemen, then disappearing as rapidly as they had struck, an invisible Commando force. Serb casualties mounted. Would the West see them as victims of terrorism, or of legitimate peoples' uprising? JAMIE RUBIN US ASST SECRETARY OF STATE Killing postmen or killing Serb civilians in cold blood - those are terrorist acts that we do believe were wrong and unfortunately that was what the KLA was pursuing at the time. LITTLE It was a calculated but dangerous gamble. The KLA's political leader Hashim Thaqi now admits that he knew the Serbs would retaliate against innocent civilians. HASIM THACI KLA LEADER Any armed action we undertook would bring retaliation against civilians. We knew we were endangering a great number of civilian lives. LITTLE Their desperate calculation was to draw the world into Kosovo's feud. DUGI GORANI KOSOVO ALBANIAN NEGOTIATOR The more civilians were killed, the chances of international intervention became bigger, and the KLA of course realised that. There was this foreign diplomat who once told me 'Look unless you pass the quota of five thousand deaths you'll never have anybody permanently present in Kosovo from the foreign diplomacy. LITTLE The western world was still haunted by a profound collective guilt: it knew it had waited too long to intervene in Bosnia. Now one woman resolved not to make the same mistake again. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT US SECRETARY OF STATE I believed in the ultimate power, the goodness of the power of the allies and led by the United States. We were dealing which such a basic evil, that could not be tolerated. LITTLE That evil was the Milosevic regime. For more than a decade, he had wrapped himself in the symbols of Serb identity. He'd persuaded the Serbian people that they were surrounded by predatory enemies, and led them to war against their neighbours. Milosevic needs conflict to stay in power. The world had failed to defend the Bosnians against Milosevic. In 1995, Serb forces marched into Srebrenica and murdered seven thousand Bosnian Muslim men and boys. In the west, many came to believe that the lessons of Bosnia could now be applied to the very different circumstances of Kosovo. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT Milosevic was the same, evil Milosevic who had started this whole thing actually in Kosovo by denying them of their rights. And that we just had to stand up. LITTLE On March 5th 1998, Serb forces began an action that illustrated that very point of view. They attacked the home of a leading KLA commander called Adem Jashari, in the stronghold of Prekaz. The Serbs regarded this as legitimate anti-terrorist policing. It was the start of a brutal campaign that would lose them Kosovo. VILLAGER About six o'clock or seven o'clock in the morning we just saw about two thousand or two hundred soldiers or police, they were coming up… LITTLE As their home was being destroyed even the Jashari children understood the value of appealing to the world. As though heirs to an ancient tradition of epic tale telling. BESARTA JASHARI No-one is taking action in Kosovo. A war has started. They are burning our houses, they are killing people, children. They are burning our houses. No-one is taking action for poor Kosovo. They are burning the women and children and dumping them in the woods. The woods are surrounded so we cannot collect the bodies, no one is helping us. We are suffering. What did we do to Serbia, to deserve this? They burnt our houses. NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC COMMANDER, YUGOSLAV ARMY IN KOSOVO There was a standard police operation in that village, I don't know all the details. I know it involved the arrest of a notorious criminal, someone condemned for criminal offences. And that it was successfully executed. I don't remember the other details. LITTLE These are the details he doesn't care to remember. Fifty three members of the Jashari family were killed. What were KLA ambushes compared to this? Albanian leaders appealed to the wider world. VETON SURROI KOSOVO ALBANIAN POLITICAL LEADER As soon as we got the photographs we put them on the internet because that was the most horrendous thing we had seen until then. Kids, shot dead, were images of a war that people needed to see. We were shocked and we thought that other people needed to see this because this was getting out of control. LITTLE Four days later, foreign ministers from allied countries met at Lancaster House in London: The ghosts of Bosnia were there too. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT Not only was it a deja-vu about the subject generally, but we were in the same room that we had been in during Bosnian discussions. I thought it behoved me to say to my colleagues that we could not repeat the kinds of mistakes that had happened over Bosnia, where there was a lot of talk and no action and that history would judge us very, very severely. ROBIN COOK FOREIGN SECRETARY She was very vigorous in making it clear that we had to prevent Milosevic from repeating in Kosovo what he had attempted to do in Bosnia. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT I think I probably seemed quite harsh to my colleagues. But I decided it was worth it. LITTLE A shared enmity towards Milosevic was making allies of a shadowy band of guerrillas, and the most powerful nations on earth. The ambitions of the KLA, and the intentions of the NATO allies, were converging. The massacre at Prekaz made popular heroes of the KLA. Kosovo's Cornfield Cavalry grew exponentially. It was openly challenging the mighty Yugoslav Army to do its worst. Thousands answered the call to arms. They were ill- disciplined, and untrained. It was a spontaneous uprising of village militias. Milosevic regarded the KLA as a terrorist organisation funded by drug barons. But the US wanted to reach out to them. Richard Holbrooke - the US envoy who'd brokered Bosnia's peace deal - went to seek them out. VETON SURROI KOSOVO ALBANIAN POLITICAL LEADER The idea was Holbrooke wanted to come and see for himself what was going on. RICHARD HOLBROOKE US BALKANS ENVOY I made a trip out to the Albanian border and we went out to a small town called Junik which was under siege and completely surrounded by Serb forces. VETON SURROI We had consulted whether it would be good to go together and meet the KLA there. And then we went, and he wanted to see himself how the KLA looked like. RICHARD HOLBROOKE US BALKANS ENVOY It was a benchmark event. But it wasn't planned. Every once in a while things happen which aren't planned. VETON SURROI It was prepared beforehand, the KLA were notified that we were going to be there… so they sent one of their officers there. RICHARD HOLBROOKE We got into this Albanian village, we met with the village leader and as we were meeting with him seated in his living room upstairs, on the floor , Albanian style a guy sat down, wedged himself in between him and me cradling his Kalishnikov. This guy was very good at photo ops and he got photographed with me. He understood how to handle the world media beautifully and this photograph became the first official photograph of an American official with a member of the KLA. Snap! VETON SURROI Holbrooke was not very much impressed by that meeting - it didn't leave much breathing space, physical breathing space to Holbrooke either, because they were so compressed with each other. RICHARD HOLBROOKE I was not happy, because you don't like to be surprised in a situation like that. This sent all sorts of confusing signals to people round the world. Milosevic was furious. I was meeting with these rebel terrorists as he put it. GENERAL NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC COMMANDER, YUGOSLAV ARMY IN KOSOVO When the official ambassador of another country arrives here, ignores state officials, but holds a meeting with the Albanian terrorists, then it's quite clear they are getting support. RICHARD HOLBROOKE Albanians were very encouraged. LITTLE KLA Albanians in particular understood its importance to them. LIRAK CELAJ KLA FIGHTER I knew that since then, that USA, NATO, will put us in their hands. They were looking for the head of the KLA and when they found it they will have in their hand and then they will control the KLA. LITTLE With renewed confidence that the world was now at last taking heed, the KLA made astonishing advances From countryside strongholds they now held major cities in their sights. In the city of Pec, half the population was Serb. The rise of the KLA terrified them. Pec is the home of Serbian Orthodox Christianity. They call it the cradle of Serb identity. FATHER MIRJLKO KORICANIN PARISH PRIEST, PEC Serbs could not move around freely during the day, let alone at night. Our youth couldn't stay out after 10pm. We panicked if they weren't back on time. LITTLE This is a predominantly Serb neighbourhood. But Albanians lived here too, among the Serbs, as neighbours. Valmir and Valentina, an Albanian brother and sister, had grown up here, counting Serbs and Albanians alike as friends. The Rajcavic family next door were Serbs. But good neighbourliness would not survive the fear and suspicion that was sweeping in from the surrounding countryside. VALMIR HAKLAJ We used to play basketball together - go to each other houses to watch movies together. LITTLE Mladen Raicevic and his brothers were policemen. One night that summer his youngest brother was wounded in a KLA ambush. Mladen turned his anger on his neighbours. VALENTINA HAKLAJ He came here, and came with his brother Obrad, in our house. He told my father 'If somebody upset my family, my woman or my child, I will kill all of you.. VALMIR HAKLAJ He said 'I am warning you. It's your choice'. As they left his brother slapped me. LITTLE It was a chilling forewarning of what lay ahead. The KLA's summer confidence didn't last long. Milosevic responded with a ruthless and indiscriminate counter-offensive. The KLA were immediately in the run. But not only the KLA. Refugee man (unknown) Look ten people are sleeping here! LITTLE Hundreds of thousands of Albanian civilians fled. As the autumn chill closed in, they faced starvation and disease. These pictures pushed international opinion over the edge. NATO told Milosevic to pull his forces back to barracks. For the first time they backed it with a threat to bomb. Richard Holbrooke went to Belgrade to deliver that threat in person. RICHARD HOLBROOKE We had the planes on the run way in Italy fuelled up. We picked the targets. At my request the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent with me on the second half of the negotiating effort. General Short, the actual commander who was going to do the bombing. Milosevic had never met the General before. