TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE
GIVEN BY MR JAMIE SHEA AND GENERAL GIUSEPPE MARANI
IN BRUSSELS ON TUESDAY, 20 APRIL 1999

JAMIE SHEA:
Ladies and gentlemen, good afternoon. May I apologise for being a few
moments late, keeping everybody waiting.


A number of different topics for you today at the briefing. First of all I
would like to begin with the up-date on the political/diplomatic front. As
you know, you have just seen, the Secretary General received Prime Minister
Blair a few moments ago, it was a very cordial meeting. I think the
essence of it was that we are going to demonstrate both now and at
Washington the determination of all 19 Allies to see this through to the
end, no matter how long it takes. And there was a sense that emerged from
the discussion this morning between the Secretary General and the Prime
Minister that we are all together on this, all of the democracies of
Europe, and that our values and security in the region will both suffer if
Milosevic is allowed to conduct ethnic cleansing with impunity. But of
course you heard from the Secretary General and the Prime Minister
directly, so I don't need to dwell any longer on that topic.


I should like to inform you that the Secretary General spoke on the
telephone this morning with the Prime Ministers of Norway, the Netherlands
and Luxembourg as part of his on-going consultations to prepare for the
Washington Summit, and of course also to review the latest developments in
Kosovo.


At 7.00 pm today the Secretary General will receive Mr Samaruga, the
President of the International Committee of the Red Cross, and as you would
expect, the focus of their meeting will be very much on the situation, or
should I say the plight, of the internally displaced persons inside
Kosovo. We will be interested in learning of the information that the Red
Cross may have as to the numbers, the whereabouts, the condition of the
internally displaced persons. We will also exchange ideas on what can be
done in the near term to bring relief and assistance to these poor people
and to see also how NATO can assist the work of the International Committee
of the Red Cross.


Tomorrow we will be having in the afternoon the visit of the Prime Minister
of Bulgaria, Mr Kostov, for another one of our so-called 19 + 1 meetings
between NATO and our partner countries of the region. Bulgaria of course
is an extremely important partner to us always, but never more so than
during the current crisis. And we very much appreciate the solidarity that
our partners in the region and beyond have shown in the conduct of NATO's
operations. Yesterday I noted the Foreign Minister of Slovakia confirmed
that his country is planning to offer NATO full transit facilities if
necessary and we are grateful for that.


Turning to the operational situation, General Marani of course is here to
give you the full up-date in just a few moments. I can say briefly that
last night we continued air operations on a number of targets in
Yugoslavia, ammunition depots, an ammunition plant near Belgrade,
ammunition storage facilities right across the country in fact. At the
same time we struck a number of tactical targets in Kosovo, including
tanks, trucks, a frog missile support site and a high level command post.
So the intensity of the operations continues. But we also note that the
troops of President Milosevic on the ground in Kosovo continue their clean
and sweep operations, particularly around Kosovska, Metrovica and Pudojevo
in northern Kosovo where clearly the resistance of the Kosovo Liberation
Army continues.


But they have also continued to conduct operations against Kosovo
Liberation Army elements between Prizren and Djakovica, and there is a
continuing build-up of artillery in the western part of Kosovo and shelling
across the border into Albania. We are also getting reports, and I think
General Marani will develop these in a moment, of the special police using
teargas near Pristina during clearance operations.


I would like to turn now to the humanitarian situation. Approximately
70,000 refugees have left Kosovo over the past weekend, this compares to
50,000 who left between 6 - 15 April. So around 600,000 refugees have
departed Kosovo in the last month alone. The United Nations High
Commission for Refugees expects 100,000 more refugees to try to leave
Kosovo over the next few days. And what we are seeing as we study these
movements of people more is a kind of safari operation on-going by the Serb
security forces against the Kosovar Albanians. First there is a pattern of
shelling into the hills where the refugees are hiding so that they are
forced to come down, beating them out of the bush if you like. Then they
are on the roads, clogging up the roads, being moved hither and thither,
particularly being mixed up with military vehicles of course on those
roads. Then they are put into trains and sent to the borders, but
sometimes when they arrive at the borders they are sent back again. There
was an incidence yesterday where a train from Pristina arrived at Blace at
the border with the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and there
international observers saw it being turned around again by Serb forces and
sent back. And finally a strategy which seems to consist of trying to
drive people towards the south, which is what I was talking about
yesterday, herding them near the borders but not allowing them to cross, as
if Milosevic is trying to develop a surge capability that he can sort of
switch on and off as he desires whenever he wants to start a new flood of
refugees. It is extremely depressing that human beings are used as pawns
on this type of macabre and rather machiavellian chessboard.


