USA: KOSOVO CRISIS: NATO DEMANDS PRESS BRIEFING
(11 May 1999) English/Nat President Clinton and top U-S officials have reiterated demands for Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to comply with all NATO demands before the alliance will halt its air campaign. The renewed calls came following reports on Monday that Milosevic had announced a partial pullout of his troops from Kosovo. And, in an extraordinary admission of error, America's intelligence have said that outdated maps were to blame for NATO's accidental air attack on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. At the White House, President Bill Clinton was hinting that word of a possible withdrawal of Serb forces out of Kosovo might be a good sign. But he was also indicating that Milosevic must still meet all the demands laid out by NATO before the alliance will halt its air campaign. SOUNDBITE: (English) "After all the build up and the hundred of thousands of Kosovars been driven out, many many killed, I don't think they'll come back with that, I think we'll have to do better. Any little daylight, any little progress it's better than it was the day before, we just have to bear down and keep working and we'll work through it. But I think that forces have got to be withdrawn. There has to be an international security force there or otherwise they won't come home, and that's the important thing." SUPER CAPTION: Bill Clinton, U-S president U-S officials say their insistence on a complete pullout of Serb forces from Kosovo is not a new demand. They argue that anything short of a full withdrawal might hinder chances of returning home for the thousands of ethnic Albanians who have fled the country. SOUNDBITE: (English) "It has been our view all along that if you don't remove the Serb military, paramilitary, and police forces, and that means all of them, the likelihood of getting the Kosovar Albanians to return will be close to nil. And the question of this issue has been our view all along that all Serb forces ought to be removed." SUPER CAPTION: James Rubin, U-S State Department spokesman The verifiable withdrawal of Yugoslav units is among the key conditions set down by NATO for stopping the bombing campaign that began on March 24. Also in Washington, William Cohen, the U-S defense secretary, has been making excuses for NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade. He says there were several mistakes made in identifying and locating the embassy. For instance, Cohen says that the maps that were used failed to correctly locate the Chinese embassy. SOUNDBITE: (English) "There was an original 1992 map that was subsequently updated in 1997 and again in 1998 it was again reviewed for the possibility of conducting a neo (?) operation ... so it was 1992, looked at again in 1997 and 98. None of those maps indicated that it was the Chinese Embassy that was being targetted - that the Chinese embassy on all of those maps located in what's called "Old Belgrade."" SUPER CAPTION: William Cohen, U.S. Secretary of Defense Still, Cohen insists this mistake will not stop the NATO bombing. SOUNDBITE: (English) "We hope that they will understand that this was in fact accidental. It was not intentionally targetted as a Chinese embassy. The building was targetted but it was not understood to be the Chinese embassy ... it defies all logic, all rationale on the part of anyone to conclude that we would deliberately target the Chinese Embassy. We have tried very vigorously to promote better US-Chinese relationship." SUPER CAPTION: William Cohen, U.S. Secretary of Defense Bombing continued on Monday night. Find out more about AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/HowWeWork Twitter: / ap_archive Facebook: / aparchives Instagram: / apnews You can license this story through AP Archive: http://www.aparchive.com/metadata/you...