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT COMMANDER, ALLIED AIR FORCES I don't want to say that I was thrilled because I wasn't. Or that I was impressed because I wasn't. This man is a mass murderer. We had just sat down when Milosevic leaned forward without any small talk or breaking of the ice and leaned forward and said 'So you are the man who is going to bomb me'. And I will admit that I was stunned. RICHARD HOLBROOKE So using a line we had practised on the plane, Short said 'Mr President, I've got U2s in one hand and B52s in the other. It's up to you which I'm going to use'. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT Because if you cause me to start a bombing campaign your country will never be the way you see it today again. And in fact, we ought to stop the negotiations now, and you ought to go out and ride around Belgrade because the way it is today, it'll never be that way again. And I genuinely believed that. LITTLE Milosevic agreed to an immediate cease-fire. He agreed to allow international observers into Kosovo and to limit his troop numbers. It seemed that the threat of force had worked. But Milosevic had another reason for agreeing to the cease-fire: his fight, he believed, was over for now. He had completed his military task. GENERAL NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC COMMANDER, YUGOSLAV ARMY IN KOSOVO All the terrorist strongholds were liquidated, the terrorists scattered. Most of them handed over their weapons, some left the weapons and ran away. LITTLE Milosevic pulled his troops back to barracks. Diplomacy backed by force - appeared to be the way to deal with him. But it was a miscalculation. When the allies were to try it again just four months later, it would lead them to war. In a world with only one Super Power - Kosovo was becoming a global crisis. A senior American diplomat was summoned to the State Department. The head of the political office made him an offer that surprised and offended him. WILLIAM WALKER HEAD, KOSOVO VERIFICATION MISSION I remember thinking to myself he can't be serious sending me to Kosovo. I'm a very senior career officer. How could Kosovo be important enough to require my services? LITTLE The cease-fire agreement made it important enough. In October Walker was received by Milosevic. His job was to make sure that Milosevic's forces complied with the cease-fire. He set up the headquarters of the Kosovo Verification Mission in the capital Pristina. It was conceived as an independent, international body. But Walker had spent a life time loyally serving the US State Department. He saw the world from Washington's perspective. RICHARD HOLBROOKE The selection of Bill Walker was made by the Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright. She knew him.. and made the choice herself. CAPTAIN ROLAND KEITH KOSOVO VERIFICATION MISSION Ambassador Walker was not just working for the OSCE. He was part of the American diplomatic policy that was occurring which had vilified Slobodan Milosevic, demonised the Serbian Administration and generally was providing diplomatic support to the UCK or the KLA leadership. LITTLE Walker's cease-fire monitors drove round Kosovo in brightly- coloured orange vehicles. Their job was to watch as Milosevic withdrew his police and returned his troops to barracks. In the beginning, he complied. The German General Klaus Naumann had helped broker the cease-fire deal GENERAL KLAUS NAUMANN CHAIRMAN, NATO MILITARY COMMITTEE He really did what we asked him to do, he withdrew within 48 hrs some 6,000 police officers and the military back into the barracks. This was also confirmed by the OSCE Verification Mission. LITTLE This was much harder to monitor. Where the Serbs withdrew, the KLA moved forward, filling the vacuum. For the cease-fire agreement had a fatal flaw. It was one sided. It had required nothing verifiable from the KLA. GENERAL AGIM CEKU KLA MILITARY LEADER The cease-fire was very useful for us, it helped us to get organised, to consolidate and grow. WOLFGANG PETRITSCH EU SPECIAL ENVOY TO KOSOVO They were really growing ever stronger from day to day, and there was nobody to really stop them. GENERAL AGIM CEKU KLA MILITARY LEADER We aimed to spread our units over as much territory as possible, we wanted KLA units and cells across the whole of Kosovo. LITTLE At Podujevo, in the north of Kosovo, the KLA now filled the very positions the Serbs had vacated. The pattern was repeated across the province. William Walker's Deputy was a British General. He and his colleagues could see what the KLA was doing, but had no means of stopping or even discouraging it. MAJ GEN JOHN DREWIENKIEWICZ KOSOVO VERIFICATION MISSION The Kosovo Liberation Army infiltrated forward. WOLFGANG PETRITSCH EU SPECIAL ENVOY TO KOSOVO The KLA basically came back into its old positions that they held before the summer offensive. MAJ GEN JOHN DREWIENKIEWICZ KOSOVO VERIFICATION MISSION And this started to be a factor in dealing with the Serbs. Because the Serbs said to us, well hang on, the deal was that we withdrew from these things, and you were going to police the agreement. So can you just get these Kosovo Liberation Army out of the trenches that we were in a month ago? LITTLE But they couldn't. At NATO headquarters there was growing disquiet. We've obtained confidential minutes of the North Atlantic Council or NAC, NATO's governing body. They talk of the KLA as "the main initiator of the violence and state…" It has launched what appears to be a deliberate campaign of provocation". This is how William walker himself reported the situation then, in private GENERAL KLAUS NAUMANN CHAIRMAN, NATO MILITARY COMMITTEE Ambassador Walker stated in the NAC that the majority of violations was caused by the KLA.. LITTLE Walker didn't admit that in public at the time. He still doesn't. WILLIAM WALKER, HEAD KOSOVO VERIFICATION MISSION Q: You told the North Atlantic Council that it was the KLA side who were largely responsible. A: I Would have to go back and re-read my notes. I don't remember. most of the briefings I gave to the North Atlantic Council was that both sides were in non-compliance. Both sides were doing things that were wrong. Obviously it was easier to point at the government. JAMIE RUBIN US ASST SECRETARY OF STATE Q: How far did the KLA have to go to jeopardise international backing? A: Well again there would have been a point. I don't know where that point came they obviously never reached it.. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT Q: There was no clear mechanism to punish them if they failed to behave in what you call a reasonable way? A: Well I think the punishment was that they would lose completely the backing of er the United States and the Contact Group. LITTLE With US backing for the KLA now barely concealed, Milosevic sent the army back into action to clear the KLA out of Podujevo. The doomed procession to war with NATO had begun. The KLA continued to smuggle arms over mountain passes from Albania. Albanian civilians were press ganged into service. Before dawn on the fifteenth of December, they walked into a well prepared Serbian ambush. Most of those taken by surprise fled back into Albania. But 31 Albanian men were killed. Later on the same day in an apparent act of revenge, what remained of ethnic co-existence in the city of Pec nearby, was to be torn apart. A group of hooded, masked men drove up to this bar which was popular with young Serbs. LAZAR OBRADOVIC The doors opened and then we heard the machine gun fire …" LITTLE Lazar's teenage son, Ivan, was in the bar. He was a bright and promising school boy, who'd come top of his class.. LAZAR OBRADOVIC It was a horrifying sight. We tried to help those that were still moving. There was blood everywhere. Ivan didn't stand a chance. He was sitting right by the door. So he was the first one to be hit. FATHER MIRJLKO KORICANIN PARISH PRIEST, PEC The situation in Pec became unbearable. The Serbs couldn't stand the Albanians because they had killed 6 children. And the Albanians couldn't stand the Serbs. Nobody knew what would happen next. LITTLE Walker condemned both the ambush on the border and the killings in the bar in equal measure. WILLIAM WALKER HEAD, KOSOVO VERIFICATION MISSION It really looked like this was a tit for tat again. KLA hearing about their people being killed up on the border had done this in Pec. WILLIAM WALKER Q: There is a huge difference, isn't there, between people killed in a legitimate military exchange and a bunch of hooded unknowns walking into a bar and killing some teenagers..? A: I think the point is, we really didn't know what had happened in Pec. Yes the government was saying it was KLA gangsters who had come in and sprayed this bar. When you don't know what has happened, it's a lot more difficult to sort of pronounce yourself. LITTLE One month later Walker was to break this rule to spectacular effect. He pronounced himself with absolute certainty about a massacre that occurred here, in the village of Racak. Even now, more than a year on, important questions about what happened here remain unanswered. This is the story of that massacre, of the political uses to which it was put, of how it galvanised the west to go to war, and of the pivotal role played by William Walker. There is nothing remarkable about Racak. Except that by January 1999, the KLA had moved in, most of the villagers had fled, and trenches had been dug on the edge of the village. PAULA GHEDINI UN REFUGEE AGENCY We encountered many villages where the villagers themselves told us in very clear terms that they would prefer to be left completely alone. Often times they felt that if a KLA group were to come into their village, that would put them under greater threat. LITTLE From camouflaged positions near Racak the KLA launched well prepared hit and run strikes against Serb patrols. In early January, they killed four Serb policemen. ZYMER LUBOVCI KLA FIGHTER We saw them coming, so we prepared and opened fire. But it was guaranteed that every time we took action they would take revenge on civilians. LITTLE Racak did not have to wait long for the retaliation. The attack began on the morning of January 15th. HASIM THACI KLA LEADER A ferocious struggle took place. We suffered heavy losses, but so did the Serbs. They set out to commit atrocities, because a key KLA unit was based in this area. LITTLE International observers watched from safe high ground as Serb forces took control of the village. They moved from house to house. Most were empty. The KLA had gone. When the Serb forces pulled out in the afternoon, they announced they'd killed 15 KLA men in action. The international monitors entered the village and reported