Nonetheless, NATO continues to help all of those who are successful in
leaving and AFOR - Albania Force - is now up and running, over 2,000
soldiers have now been deployed as part of that mission, they are beginning
with a relocation plan for the refugees that has to be moved, as I said
yesterday, first of all from Marina on the border to Kukes and there, given
the lack of facilities in Kukes, urgently towards 10 refugee camps which
are going to be constructed elsewhere in Albania. And AFOR, co-operating
with the Albanian government, is currently able to move 3,000 refugees a
day out of Kukes in Albanian military vehicles, and also using the 40
flights a day of our helicopter shuttle service between Tirana and Kukes,
so that is now up and running.


And indeed more and more NATO forces are arriving to join AFOR with each
passing day. We have now Dutch and Belgian engineers who are experts in
main supply route maintenance and repair, those two units will be
operational on 25 April, and an advance party of the Dutch Engineers will
start its reconnaissance on 20 April; an advance party of a Spanish
contingent will depart for Tirana today; Belgian Army Engineers will
construct a refugee camp for 2,500 and a child rehabilitation centre for
500 near Durres. Once completed, this camp and the centre will be
transferred to the International Red Cross.


Our force balancing conference terminated yesterday at SHAPE and I am glad
to report that we have now been able to fill in all of the gaps in medical
and engineering resources that we need for AFOR, for the Operation Allied
Harbour in Albania.


At the same time today at SHAPE there is going to be a main logistics
planning conference where all NATO nations are going to be represented.
What we want from this conference are confirmations of national
contributions, national deployment plans because obviously this force has
to be divided into different geographical centres, identification of lead
and roll specialist nations, and of course co-ordination of multinational
logistics.


At the same time in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, the
authorities have given permission for the construction of a new refugee
centre at Sigani to accommodate 30,000 refugees and naturally General
Jackson and his soldiers will be on hand to help with the construction of
that camp to accommodate the spillover of the existing camps given the
increased number of refugees flowing into the former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia in recent days.


One very worrying piece of news that I have received in the last 24 hours
is of the Yugoslav Army in Montenegro beginning ethnic cleansing of
villages along the border between Montenegro and Kosovo, but in Montenegro.
This is something rather new and distressful if this pattern is now
spilling over elsewhere into Yugoslavia, it can only exacerbate the problem
which is already, as you know, of alarming proportions.


Today I would also like to say a few words on the subject of war crimes and
crimes against humanity. You heard Secretary of State Robin Cook in the UK
this morning describe the help that the UK is now giving to the
International Criminal Tribunal for The Hague in terms of supplying
intelligence material, witness accounts, refugee accounts, to Justice
Louise Arbour, and I was very pleased to see today Rudolph Scharping, the
German Defence Minister, also confirm that Germany is making similar
information available.


It is rather tragic, but at the same time necessary, that the United
Kingdom has collected material on 50 separate incidents in one month alone,
as Robin Cook said this morning. And I think Robin Cook also reminded
everybody very usefully that even before the NATO operation began, even
before the latest wave of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo, several incidents
approaching war crimes and crimes against humanity were already taking
place in Kosovo, so this is if you like the aggravation of a pattern rather
than the beginning of a pattern, and as you know he cited the discovery of
24 Kosovar Albanians whose corpses were riddled with machine gun bullets in
a minibus near Rogovo, he cited grenade attacks on cafes in Pristina,
grenade attacks on shops and individuals discovered in Decani in cars,
again the victims of gunshot wounds.


But I would like to give you some information that we have received from
various reliable sources, particularly corroborated refugee accounts, about
what has been happening more recently, in just the last few days in fact,
and I would like to break this down into separate headings, as I have done
in the past on this topic.


The first heading of course is detentions, forced detentions. The refugees
have continued to report that Serb forces are systematically separating
military aged men from the groups that are sent towards the frontiers, and
you heard the State Department spokesman, Jamie Rubin, yesterday talk of
about 100,000 men that are currently unaccounted for if one looks at those
absent from family groups arriving in the surrounding countries, in fact
the figure could be much higher than 100,000 which is probably a very
conservative estimate.


