Clinton Would Consider Ground Troops By John F. Harris

Washington Post Staff Writer

Wednesday, May 19, 1999; Page A1 President Clinton declared for the first time yesterday that he would consider sending ground troops to Kosovo if he becomes convinced that NATO's strategy of bombing Yugoslavia will not bring victory. Clinton's comments, in a brief White House appearance before reporters, came as diplomacy aimed at ending the conflict seemed to be gaining momentum. Officials said he spoke out to dispel any impression that NATO might accept something short of its stated demands from Yugoslavia and to strengthen the hand of Russian peace envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin as he heads for a round of talks with President Slobodan Milosevic in Belgrade. "I and everyone else has always said that we intend to see our objectives achieved and that we have not and will not take any option off the table," Clinton said. Clinton's insistence that his mind is open to putting combat troops in Kosovo marked a rhetorical shift – "I do not intend to put our troops in Kosovo to fight a war," he announced on the first day of airstrikes 56 days ago – but senior administration officials said as a practical matter they are weeks away at least from a decision to assemble an invasion force. For the near term, Clinton's more aggressive stance was designed principally as a stick in public diplomacy, seeking to encourage Milosevic to embrace a still-evolving settlement offer that NATO and Russia are hoping to jointly craft. A Yugoslav government spokesman said in Belgrade that Milosevic is "ready to cut a deal" if NATO were to stop bombing first – an incentive the United States has ruled out – and predicted that "we have a diplomatic opening" with Chernomyrdin's imminent arrival in the Yugoslav capital. U.S. officials called that statement evidence that the air war is working, finally starting to grind down Belgrade's resistance. But much of Clinton's maneuvering in recent days has been designed to expand his flexibility if it becomes evident the air war will not force withdrawal of Yugoslav forces from Kosovo, the rebellious Serbian province at the center of the war, and an agreement giving autonomy to the ethnic Albanians who made up 90 percent of the province's 1.8 million inhabitants before the current conflict. Clinton's statement on ground troops followed a two-hour session he held Monday evening with his senior national security advisers at which officials said the group confronted in blunt terms the possibility that an invasion might eventually be the only way NATO can impose acceptable terms on Yugoslavia. "If the diplomatic track does not bear fruit, we have to be in a position to guarantee success with strictly military means," said one administration official close to the deliberations, adding that this recognition could lead soon to a reappraisal of combat ground troops. Previously, Clinton has said that he would put ground troops into Kosovo only as peacekeepers with the consent of Belgrade, following an autonomy agreement. Clinton's latest remarks, one official said, were an effort "to break out of a rhetorical box that we never should have gotten into." "It has not been removed permanently from the table, but neither is it adopted," a senior State Department official said. This hedging reflected the administration's gingerly efforts to keep the 19-member NATO alliance unified on strategy. Senior officials in Britain, the United States' closest ally in the Balkans conflict, continued to urge more aggressive planning for the possibility that a forcible entry into Kosovo will be needed soon. Yet German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder called a NATO ground offensive "unthinkable," a position shared by some other allies. The British defense minister, George Robertson, said in London that NATO has "ruled out, and we still rule out, a wholesale invasion against organized force inside Kosovo." But he added that NATO is exploring, with British encouragement, ground-troop scenarios in which there was no peace settlement but in which Milosevic's troops were in retreat and unable to fight and there was the prospect of large-scale death through starvation or cold inside Kosovo. Robertson was describing a scenario that in U.S. parlance has become known as the "semi-permissive environment." Some State Department officials have urged Clinton to embrace the idea of sending troops in such a situation, but Pentagon officials made plain that, as a matter of military planning, there was no such thing: There are combat troops or peacekeepers, but nothing in between. White House press secretary Joe Lockhart said yesterday that Clinton has adopted the Pentagon's interpretation. But other senior officials said Clinton is plainly more willing than he was when the air war began to consider a forcible entry into Kosovo. At the same time, diplomacy appears to have regained much of the momentum it lost after the accidental May 7 bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, which along with a government shift in Moscow had slowed Russia's efforts to work with the United States on a proposal for ending the war. Eager to encourage Russia's position as an intermediary, Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott held an extended strategy session in Helsinki with Chernomyrdin and Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari, who is representing the European Union in talks with Belgrade. U.S. officials said they expect both Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari to travel to Belgrade as early as today. Finland has long acted as a buffer state between Russia and the West, and that is evidently the role assigned to the Finnish president in the current conflict. Since Finland is not a NATO member, Ahtisaari can theoretically act as a go-between acceptable to Russia and Yugoslavia and to the NATO nations. While White House officials said they consider Chernomyrdin's involvement constructive, they said Russia has yet to accept Clinton's bottom line on two essential parts of an agreement. One point is the security force that would go to Kosovo after a settlement. Clinton insists the force must be NATO-led. The other point is whether all Yugoslav military and special police forces must withdraw from Kosovo, as Clinton says, or whether some would get to stay behind. Also on the eve of Chernomyrdin's trip to Yugoslavia, the United States freed two Yugoslav soldiers who had been captured by Kosovo's secessionist Albanian guerrillas and held as prisoners of war at a military base in Germany. The soldiers, both privates, were flown to Hungary and released at the Yugoslav border. Lockhart said the release was separate from the diplomatic maneuvering and not intended as a gesture. The Pentagon told Clinton that there "was not any purpose in holding them any longer," he said. "It was a humanitarian step for these two soldiers, and it should not be interpreted as anything more than that." NATO's air raids continued in tandem with diplomatic activity. Yugoslav media said bombs cut the nation's main highway yesterday, bringing down an overpass just north of Nis, the third-largest Serb city. Alliance missiles hit at least four cities in other raids that Yugoslav media said killed one woman and injured 12. Six bombs slammed into Mount Fruska Gora, near Novi Sad, Yugoslavia's second-largest city, according to wire reports from Belgrade. NATO missiles struck an empty fuel storage depot again last night a mile southwest of Belgrade's city center, witnesses said. Also yesterday, about 800 ethnic Albanians packed into a train were allowed to leave Kosovo for Macedonia, a day after the Serb military turned them back at the border. First lady Hillary Rodham Clinton announced release of another $15 million in U.S. aid money for refugee relief, warning the job of caring for displaced people will get much harder in a few months when cold weather arrives. Caring for these people, she said, "will be a huge challenge; we hope we don't have to meet that challenge." Staff writer Steven Mufson in Washington and correspondent T.R. Reid in Helsinki contributed to this report. © Copyright 1999 The Washington Post Company Back to the top