nothing unusual. Only next morning did the full force of Serb retaliation become apparent. William Walker went to see for himself. WILLIAM WALKER We progressed up the hill and about every 15 or 20 yards there was another body as we kept going up the hill, and I don't know how many bodies we passed before we got to a pile of bodies. LITTLE By the time Walker arrived the KLA had retaken control of Racak WALKER [archive] I think its going to take me a few minutes to determine what I really should say, and I'd like to hold a press conference in Pristina later this afternoon. Walker [archive] The facts as verified by KVM include evidence of arbitrary detentions, extra-judicial killings, and the mutilation of unarmed civilians of Albanian ethnic origin in the village of Racak by the MUP and VJ. LITTLE In other words, he blamed the Serbian police and the Yugoslav army. Walker was supposed to be an independent international official. But did he seek direct instruction now from the Americans? WILLIAM WALKER Without calling any of my capitals I told what I thought I had seen, which was the end result of a massacre. RICHARD HOLBROOKE William Walker, the head of the Kosovo Verification Mission, called me on a cell phone from Racak. WILLIAM WALKER Q. But you don't remember calling Washington at all? GENERAL WESLEY CLARK SUPREME ALLIED COMMANDER EUROPE I got a call from Bill Walker. He said there's a massacre. I'm standing here. I can see the bodies. WILLIAM WALKER (No reply to question) Q: And you didn't speak to Gen Clark or anybody like that? LITTLE Walker's comments gave America the green light to enter Kosovo's war. The KLA had pulled in it's mighty ally. DUGI GORANI KOSOVO ALBANIAN NEGOTIATOR With Racak, and with lots of others, the Serbs were playing into KLA hands. It will remain I would say an eternal dilemma whether the KLA initiated these battles in the civilian inhabited areas because it knew that the Serbs will retaliate on them. Personally I don't think so, but of course, it was a war. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK Clearly, after Racak, extraordinary measures had to be taken. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT It clearly is a galvanising event, and the President really felt that we could then move forward, make clear that the US was going to be a part of an implementing force. LITTLE But Albright knew that the galvanising effect of Racak would not last long. She had to get her European allies on board. She insisted there could be no more diplomacy without the credible threat of force. The Europeans agreed. There would be one last diplomatic effort. The mesmerising splendour of the Chateau Rambouillet near Paris became the most luxurious last chance saloon in diplomatic history? Would the grandeur of Rambouillet beguile and seduce old foes to reconciliation? DUGI GORANI KOSOVO ALBANIAN DELEGATE We became used to rare wines. We became used to delicious and I suspect tremendously expensive French specialities. We became used to a luxury which the main aim was to see us taking up a pencil and signing a piece of paper. So luxury was there, everything was there : you just sign the damned document. LITTLE As the delegates arrived, the last ditch nature of the talks became clear. The atmosphere was tense, it was the first time these old enemies had sat in the same room. The Europeans, some reluctant converts to the threat of force, earnestly pressed for an agreement both the Serbs and the Albanians could accept. But the Americans were more sceptical. They had come to Rambouillet with an alternative outcome in mind. JAMIE RUBIN US ASST SECRETARY OF STATE The second acceptable outcome was to create clarity where previously there had been ambiguity. And clarity as to which side was the cause of the problem and clarity as to which side NATO should defend and which side NATO should oppose and that meant the Kosovar Albanians agreeing to the package and the Serbs not agreeing to the package. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT If the Serbs would not agree, and the Albanians would agree, then there was a very clear cause for using force. LITTLE The Europeans clung to the formal purpose of the talks - an agreement by both sides. ROBIN COOK FOREIGN SECRETARY Q: At the end of the day it was much more important for the Albanians to say yes than for the Serbs to say yes? A: NO it was important for both to say yes. After all this was not a tactical exercise to prepare the ground for a reaction this was a genuine attempt to find the peace formula that the Serbs had said they wanted. JAMIE RUBIN Obviously, publicly, we had to make clear we were seeking an agreement, but privately we knew the chances of the Serbs agreeing were quite small. LITTLE The Serbs did not object to the political aspects of the peace plan - including wide ranging autonomy for Kosovo. But their delegation refused even to consider the military part - a NATO peace implementation force. GENERAL NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC They would have unlimited rights of movement and deployment, little short of occupation. Nobody could accept it. JAMIE RUBIN Q: There must have been a bottom line.. how far would you have gone to appease Serb anxieties? Would you for example have compromised on the question of NATO's role in that force? A: No . the force had to be NATO because if it weren't NATO it weren't going to work! LITTLE Focus now shifted to the Albanian delegation. They'd elected the young and inexperienced KLA man Hashim Thaci as their leader. The entire delegation urged him to accept. But he refused because the agreement on offer did not include a referendum on independence. DUGI GORANI The delegation appointed Thaqi for a leader not knowing they may become his prisoners. VETON SURROI KOSOVO ALBANIAN POLITICAL LEADER It was a formidable yes on all sides. Except when it came to Thaci - who was very strained and he said no. DUGI GORANI Thaci was really blunt to the delegation stating that look this document this actual presentation is completely unacceptable. VETON SURROI He used language which could be threat.. could be understood as threatening. DUGI GORANI And whoever signs it now, I would treat him or consider him as the enemy of the nation. LITTLE It was a graphic illustration of the power the gun now wielded among the Kosovar Albanians. Thaqi's intimidation of his fellow delegates did not stop a warm relationship developing between him and his international sponsors. JAMIE RUBIN He was somebody who was a younger member of the delegation more my age and so there was a certain natural rapport. I think I used to tease him a little bit about how he might look good in a Hollywood movie and I think he appreciated that sort of basic teasing back and forth. LITTLE Thaqi did not respond to this flattery. The Americans sent for their diplomatic big gun. Madeleine Albright arrived on St Valentine's Day. She was absolutely focussed on getting a yes from Thaqi. She spent four days wooing him. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT When we got there, it was very evident that Mr Thaqi was kind of a leader and we actually compared him to Gerry Adams DUGI GORANI she insisted on him making a sort of a symbolic choice. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT Perhaps here was a leader who had a goal who was able to be part of a political solution. VETON SURROI ..which Thaqi partly liked, and more disliked. He liked the idea of Ok, now he's being ushered into politics. LITTLE (Night time Rambouillet) Deadlines came and went, Thaqi still held out MADELEINE ALBRIGHT I must say I was unbelievably frustrated. We needed clarity then and there. VETON SURROI She was saying you sign, the Serbs don't sign, we bomb. You sign, the Serbs sign, you have NATO in. So it's up to you to say. You don't sign, the Serbs don't sign, we forget about the subject it was very explicit. LITTLE It took three weeks, but America's chief diplomat got there in the end. The Serbs said no. The Albanians, finally, said yes. It was the unambiguous clarity the Americans had sought. NATO, led by the US, could now wield the credible threat of force against Milosevic, in the confident belief that the threat alone would be enough. They were wrong. In Kosovo, Serb forces moved into position, the international monitors prepared to leave. WILLIAM WALKER The personal security of the international verifiers was our highest priority. No country in Europe, no country in North America wanted to lose any of its people. LITTLE Walker called his local Serb and Albanian staff together for a surprise announcement. WILLIAM WALKER We had to say, look, I've been told by the minister that we're pulling out. We can't offer to take you out, even if you wanted to go. BEATRICE LACOSTE KOSOVO VERIFICATION MISSION You know I'm really sorry to leave you behind. You've done a great job, but hey we'll be back in a few days. It'll be a little tough, but we'll be back. WILLIAM WALKER Let's get on with the shredding. Let's not leave too much behind. BEATRICE LACOSTE I was very unhappy. I could imagine that there would be a lot of retaliation. Walker gets into car CAPTAIN ROLAND KEITH KOSOVO VERIFICATION MISSION There was a lot of disquiet as our very lengthy convoys of international orange vehicles motored out of the province. I guess foreboding of what was coming next. I personally felt frustration, betrayal? Yes to some extent. WILLIAM WALKER We got out in record time. we sort of congratulated ourselves on being even more organised than we thought we were. And it wasn't till a few days later that we realised that Milosevic and his troops had been anxious for us to leave, and sort of cleared the way, made sure we did get out in record time, so that they could start the campaign that kicked off immediately. LITTLE In Pristina, the local staff who'd been left behind now paid the price of their loyalty to the international community. BEATRICE LACOSTE Some of the guards who had been given two weeks pay and asked to stand outside the building of the OSCE, one of them was shot down and another one was very badly beaten up, LITTLE In the absence of international observers, Serb forces began to pillage and burn and kill with the casual cruelty they had taught the world to expect of them. Kosovo was sliding into chaos. ZELIHE REXHEPI They said "If you even move we will slit your throats or shoot you. We didn't dare move. LITTLE This is what that remains of the village of Chirez. There was no military purpose to this. It was wanton, wilful destruction, a pre-emptive campaign of revenge for NATO's threat. This group captured on camera the undiluted pleasure they took in their barbarity. ZELIHE REXHEPI