Military Assaults Yugoslavia

the basic element of NATO's structure is the national authority of its 19 members. Representatives to NATO present and vote on proposals based on the policies of their respective governments. For Operation Allied Force, NATO's campaign in Yugoslavia, the chain of command for day-to-day operations is as follows:

In the fertile Vojvodina plain, which straddles the Danube River and once fed much of southeastern Europe, wheat fields are so blanched by the sun that looking at them can blind the eye. A thermometer at a farmhouse reads 94 degrees in the shade at 7 p.m. as Djordje Curcin, wearing only shorts and sandals, takes shelter after a 14-hour harvest day in a dry, punishing wind.

Like hundreds of thousands of his fellow Kosovo Albanians, Bashkim Millaku was forced at gunpoint to leave his home and his country by Serbian troops last week. On his way, the 36-year-old father of two was caught in a roundup of 400 men, held prisoner for three days and two nights, tormented mentally and physically, robbed and denied food and water. He was used as a human shield. By the time Millaku reached Albania on Saturday night, he was in shock.

The shadowy Greek terrorist group November 17 claimed responsibility Friday for the assassination of Britain's defense attache in Athens, saying it targeted the diplomat because of his role in helping to coordinate NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia last year. In a 13-page letter to the independent Athens newspaper Eleftherotypia, the group said Brig. Stephen Saunders was "one of those who participated in the Nazi-type raids and mass murder of innocent, unarmed civilians."

In a significant escalation of tensions between the two Balkan neighbors, Albania on Tuesday charged that Yugoslav troops had violated its territory, shelling and burning homes in a remote border village before withdrawing. Yugoslav officials denied the report, but international peace monitors in the border area said Yugoslav troops had entered the village of Kamenica and set part of it on fire before withdrawing after 1 1/2 hours.

Serbian forces captured three more villages in western Kosovo, pushing ethnic Albanian militants away from Pec, the province's second-largest city, media reported Monday. Yugoslavia's state-run Tanjug news agency said Serbian police "crushed" important strongholds of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army in the villages of Lodja, Grabovac and Rausic, all just outside Pec. The push comes a day after the Serbs gained control of Junik, the rebels' main logistical and weapons distribution center.

U.S. diplomat William Walker, the former head of an international monitoring mission in Kosovo, walked past hundreds of smiling admirers Thursday on a hillside above this village. Then he reached the cemetery, and the mood turned somber. At the burial site for 45 ethnic Albanian massacre victims, Walker and a local dignitary spoke solemnly as relatives sat by the graves and fought back tears. Afterward, one of the bereaved women, Sherife Syla, 62, rose and said she wanted to say a few words.

More than 500 exhausted, emaciated Kosovo men of fighting age staggered across the border into Albania on Sunday, telling harrowing tales of being beaten, starved and forced to fight one another like gladiators before their Serbian captors.

Something strange is going on in this Kosovo Albanian village in what was once a hard-line guerrilla stronghold, where NATO accuses Serbs of committing genocide. An estimated 15,000 displaced ethnic Albanians live in and around Svetlje, in northern Kosovo, and hundreds of young men are everywhere, strolling along the dirt roads or lying on the grass on a spring day.

With air raid sirens wailing on a day of intense NATO bombing, the Rev. Jesse Jackson embraced three U.S. prisoners of war in a Serbian military judge's chambers Friday evening and led a prayer for their freedom. "Help is on the way and hope is in the air, and soon--very soon--you will know peace and family," the civil rights leader said in a huddle with the servicemen in the first video of the trio aired since their capture a month ago.

It was born amid ringing promises about the rule of law and the West's resolve to do the right thing. Madeleine Albright, now secretary of State, lauded the "commitment of the international community to bring those responsible for atrocities in the former Yugoslavia to justice." That was nearly seven years ago. Today, trials at the U.N.-established International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia grind on, but the most notorious suspects--Bosnian Serb leaders Radovan Karadzic and Gen.

NATO should admit that its bombing of Yugoslavia failed and send in ground forces to battle extremist Albanians and restore the ethnic balance in Kosovo, a U.N. expert said Wednesday. "The bombing hasn't solved any problems. It only multiplied the existing problems and created new ones," Jiri Dienstbier said after presenting his report to the 53-nation U.N. Commission on Human Rights.

High on a breathtaking hill in southern Serbia, beyond the reach of foreign troops patrolling nearby Kosovo, the only sound in this ethnic Albanian village is of dried corn stalks rustling in the autumn breeze. Ethnic Albanians tilled this land for centuries before the Serbs gave up control of the neighboring province to NATO-led peacekeeping troops 5 1/2 months ago.

War crimes investigators have unearthed 2,108 bodies from grave sites in Kosovo and expect to find more in the coming months, the chief prosecutor told the U.N. Security Council on Wednesday. U.N. investigative teams have examined 195 grave sites so far in their effort to establish evidence of systematic killing this spring of ethnic Albanians by Serbian forces, chief prosecutor Carla del Ponte said. The findings will be presented to the war crimes tribunal.

U.S. diplomat William Walker, the former head of an international monitoring mission in Kosovo, walked past hundreds of smiling admirers Thursday on a hillside above this village. Then he reached the cemetery, and the mood turned somber. At the burial site for 45 ethnic Albanian massacre victims, Walker and a local dignitary spoke solemnly as relatives sat by the graves and fought back tears. Afterward, one of the bereaved women, Sherife Syla, 62, rose and said she wanted to say a few words.

The ethnic Albanian men picking up home-winterizing materials at a distribution center in this village in southern Kosovo were frustrated and angry. "This isn't material to build a roof," complained Miftar Elshani, whose home was gutted by fire last spring when Serbian forces drove ethnic Albanians out of this war-torn province of Serbia, Yugoslavia's main republic. "It's only plastic sheets and sticks. The winter here is very strong. The wind can blow the plastic sheets away."

Spread out by a gurgling river, surrounded by mountains and green fields, the village of Belanica is described by those who dwelt there as a place where orchards flourished, the earth was rich, and time passed unhurried among neighbors who had known each other all their lives. It existed that way for centuries. And then, in a day, it was gone.

At a makeshift school in a refugee camp, it was 5-year-old Jeton Hasani's turn to tell his story of what happened in Kosovo. With the teacher at his side, Jeton started to talk in a matter-of-fact tone. "A grenade was thrown into our garden. Then my grandma was dead. My uncle, he's standing over there, was injured," Jeton said. Then the meaning of his words seemed to hit him. His whole body tensed up, his cherubic face turned bright red, and tears started to spritz from his eyes.

Ethnic Albanians were killed in revenge for NATO strikes during the Kosovo conflict, Serbia's deputy minister for information said in a British television report to be aired Sunday. "I don't want to say that there were no cases of retribution during the bombing--but during the bombing--and I emphasize that," Miodrag Popovic told the BBC.

The school year began Wednesday in Yugoslavia's dominant republic, Serbia, with a lecture on NATO's "aggression" delivered in those schools not closed by a teachers strike, damaged by bombs or occupied by refugees from Kosovo. Teachers read out letters from Serbian Education Minister Jovo Todorovic reminding pupils of varying age groups of the evils of the Western defense alliance.