Refugees have also reported that the Serbs have taken approximately 700
boys, as young as 14 years old, either to use as human shields or as blood
banks for Serb casualties. In another incident, according to one refugee,
Serb paramilitary forces are forcing Kosovar Albanian men to dig defensive
positions on the south-east side of Borosevac. Refugees also reported that
near Orahovac as many as 700 men were used as human shields last week. The
ethnic Albanian men were forced to stand in front of tanks in the rain for
2 days with their hands tied behind their heads. A few of them eventually
escaped by paying the soldiers 10,000 Deutschmarks. And you have heard
already from General Marani a report that we have seen from a number of
sources of Serbs forcing chain gangs of Kosovars, clad in orange-red
uniforms, to dig graves for mass burials.


The second category - executions and mass burials. The Kosovar Albanian
refugees continue to report mass executions throughout the province. We
have put these together, as you know, and we total over 3,500 deaths as a
result of these executions. Again this could be on the conservative side
of the scale. In fact the number would be far higher if we take into
account not the group executions, but the innumerable accounts of
individual executions. And refugees have reported mass graves in Drenica,
Malaveso and Pusto Selo, but also in the Paragus Valley. We have as you
know confirmed already, or at least what we have strong beliefs to be, a
mass burial site at Pusto Selo and another one near Klima. And according
to one survivor who later videotaped the scene, the ethnic Albanians at
Velika Crusa were removed from their homes at gunpoint, men separated again
from their families, and approximately 100 adult males were summarily shot
dead at point blank range. We believe the bodies may have been taken to
this mass burial site at Pusto Selo.


The next form of war crime is the systematic destruction of civilian homes.
As you know, some 500 residential areas containing how many thousands of
homes it is impossible to say, have been partially burned or gravely
destroyed since the crisis began in March last year, and we believe 200 of
those villages have been burning since April.


And then we come to the final category, which is now a proven war crime, of
rape and we have as you know numerous accounts of Serb rape of ethnic
Albanian women and these are being reported in increasing number by Kosovar
refugees. Ethnic Albanian women were reportedly separated from their
families and sent to an army camp near Djakovica where they were repeatedly
raped by Serb soldiers. Refugees allege that in Pec Serb forces have
rounded up young Albanian women and taken them to the Hotel Karigac where
the local commander apparently has organised a roster of his soldiers to
allow them all an evening at the hotel.


And in addition to these specific accounts, numerous refugees claim that
during Serb raids in their villages, young women have been gang raped in
their homes or on the roadside by Serb soldiers. We also have reports of
rapes occurring at an ammunition factory and a Ferro nickel plant in Kosovo
where some 100 women allegedly remain. Again, all of this will have to be
investigated, all of this is going to be checked out, but the reports are
too numerous to suggest that these are completely without foundation. And
this means that the killing fields of Kosovo are going to be on our minds
for many years to come as we try to piece the full story together and
ensure that those responsible are brought to justice.


I would like finally to say something about the case of a journalist, the
German journalist that has been brought to my attention today and which
again is a cause of anxiety. He is a German journalist called Peter
Schnitzler who works for Sat-eins (phon), the German TV station you are
familiar with. He left Belgrade on 16 April but never reached Zagreb and
according now to a number of sources, foremost of which are his employer at
Sat-einx, on 8 April at 10.30 pm his car and equipment were taken from him
in the garage of the Intercontinental Hotel in Belgrade by 9 uniformed
policemen and 4 plain clothes men. They also confiscated his mobile phone
and demanded at gunpoint the pin code of that phone. On 16 April he left
Belgrade, headed for Zagreb as I have said, in a car borrowed from his
colleagues at the Biavishca Humfunk (phon) but he never arrived and he has
disappeared and we have no knowledge of his whereabouts. The German
Foreign Ministry in Bonn has been in touch with the Japanese Embassy in
Belgrade to ask them to investigate and to make a demarche vis a vis the
Yugoslav authorities, but so far that is without response. So obviously we
would like some information as to what happened to Peter Schnitzler and we
very much hope that he is alive and well.


That is what I have as far as an up-date for you today and now I will ask
General Marani to give you his operational up-date before our questions.


GENERAL MARANI:
Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen. We continue to intensify our day and
night air strikes against strategic infrastructure in Serbia as well as
fixed military facilities and fielded forces in Kosovo systematically
degrading the capability of the FRY military and special police to conduct
their scorched earth tactics.


All of our aircraft returned safely to their bases. Our forces also
continue their support of the humanitarian efforts. In the last 24 hours
there were 10 aid flights to Fyrom delivering 90 tons of food and water,
and over 13 tons of other supplies. There were 38 flights into Albania
delivering a corresponding amount of aid.


Turning to military operations, the Serb military and Special Police
activity in Kosovo is shown on this map. There has been a particularly
disturbing development with the use of teargas by special police in the
region of Pristina. Displaced persons are being systematically forced
south towards the border and there is evidence of Serb forces increasingly
mixing with civilian convoys to obtain protection from our air strikes.
Serb attacks also continue on displaced persons, as shown in this picture
taken in the Djakovica area.