They took my daughter away with a young girl and an old woman. When I heard the gunshots I knew they had killed her. Her little son cried on my lap. LITTLE The credible threat of force as a tool of diplomacy collapsed amidst this depravity. Its bluff was called. In Belgrade, there would be one last attempt to salvage the doomed policy of coercive diplomacy. RICHARD HOLBROOKE We sat alone in this vast white palace surrounded by Rembrandts or fake Rembrandts who knows, and we were totally alone and I said "You understand what will happen when I leave here?" and he said very flatly, no emotion, Milosevic said "Yeah, you're gonna bomb us, you're a big powerful country, you can do anything you want". And I said "Well that's it Mr President I have to go now". And there was dead silence in this room where there had rarely been silence. And he said as we walked out "I wonder if I'll ever see you again". And I said "Well that depends on your actions Mr President". And we shook hands and that was it. The bombing started twenty nine hours later. LT COLONEL RODRIGUEZ Every last detail every second, every manoeuvre transitions through your brain, through your hands, through your eyes very quickly so that when the right time comes, call it the push time, everything starts to click like clockwork GENERAL WESLEY CLARK We got the Go message and go tomorrow unless something stops it. LT COL. CESAR RODRIGUEZ US AIR FORCE We had the chaplain give us a few words of wisdom which were very encouraging, and then we suited up and prepared to do the mission.. CAPTAIN PAT MACKENZIE US AIR FORCE As I stepped into the jet the nerves took over a little bit. I think one of the things I will not forget is the fact that there was an individual that was standing on the flight line waving an American flag as we taxied out. I mean it just sent chills down my spine. It was just amazing LT COL CESAR RODRIGUEZ I myself personally experienced moments of extreme fear. At times you kind of question whether you're ready for it SQUADRON LDR CHRIS HUCKSTEP ROYAL AIR FORCE I can remember thinking this is it. In a couple of miles in a couple of seconds I'll be over the border I'll be over enemy territory. They'll be trying to shoot me down. I'll try and prosecute the target then, and drop bombs on them. I threw up a little prayer: Lord you've got to help me this is it I can't do any more now. GENERAL NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC At about 7pm I received an anonymous phone call. A voice said: I must avert the attack on my country, that it would be worse than the one on Iraq. I hung up. LITTLE From ships in the Adriatic, the first cruise missiles targeted Yugoslavia's air defence system to try to make the skies safer for NATO pilots. Phase One of the campaign began with a very limited list of targets. Each missile carried a camera in its nose, recording an image of its target until the moment of impact. CAPTAIN PAT MCKENZIE US AIR FORCE I knew exactly when I was crossing into what we call bad-guy's side and the adrenaline started flowing a little bit. Once we saw the Triple A coming off the ground, the training kind of took-over. This Triple A over there is not a factor. This Triple A over here could be a factor to me. Whatever the case may be. And that's - that's um training. WING CDR TIM ANDERSON ROYAL AIR FORCE Perhaps more worrying were the surface-to-air missiles and when they came then definitely you were very focussed on where they were going, what they were doing and how you were going to defeat them. LITTLE In Washington in the last of the day's spring sunshine, the White House went on a full war footing. President Clinton was preparing to address the nation. Now that hostilities had begun, the National Security Adviser, Sandy Berger became Clinton's key lieutenant. Power in the cabinet had shifted away from Madeleine Albright. Together they worked out 3 basic aims. Those aims were not to last beyond the first few days of the air campaign. PRESIDENT CLINTON [Speech] My fellow Americans, our mission is clear: to demonstrate the seriousness of NATO's purpose so that the Serbian leaders understand the imperative of reversing course... SANDY BERGER US NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR There was the hope that the use of force by NATO in a strong way would cause him to stop, would deter him from going through, but I think that there was no illusion that that was by any means a certainty even perhaps a probability LITTLE The second aim astonished NATO's military leaders. They'd already warned the politicians that it could not be achieved. [Clinton speech ] ... To deter an even bloodier offensive against innocent civilians in Kosovo GENERAL HENRY SHELTON CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF The one thing we knew we could not do up front, was that we could not stop the atrocities or the ethnic cleansing through the application of our military power .. LITTLE And the third would prove so hazardous to implement that it threatened to tear apart the NATO alliance itself. [Clinton Speech ] .. and if necessary to seriously damage the Serbian military's capacity to harm the people of Kosovo. That is why we acted now because we care about saving innocent lives. GENERAL KLAUS NAUMANN CHAIRMAN, NATO MILITARY COMMITTEE I said on one occasion the Council, we cannot stop this by using air power alone. It's impossible. No-one in the political arena should have had the illusion that we could do it, but as soon as a statement is done, it's there. SANDY BERGER US NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR Q: So you knew that air power alone couldn't necessarily prevent the mass murder and mass deportations that everybody knew he was capable of? A. Well I'm not quite sure it would, we knew that it was that, that a military response would not necessarily cause him to stop and if he didn't stop that we had to be prepared to destroy him. LITTLE The Generals had to produce military action that could match that rhetoric. When the threat of force became actual force, the diplomatic aims stayed the same. The generals were not yet given clearly defined and achievable war aims for one simple reason: GENERAL WESLEY CLARK It wasn't a War . There was no declaration of War. It wasn't legally a War. And we weren't going in there to conquer territory. It was simply one plank of the diplomatic strategy. And I don't think there was a single member government of NATO that sought to go to war with Slobodan Milosevic. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT I certainly acknowledge that there were people within the Alliance who felt we weren't at war but as a commander of young people going in harms way every day and very night, my mindset was that I was at war, the people under my command were at war and that was how we had to do our business. LITTLE It certainly felt like a war beneath those NATO flight paths, the Albanians of Pec were about to pay the price of winning NATO's support - in a programme of mass and systematic revenge. VALMIR HAKLAJ ALBANIAN The Serbs knew that they couldn't fight NATO, so they took it out on us instead. Through the windows we saw smoke and flames. They were burning Albanian houses. I was horrified because the same fate awaited us. They were going to expel us from the home and then burn it down. I felt desperate. LITTLE Valmir and his sister Valentina remembered the threats their Serbian neighbours had issued earlier. Now their neighbours turned on them again. VALENTINA HAKLAJ Five minutes after we went to bed someone banged on the door. A man shouted in Serbian: Its the police, open the door. VALMIR HAKLAJ We knew that voice. It was our neighbour. VALENTINA HAKLAJ He was either going to kill us or do something terrible . LITTLE That night they were herded with thousands of others into a sports stadium. VALENTINA HAKLAJ It was a horrific sight. The whole city, or rather our half of it, was there. There were old people, babies, the sick, the disabled: but they wouldn't let anyone leave. They said: you wanted NATO now you can pay for it. LITTLE The next day they were driven, on foot, from their country. The first trickle of what would soon become a flood of humanity, changing the dynamic of NATO's moral crusade. Valentina thought only of returning, and revenge. VALENTINA HAKLAJ I asked God: will you be merciful. May the day come when we do the same to them. LITTLE NATO's first priority was not to help the likes of Valentina but to make the skies safe for their own pilots. Using cluster bombs they struck Yugoslavia's air defence systems. But some MiG fighter planes made it into the air. LT COL CESAR RODRIGUEZ US AIR FORCE We'd located a MiG 29 that was coming out of the Pristina airspace. LITTLE High above Yugoslav airspace, air controllers in AWACS surveillance planes carefully choreographed the movements of hundreds of aircraft. LT COL CESAR RODRIGUEZ There was some confusion amongst the controller in our formation. The confusion comes from not having trained together. The confusion comes from a slight language barrier. I handed him off to my wingman who was very young, his very first combat mission, goes by the name of Wild Bill. I've got the threat on my radar scope. I'm monitoring him. We'll take the shot. We can't see very far and we're not really equipped with night-vision equipment. But when the MiG 29 explodes , the large orange fireball that erupts, it illuminates and reflects off the western mountains, lighting up the sky. First blood had been drawn on night one: LITTLE NATO was not to lose a single pilot in combat throughout the campaign. But the Yugoslavs were much more effective adversaries than NATO had expected. That first objective to destroy Serb anti-aircraft positions, was supposed to take just 3 days. In fact it was never achieved. NATO couldn't even locate, far less destroy, all the anti-aircraft missile systems. Missiles remained a threat every single night, forcing NATO to fly higher. GENERAL NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC We knew that they would try to make a good start by hitting our units, our command and control centres. So we undertook all necessary measures to protect our soldiers and equipment. We made them unreachable, untouchable. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT The key is that we were never able to get to the point where I could look him in the eye and say Okay, the risk isn't there any longer from radar missiles: we have killed them all. That never occurred. They had to assume they were in a threat range- all the time . That makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck all the time. LITTLE Short insisted that his pilots stay above 15,000 ft, 3 mile above the ground. On the ground the chaos that was sweeping the countryside was about to hit the capital. Unhindered by NATO air strikes, armed police and paramilitaries began to spread terror among the civilian population - looting as they went. GENERAL NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC We couldn't allow attacks on the police or army from inside Kosovo. As soon as NATO started attacking civilian targets, there was a mass population movement out of Kosovo. This favoured our defensive deployments. LITTLE Armoured police vehicles patrolled the streets as, systematically, the civilian population were given a few hours to leave. These pictures were taken secretly by an concealed Albanian photographer. GENERAL NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC We tried to dissuade them, and sometimes we succeeded. A great number stayed in Kosovo and were protected by our units. LITTLE The whole world could see that that was a lie. General Pavkovic's units were in fact organising the biggest programme of forced deportation in Europe since the second world war. It was bound by the sheer force of the image to evoke memories of Nazi Germany. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK We knew that there would be have been some effort to retaliate against the population. But what we didn't foresee is that it would be calculated in a way that would have generated the massive refugee outflow LITTLE The scale of it was breathtaking. Milosevic had dramatically raised the stakes. These images bore alarming testimony to the failures - so far - of the air campaign. Everywhere the reaction was the same. IVO DAALDER US NATIONAL SECURITY COUNCIL 1995-96 Shock. .In many ways, the - it made the team that had been - led the President into this decision was shell-shocked. They never thought that this was going to happen. LITTLE In Washington, the recriminations began. How and why could a war that had been launched so boldly, so confidently, now seem so out of control? On March 30th, six days after the war began, there was a crisis meeting of Clinton's cabinet. Washington turned its heat on Madeleine Albright. IVO DAALDER There was a sense that in fact she had led the Administration down this path and had failed. Madeline's War, as it became called, all of a sudden didn't look so good. JAMIE RUBIN ASST US SECRETARY OF STATE Q: A lot of people said this was Madeline's war and it was going all wrong. Was she under pressure? A.: Absolutely. (laughs) That was a very, very difficult time. There were a lot of people who were looking for scapegoats when things didn't go well quickly. Washington has become a very impatient place where if success isn't achieved instantly then knives go out. IVO DAALDER They always thought that at worst, this would take a bombing campaign of about 12 days and then it would be over, then he would give in. They never considered that in fact, rather than giving in or even hunkering down, it would escalate.. escalate to these massive proportions. MADELEINE ALBRIGHT All of us knew that this was not going to be easy. I mean I think there is so much misinformation about there, that we thought this was going to be an easy military campaign.. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT I was being told, again quote, "Mike you're only going to bomb for two or three nights, that's all the Alliance can stand, that's all Washington can stand". LITTLE But Madeleine Albright had herself handed fortune a hostage. On the opening night of the campaign she had given the clear impression that it would be short. She appeared unconcerned - almost casual. MACNEIL LEHRER Can you give us any time frame in our own mind, the ideal situation, as to how long it might take to get where you want to go? MADELEINE ALBRIGHT I don't see this as a long-term operation. I think that this is something that the deter and damage, is something that is achievable within a relatively short period of time. LITTLE Among the military, the knives were also coming out. Some believed NATO was fighting a war by committee, and moving at the pace of the slowest member. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT This is my first time fighting a war with 19 partners. But I've heard the term "lowest common denominator" used. It's probably overused but you don't have a better one. LITTLE All the military men agreed the need for political consensus was hindering the military effort. LT COL CESAR RODRIGUEZ The first phase of the -the Kosovo operation, it'll be looked at as a failure, because we did not employ our assets in a swift and lethal fashion, so as to bring the enemy to - to sue for peace, in an early fashion. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK Once you begin to use force you should use it as decisively as possible as rapidly as possible but that is based on some prior understandings.. those understandings weren't there. LITTLE But a nineteen member coalition is unwieldy in a more sinister sense. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK We got additional assets coming in now, and it's very good results.. LITTLE Each morning Clark convened a video conference. He grew increasingly concerned about the security of information. The Serbs were evading the effect of bombing so well, that they appeared to know not only what was to be bombed, but when. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK ..and I think the real thing for today is to make sure.. LITTLE The Serbs were evading the effect of bombing so well, that they appeared to know not only what was to be bombed, but when. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK There was a lot of effort put forward by the Serbs I'm sure to try to figure out exactly what the targets were. We did have some very good data. But mainly our predictions were accurate. There are things which remain secret, which I cannot discuss. In some cases we had some indications maybe they did have some information, about some specific things that were being targeted. LITTLE There was alarming precedent. Six months earlier the Serbs had been passed a copy of the Top Secret Operations Plan. It told them precisely what targets would be hit in the opening phase of the campaign. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK Q. On that first night did the Yugoslav regime know the targets, that were going to be? A. I think they knew the categories of targets, and I think they understood exactly what we were coming out after the first night. A - in at least one proven case, the operations plan had been given to the Serb government by an officer assigned at NATO headquarters. Q. How do you know that? A. This officer basically confessed to this. Q. How damaging was that? A. Well I think it was it was one of the factors that helped the Serbs have greater confidence that they would know what NATO was going to do. LITTLE That information had been passed by a French officer called Pierre Henri Bunel. The question was - was it still happening. Clark thought it was. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK We looked for all indicators that the Serbs might have known what we were doing. We worked these back into what else could we do to tighten operation security? LITTLE We've learned that an internal US air force investigation conducted after the war concluded that the Serbs were being passed the highly sensitive air tasking orders. Those orders list the targets to be hit, the flight paths and the timings. Clark ordered access to the air tasking orders to be restricted. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK There were certain elements that certain people who didn't get an air tasking order, and we restricted who had access to it and we tightened it down. We kept certain sensitive items that didn't need to be on the air tasking order, off the air tasking order. LITTLE We've learned that initially, no fewer than six hundred people had access to the air tasking orders. This was then cut to a hundred. The internal investigation concluded that when this was done the impact on what the Serbs appeared to know, was immediate. No spy has yet been caught. In the skies above Kosovo unmanned projectiles called 'drones' photographed the tragedy below. They confirmed the worst fears. RODRIGUEZ There's no doubt there were - you could see through the fires on the ground that here was in fact pain and destruction down there. LITTLE Streams of refugees were being herded along the roads. The reality was stark - the air campaign could not stop this. CAPTAIN PAT MCKENZIE US AIR FORCE It was frustrating. When you see a building go up in flames and you go 'wow I wonder what's going on down there'. And as you continue to watch this target area you see the house next door go up in flames. As I'm watching these houses burn there's really nothing I can do based on the rules. LITTLE It made the moral imperative greater than ever. The unfolding tragedy demanded action. The politicians had become prisoners of their own confident eve-of-campaign assertions. BLAIR [Speaking in Commons] We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and children from humanitarian catastrophe, from death, barbarism and ethnic cleansing by.. ROBERTSON [at MoD press conference] The military objective of these operations is absolutely clear cut. It is to avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe by disrupting the violent attacks ... GENERAL WESLEY CLARK We had men and women on the ground, Albanian men and women being cleared out of their homes, families fleeing to the forests. Naturally there was a great desire on the part of the political leadership to go after those forces that were directly involved in perpetrating these atrocities. LITTLE Tony Blair went to NATO headquarters, shocked at the sense of drift that now prevailed. He wanted the Army in Kosovo hit, and NATO's PR sharpened up. TONY BLAIR I certainly believed that we had to take a grip on the whole way the thing was run and organised because it was a big - it wasn't just a military campaign it was also a propaganda campaign and we had to take our public opinions with us. You know you had a NATO Alliance, a bureaucracy that simply wasn't tuned up. Organising it was a problem and I felt a bit like.. you know, at the beginning of a big political campaign, where you know your officials were all assembled in different places and no one had ever quite done like this before LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT I think the pressure on General Clark was absolutely intense from the political leadership of the alliance. There was a moral imperative to be seen to attack the Third Army in Kosovo, to respond, quite frankly, to public pressure to be bombing those forces that were committing the atrocities. TONY BLAIR The moral purpose was very simple. A gross injustice was being done to people right on the door step of the European Union which we were in a position to prevent and reverse. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT I don't wish to be impertinent but I don't think most of our civilian leadership generally understands air power and how it should be employed. Their exposure to it has been films of the Gulf War which looked very much like a video game. And what they were seeing on television was ethnic cleansing - streams of refugees being forced out of their homes. LITTLE What the politicians wanted was very clear. But the pilots could not deliver it. SQUADRON LEADER CHRIS HUCKSTEP, RAF We were flying, every day every night we were flying missions and yet you knew that there were still refugees pouring out, horrendous stories of what was going on, on the ground, in Kosovo and while we were doing everything we could, we weren't actually stopping it happening. The Serbs weren't leaving and that was painful. You'd get back to your hotel at night and watch the news and you knew you were doing everything you could and it was still going on. So that hurt sometimes. LITTLE At fifteen thousand feet NATO's pilots were safe but so were the Serbs they were trying to find. General Pavkovic commanded the Third Army in Kosovo. This was not an army on the run. It was calm, defiant, and secure. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT The Serbs dictated the pace of events, they dictated the battle rhythm. They came out to burn villages when they wanted to, they hid when the weather was good. His troops had dispersed. His Command and Control capability was out in the field or in tents or in the trees or wherever they needed to be. GENERAL NEBOJSA PAVKOVIC We used other measures too: miniaturisation, camouflage, decoys. We created many false targets, and it was mainly these that NATO aircraft destroyed. LITTLE It was Kosovo's guerrilla fighters that took to flight. Lirak Chejna's unit found itself isolated and vulnerable, mystified that their mighty enemy seemed unaffected by NATO action. They struggled and failed to protect fleeing civilians against retribution. LIRAK CELAJ KLA FIGHTER I had some pictures which I shoot with camera. I will never forget these pictures. People which didn't have enough to eat, who are sleeping in the car. I saw children suffering. We decided to organise them in a big convoy to send them to Pristina. It was very sad to let your people go in the Serbs' hands. We couldn't protect them any more. LITTLE The end of the convoy was too slow. Serb paramilitaries surrounded it near the town of Koljic JEHONA LUSHAKU I remember my father was so, so afraid. He said to us 'Oh my God what I have done'. LIRAK CELAJ When the Serbs arrived in Koljic they already found some Albanians because the convoy was too long. JEHONA LUSHAKA It was a paramilitary forces, have separated us and they want to execute all my family. Then my father paid 1000 DM to rescue us. LITTLE Those who couldn't pay were not spared. Dozens, perhaps as many as eighty, were murdered. The aftermath of this atrocity was caught on camera. How many others were not? LIRAK CELAJ We sent our reports every night of Serb position and Headquarter. They were supposed to pass it to NATO. They were all out in the field. It was I think very easy to attack this, but they never did. LITTLE The mismatch between real military achievement and the resolute confidence of the politicians was clear. OOV ROBERTSON Day and night, the regularity of pounding is already having an effect, is severely depleting their capability of carrying on this violence. They are being hurt very badly on the military front TONY BLAIR There is no doubt at all it has been hugely inhibited his policy of ethnic cleansing and as a result of the destruction of his air defence systems his military infrastructure, his supplies, we are of course, halting that machine… Q: We weren't really having a fairly devastating effect at that time were we? A: Well it is true that in terms of what he was able to do in Kosovo, we were hindering him rather than stopping him, at least in the initial stages. And that was because of the limitations of that type of military action. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK So those we didn't destroy, we degraded their operations. I think it had a huge impact on their army. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT Q: What impact did that strategy have on his ability to carry out ethnic cleansing? A: I don't think it impacted him at all. Clearly all the targets that we struck - at least in my mind, that we struck in Kosovo, he had evacuated long before. LITTLE The pilots found these small mobile targets so hard to find that on some days they dropped half their bombs on so-called 'dump sites' known to be empty. The head of the air campaign himself so despaired of being forced to chase such elusive targets that he considered resigning. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT As any human being dealing with kind of frustration there were a couple of times when I thought I can't do this any more. I don't believe that we're doing this right and I owe it to my people to stand up and say we're not doing this right. LITTLE Short believed there was an alternative. He wanted to go outside Kosovo and hit major strategic targets that would directly hurt the Milosevic regime. He pressed the political leaders to let him do it. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT But their reaction was 'we need to strike at those troops that were committing the atrocities'. That's an understandable reaction. I believe our military reaction should have been 'No Mr Prime Minister, Mr President, Mr Chancellor, we need to strike at Milosevic, and you need to give me permission to do that tonight! LITTLE To the people of Serbia, NATO's war came out of the blue. They were told nothing about atrocities in Kosovo - Milosevic told them NATO's campaign was an unprovoked war against ordinary Serb people. SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC We are facing the danger of a NATO attack. Every citizen must contribute to the defence of the country. LITTLE Serbian Radio and Television played to the worst fears of a paranoid population. Day and night it evoked the horrors of the 1940s when Nazi Germany occupied Yugoslavia. Belgrade itself had not yet been bombed. That was about to change. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK We talked about the need to move into targeting facilities, Command and Control facilities in Belgrade. After all, this is where the ethnic cleansing was being driven. This is the central headquarters of the Interior Ministry there. And there was no reason why we shouldn't be striking it. LITTLE Bombing Belgrade meant moving to Phase Three of air campaign. A dramatic escalation. Could the consensus of NATO hold together? The question was expertly side-stepped. The North Atlantic Council was never asked to give its approval. The decision was made by the Secretary General and his top military advisor. GENERAL KLAUS NAUMANN Phase three could have been seen as an all-out air war against Yugoslavia and the NATO nations, well not all NATO nations were prepared to go as far…and for that reason we never took the risk to ask the question knowing that we may run into some problems. LITTLE All out war came to Belgrade on April 3rd - Day 11. NATO hit the Interior Ministry, the campaign headquarters of Kosovo's ethnic cleansers. For the head of the air campaign, the real war had finally begun. But it was to prove a false start. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT We were going to Belgrade but Belgrade was in flames. We attacked the proper target sets. The issue from that point on was to stay after it and we had some difficulty doing that. LITTLE That difficulty came from France. Paris claimed not to have been consulted. President Chirac was furious to learn of the attack only afterwards. He and his foreign minister determined they would be consulted from now on. HUBERT VEDRINE FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER We wanted political control when we changed phases, that is to say when we changed targets. LITTLE A French general moved into Clark's office - to scrutinise the targets in advance. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK I had a French 2-star that stayed there with us the whole time who came round to my house virtually every night, and we talked about progress and he liased for me. LITTLE These new tensions in the Alliance were made worse by Belgrade's response. Far from being cowed, the population of the city rallied. They consciously taunted NATO, testing its nerve. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT For strategic reasons and, quite frankly, for signal reasons, I wanted to strike what had become.. called the rock 'n roll bridge, the bridge that the Serbs were dancing on during the campaign to demonstrate their defiance. I wanted to bring that bridge down, and by one country we were denied the ability to strike that bridge. And in fact, what was relayed to me was that, the leadership of that country had said "Don't even ask". Q: Which country? A: It was France. HUBERT VEDRINE FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER We tried hard to avoid targets affecting the economic life of the country, in other words people's day-to-day lives in the most fundamental sense. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT I never had anything but the greatest support both moral and material from the French Air Force. I cannot begin to offer opinions on why their government made the decision that they did. LITTLE They made those decisions because they knew that a major targeting error down town could cause so many casualties that public support for NATO would ebb away. In Belgrade, as in the west, public opinion was a weapon. Radio Television Serbia - RTS - transmitted anti- NATO propaganda day and night. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK Nations beginning to ask us, in the region, said please get rid of Serb Television it's just a huge propaganda weapon for Milosevic, its the way he maintains command and control. It's a legitimate military target you need to disable this. And so we looked at a number of different techniques that could have been used to disable it. We finally concluded that the best way to do it was to bomb it. LITTLE RTS pictures were beamed around the world. Western television journalists in Belgrade used them too. CNN 2-way Presenter: CNN's Alessio Vinici is there - Alessio. Alessio: Serbian Television reported that the bombing heavy bombing went on all night. LITTLE The American network CNN was based in the RTS building itself. ALESSIO VINCI CNN, BELGRADE We started talking to our colleagues in Atlanta, to some contacts again in Washington and Brussels and we heard more and more that RTS was coming up on the target list. LITTLE When these pictures hit western television screens they became a real threat to NATO's ability to sustain the war. Whenever NATO made mistakes Western journalists were taken to film civilian casualties. At Djakovica, the allies bombed a convoy of Albanian refugees, wrongly believing it to be a Serbian military column, RTS pictures had an impact around the world. ALESSIO VINCI CNN, BELGRADE We also heard from sources in Brussels and Washington that there was - a lot of people were unhappy with the way RTS was broadcasting their own part of the story. It was also a time when NATO started making the first mistakes, hitting civilian areas, and RTS was obviously prominently showing that... they were concentrating 99.9 per cent of their coverage on the mistakes or so-called mistakes that NATO would do.....and of course we were using those pictures because they were the only pictures that we had available. TONY BLAIR This was one of the problems about waging a conflict in a modern communications and news world...we were aware that there would be pictures coming back, the convoys were the, in many ways the worst of the refugees, that were hit by NATO bombs. We were aware that those pictures would come back, and there would be an instinctive sympathy for the, for the victims of the campaign. LITTLE RTS journalists openly taunted the west. Newsreader Let Clark take a shot, we are waiting for him. Our address is 10 Tarkovska street, I wont give you the co-ordinates, you'll have to work them out yourselves. ALESSIO VINCI CNN, BELGRADE And then at some point we were told that it was better to just leave the building altogether, because the risk of staying there, even during the day was too high because NATO had started 24-hour bombing, and that there was no way to find out when exactly RTS may get bombed. LITTLE Although the foreign journalists had pulled out local technicians continued to work their nightshifts. Kasenja Bankovic was among them. She believed that if the building was to be bombed the RTS bosses would warn the staff in advance. BORKA BANKOVIC She was never scared of going to work at the TV building. Somehow she felt that she was safe there. She said 'Mother, I'm leaving'. I looked at her saying 'Okay, take care.' She replied "don't worry, I will take care..." LITTLE At six minutes past two, on the morning of April 23rd, an American stealth bomber did indeed target 10 Tarkovska Street. RTS was broadcasting a pre-recorded interview with Milosevic. Kasenja's mother rushed to the bombed building. No one from the RTS management offered help or information. BORKA BANKOVIC I had the crazed look of a person searching through a crowd. Someone asked, Madam, was someone you know working here tonight? I said yes, my daughter. LITTLE Ksenija Bankovic and fifteen others, mostly technicians, died. LITTLE When Belgrade woke the next morning, RTS was triumphantly back on the air. They were re- running the interrupted Milosevic interview. RTS had made a contingency plan in the event of bombing. It did not include evacuating their own staff. ALESSIO VINCI CNN, BELGRADE One can only wonder why those technicians and why those people were kept there, especially at night when everybody at that time, especially you know so late into the war, knew that RTS was going to be a target. BORKA BANKOVIC They were sacrificed. I don't know why. You'll have to look for an answer elsewhere. Q: Where? A: Well, first of all with the people at RTS, and then from the government at all levels. I don't know. LITTLE To what end did Kasenja Bankovic die. Her family believe she was deliberately sacrificed by the Serbian regime for whom civilian deaths produced valuable propaganda. NATO derived no benefit at all from the bombing. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK We knew that when we struck it there would be an alternate means of getting out the Serb television. There's no single switch to turn off everything. But we thought it was a good move to strike it and the political leadership agreed with us TONY BLAIR They could have moved those people out of the building. They knew it was a target and they didn't; I think that was probably for you know very clear propaganda reasons: but there's no point. I mean there's no way of waging a war in a, you know, in a pretty.. it's ugly, it's an ugly business. BORKA BANKOVIC This was an outrage. I can't just condemn RTS and say NATO was right, because NATO killed my child and RTS were accomplices. NATO is the murderer. LITTLE It is an inherent weakness when democracies go to war. Western publics must confront the innocent suffering inflicted in their name. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT If we allowed this butcher, murderer and dictator to defeat the most powerful alliance on the face of the earth because we didn't have the stomach for collateral damage and we didn't have the stomach for unintended loss of civilian life, then we were going to cease to exist as an alliance. LITTLE Public opinion in the west grew more sensitive as the bombing campaign was stepped up. But how far could public support be pushed? When NATO struck the Chinese embassy mistakenly, they claim the politicians again reigned in the military. They imposed a five mile no-bomb zone around Belgrade. HUBERT VEDRINE FRENCH FOREIGN MINISTER I think political control was in the end maintained in the correct manner. But I also think that to a large extent this was thanks to France. LT GENERAL MIKE SHORT A nation clearly had the ability to say 'no-one can strike that target'. Not just us, not just you, no-one can strike that target set. And what their motivation was in making that decision certainly no-one ever shared with me. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK My military colleagues have got to understand that there will be political in which targets are struck and that we want political approval for these politically sensitive targets. LITTLE American stealth bombers flew missions directly from bases inside the united states. The French government accused the Americans of flying unilateral bombing raids of their own outside the NATO command structure. HUBERT VEDRINE All the countries s in the Atlantic Alliance acted as part of NATO, with full discussion about what to target, but the US was also carrying out a separate American operation. They deployed national forces, with a national decision-taking mechanism commanded from the US, and the European allies did not know about these other actions. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK With all due respect the French foreign minister that's incorrect. Q: Why would he say it? A: It's incorrect I am not going to speculate on his motives. I can simply tell you it's not correct. I commanded all assets and all assets were integrated into the NATO plan. LITTLE NATO unity itself was under growing strain. For America the legacy of Vietnam is a simple rule: put crudely - no body bags. But as the air war dragged on, Britain began to press America to plan for a possible ground invasion. The problem was, Clinton had ruled it out on the very first night. BILL CLINTON If NATO is invited to do so our troops should take part in that mission, to keep the peace. But I do not intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war. LITTLE Sandy Berger had put that sentence in the President's speech. SANDY BERGER US NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISOR Had there been at the beginning a debate about ground forces, we would have started this campaign not with a solid NATO facing Milosevic, we would have started this campaign with a NATO with its guns pointed at each other. LITTLE NATO had sent twelve thousand troops to neighbouring Macedonia, to go into Kosovo only once Milosevic had agreed to a peace deal. Britain now argued that they could be turned into a ground invasion force. TONY BLAIR I became convinced that we had to have that option there, and I became convinced even more so once I had visited NATO and sat down and talked to the guys who were fighting the campaign. LITTLE Blair's intervention had redefined the political aims of the war. They were blunt - Serbs out, NATO in, refugees home. He now wanted to redefine the means to achieve those aims. TONY BLAIR You had to prepare for all contingencies. Which was a you know euphemism for making sure that you had the ground force option there if you needed it. JAMIE RUBIN US ASST US SECRETARY OF STATE There was certainly irritation at the very public way the British Government was pushing the ground troops issue, it was interesting, especially because the kind of option that was a serious option, meant they were pushing essentially for the deployment of American ground troops. TONY BLAIR People used to say to me occasionally well for goodness sake Tony just don't talk about it at all, I'd say look it's quite difficult; I mean you're out there and people ask you; and as I say we don't have Milosevic's media and jolly good thing that we don't. But the fact is my guy's asking me, and your guys ask you, and you know you're expected to have some sort of answer to this. LITTLE In April the Allies gathered in Washington, for NATO's 50th anniversary summit. The issue threatened to expose NATO as weak and divided. The Americans told the British bluntly to stop talking about it in public. JAVIER SOLANA SECRETARTY GENERAL, NATO We meet at a time of crisis in Kosovo LITTLE Clinton told Blair that NATO would not be allowed to lose. Blair took this to mean that US troops would be committed if needed. TONY BLAIR & OOV I was never in any doubt that they would do what is right. America does do what is right, in the end the President would have taken the decision necessary to make sure this thing was seen through. LITTLE But in the Pentagon there was intense opposition. When General Clark took a ground invasion plan to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, he was cold shouldered. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK I showed them the assessment that we'd made. They weren't actually the plans, they were the assessment of how a plan like this would be done. GENERAL HENRY SHELTON CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF What he had at that time was somewhat analogous to the sport section out of the entire Sunday newspaper that you normally anticipate in a military plan. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK They were very appreciative of receiving then information. I didn't ask for a decision. So they didn't make a decision. GENERAL HENRY SHELTON CHAIRMAN, JOINT CHIEFS OF STAFF That was not sufficient to allow us to make a strong recommendation to the political leadership as to whether or not we should be undertaking a ground option. LITTLE The American military was closing off Blair's ground option. Instead, the alliance stepped up the bombing campaign. Graphite bombs cut off the electricity. The targets were no longer purely military. LT GEN MIKE SHORT The impact that it had on the leadership cadre around Milosevic I think is extreme. LITTLE But the leadership cadre stayed calm. They believed that the heavier the bombing the greater the chance that the Alliance would crack, and that danger was real. This was militarily effective, but politically risky. Some of the European allies believed they could not carry public opinion with them much longer. PROF KARL KAISER ADVISOR TO GERMAN CHANCELLOR It was not easy for Germany. This country was particularly interested in getting the war ended. There was a possibility that the crisis could evolve in a way that could end up in a tragedy. LITTLE NATO now turned to an old adversary for help. The Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin opened a new diplomatic channel with his US and European counterparts. He saw it as an admission of NATO's growing desperation. VIKTOR CHERNOMYRDIN RUSSIAN PEACE ENVOY They were looking for a way out. They realised that it would not be over in two or three months. LITTLE But it wasn't Chernomyrdin that mattered to Belgrade. Milosevic believed he had potential allies in the powerful old security establishment: the military, the secret police, and the successor to the KGB. GENERAL LEONID IVASHEV RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY NATO, led by the USA, was flouting all the principles of international law. These principles had been in place since World War Two. PROF KARL KAISER ADVISOR TO GERMAN CHANCELLOR Chernomyrdin represented, so to speak, the government, President Yeltsin. But to Milosevic, whose conception of power and whose relationship with the security services was of a very special nature, it was extremely important that the security part of the Russian power structure said the same, in fact said even more. LITTLE Russian security forces co-operated with Germany to open a secret back-channel to Milosevic himself. It relied on the connections of an inconspicuous Swedish financier called Peter Castenfelt. Peter Castenfelt went to Moscow to meet the security forces. What he was told there would be crucial in bringing the war to an end. PROF KARL KAISER Peter Castenfelt, having given advice to the Russian government, including Yeltsin, had the full trust of the Russian leadership, and the intelligence and security site there. He waited for a signal, the signal came, the Russian secret service took him to the border and there the Yugoslavs were waiting and a car was there and avoiding the bombs took him to Belgrade where he then met Milosevic. LITTLE For four days, Castenfelt held a series of secret meetings with Milosevic. He delivered a message that ended the Serbian leader's dream's of a Russian intervention. The Russian government was about to agree a peace plan with NATO and the Russian security forces had accepted it. PROF KARL KAISER It was so to speak a message that he would take more seriously than any other message from the Russians because those were the people that formed the power apparatus around him. The security apparatus in Moscow said 'End the War. Or 'here are some conditions that look acceptable to us, and we cannot help you beyond it, so exit now'. LITTLE Ahtisaari and Cherno arrive. The official international envoy was now the Finnish President Marti Ahtisaari. He went to Belgrade with Chernomyrdin carrying the joint NATO Russian peace plan. PRESIDENT MARTTI AHTISAARI EU PEACE ENVOY Both he and I didn't believe for a moment that we could get agreement in Belgrade. We drove through the city. First of all the city didn't look so damaged as one might have thought. We went to the guest house where he was waiting and he looked and he looked like I would have met him yesterday. He took politely us and we decided to go straight to the negotiating table. I actually read the peace offer, and he said "can we have a copy?". They got it, and then they asked me if they could start improving the proposal. I said, unfortunately not, that this is as good as we can come up with, and if we can't agree on this, then the next offer will be worse than this, from your point of view. LITTLE NATO had agreed two key compromises. PRESIDENT MARTTI AHTISAARI For them I think the important points were the whole thing would happen under UN auspices and secondly that Kosovo would remain a part of Yugoslavia. That made the deal acceptable to the Russians. It also gave Milosevic something that had not been on offer before the bombing started: a UN mandate. There was a sort of sigh of relief, and I congratulated Chernomyrdin, and hugged him in a brotherly fashion. LITTLE But the relief was premature. The Russian military had expected their own sector of Kosovo, independent of NATO. They now felt double crossed. GENERAL LEONID IVASHEV RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY I felt as if I were the defeated one. That was the feeling I had, as if I myself had been defeated. I felt that evil was triumphing over good. LITTLE They decided to try to take what they had been denied. Russian troops stationed in Bosnia rolled towards Kosovo. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK They had informally conveyed information that they might be an advance party for an airborne operation that would go into Pristina Airfield and potentially partition the country. LITTLE The question was - could they be stopped? GENERAL WESLEY CLARK I called the Secretary General and told him what the circumstances were. He talked about what the risks were and what might happen, if the Russians got there and he said: Of course you have to get to the airport. I said do you consider I have the authority to do so. He said of course you do, you have transfer of authority. LITTLE There was a way to stop the Russians. In a Macedonian cornfield, Clark put five hundred British and French paratroopers on immediate standby to launch an air-borne assault. But Clark's British subordinate told him the plan risked sparking World War Three. LT GEN SIR MICHAEL JACKSON COMMANDER, KOSOVO FORCE We were standing into a possibility - let me put it no more strongly than that – a possibility of confrontation with the Russian contingent, which seemed to me probably not the right way to start off a relationship with Russians who were going to become part of my command. LITTLE British and French objections thwarted Clarks plan. The two hundred Russian troops passed through Kosovo and were greeted as liberating heroes by local Serbs. They took the airport unopposed. The world watched nervously. The Russians were planning to fly in thousands of paratroopers, who would then cut Kosovo in half, leaving Milosevic in control of the North. GENERAL LEONID IVASHEV The Defense Ministry already had plans, proposals, ready to put into action. Let's just say that we had several air bases ready. We had battalions of paratroopers ready to leave within 2 hours. LT GENERAL SIR MICHAEL JACKSON There was concern that there may be Russian aircraft inbound, and that one answer to this would be to block the runways at Pristina airfield, and what was looked at was putting some armour, tanks, on the runway. Q: Were you in favour of that? General Wesley Clark: I believe it was an appropriate course of action. LITTLE But Clark's plan was again overruled by Britain. Instead Clark asked neighbouring countries to try to stop Russian aircraft flying towards Kosovo. The Rumanian defence minister took great pleasure in warning Moscow not to try to fly over his country. GENERAL WESLEY CLARK He said you could do that of course, but we would be obliged to send an aircraft up to intercept your aircraft. And there are only two buttons on our aircraft, and if the pilot pushes the wrong one, he'll shoot down your transport plane with all of these people on board. Of course, that would be a crime, he said, and he would be prosecuted under our law. He'd be convicted and would be sent to jail, for seven years. But he would also be a national hero. LITTLE June 12th 1999, Force Entry Day, With the agreement of Slobodan Milosevic, fifty thousand NATO troops entered Yugoslavia at last. They went more in relief than in triumph. It had taken 78 days of non-stop bombing. Militarily undefeated and defiant to the last - the Serb forces who'd so laid waste to Kosovo pulled out unimpeded and unpunished for what they'd done. Serbs out. NATO in. Refugees home. VALENTINA HAKLAJ People could hardly wait to go home and see what had happened to their land. There was nothing left to see. It was horrible. The small of war, burning and gun powder hung over the city. LAZAR OBRADOVIC Before leaving Pec we visited my sons grave. I will never forget that moment as we wept and asked "Ivan, will we ever be able to come and visit your grave again?" That was hard, really hard. It can't get any harder than that. LITTLE The Kosovo Liberation Army recruited NATO to its cause. An old injustice was defeated here. But NATO's moral war rewarded those who took up arms. RICHARD HOLBROOKE I don't believe that any of the liberation forces, or guerrilla forces of our lifetime moved more rapidly, or more successfully, from total obscurity to international standing and recognition than the Kosovo Liberation Army LITTLE The Serbs that remain live in ghettos now. At Gorazdevac, near Pec, six hundred Italians stand between them and the vengeance of their old neighbours. The war started as a moral crusade to end such intolerance. But in the end it wasn't about morality. It wasn't even about Kosovo. It was about saving NATO from collapse. TONY BLAIR The bottom line was we couldn't lose. If we lost, it's not just that we would have failed in our strategic objective; failed in terms of the moral purpose - we would have dealt a devastating blow to the credibility of NATO and the world would have been less safe as a result of that. LITTLE And NATO's leaders did not know, when they led us into it, that that is what they were jeopardising. How closely they courted catastrophe, or how hollow the moral victory amid the ruins of a Kosovo where the oppressed, once liberated, themselves oppress. THE END