In the air Yugoslav forces are increasingly relying on helicopters for
moving supplies. As I said yesterday, these flights are generally short
and at very low level, making it difficult for NATO aircraft to target
them. However, it does show that our disruption of ground … protection by
destroying bridges and line of communication is making it increasingly
difficult for Serb forces to move on the ground. Once again there have
been several unsuccessful attempts to shoot down our aircraft with surface
to air missiles and air to air artillery.


Moving on to NATO activity, 5 successful strike packages were flown in the
last 24 hours. Fielded forces in Kosovo were struck in the areas shown on
this map. The assessment of these attacks is still not complete, but
initial indications are that we destroyed 6 tanks, 7 military vehicles in
an assembly area and a command post. A number of strategic targets were
also struck, as indicated on this map, this included an army facility at
Nis and the ammunition plant at Valjevo.


One example of the effectiveness of attacks against the Yugoslav petroleum
supply infrastructure is depicted in the following series of pictures.
Here you can see pre- and post-strike imagery of the … petroleum storage
facility. In this other slide we show the evidence of trucks queuing for
fuel in Belgrade. One element of our continuing campaign to suppress
Yugoslavian Air Force operations is to deny them the use of their
airfields. The following slide shows the pre- and post-strike imagery of a
precision attack against the Ponikve airfield 2 nights ago.


The next slide is an image of an ammunition storage building in Pristina.
On the left of the screen is the building before the attack, and the right
side is a post-strike image.


Finally I have a video of an attack against the Prizren 549th Mechanised
Brigade headquarters and storage area. And being at Prizren it is obvious
that this brigade is participating in the ethnic cleansing operations going
on in Kosovo.


PATRICIA:
Jamie, early on in this campaign, Javier Solana said that toppling
President Milosevic was an objective which could not be achieved by
military means, but today Tony Blair said here: "I see the solution as
very simple, we carry on until he does step down." Could you clarify this
and tell us if the NATO objectives have changed to include removing
President Milosevic from power and if so at what level this was decided at
and under what procedure.


JAMIE SHEA:
Patricia, thank you. NATO policy is certainly to carry on until President
Milosevic backs down, that is clear. I have always said that the future of
Milosevic is up to the Serb people. Of course we believe, all allies, that
a democratic Serbia would not only be better for the future stability and
patterns of cooperation in the region, but better for the Serb people
themselves. But NATO's objectives, as set out in the famous five
principles, have not been modified by any decision of the Allies.


GIORGY FORIS:
I would like to come back to the question of the oil supply which has been
raised several times recently. Would you describe how the situation is
now? I understand that in the Council among the member states there is no
consensus how to handle the issue exactly. Is there any planning,
thinking, of an oil embargo or any kind of restriction which can solve the
problem?


JAMIE SHEA:
Thanks Georgy. I wouldn't say no consensus, I think genuinely that is
misleading, we are looking at something and we are in the process of
formulating what our best options are, and there are several different ways
of tackling this particular problem. For example the European Union is
holding a meeting at the level of Political Directors to look at the
possibility of some kind of joint EU policy on this subject and we would
hope of course that regional countries and others would join in on any such
policy. NATO too is looking at the various options and as I said
yesterday, we hope that all countries will share our view that whatever we
can do in terms of exercising restraint voluntarily, and not shipping
refined petroleum to Belgrade, via whatever port, would help to shorten
this conflict and that is in everybody's interest, to shorten this, and
certainly turning off the oil tap would be a decisive factor or a key
factor in shortening that conflict. So I think it is in everybody's
interest to look at this and voluntary restraint is certainly one way that
that can be achieved. There are also military ways that we could try to
achieve that objective although we are doing so already, as you know, in
terms of the attacks against the refineries and what General Marani showed
you a moment ago, the storage facilities at Spederevo. There may be other
options within Yugoslavia itself, I want to stress that, within Yugoslavia
itself to try to dry up the supply of refined petroleum to the Yugoslav
Army. Our military committee is still studying those options and we
haven't yet taken any decision, but what I want to stress is that this is
not an area of lack of consensus among allies, it is simply a question of
trying to come up with the best military advice as to what the options are
and then obviously choosing the option which fits our purposes best, and
that work is on-going.


QUESTIONS & ANSWERS (CONTD)


MRS. SAVIC, NOVOSTI, BELGRADE:
General, two nights after my question about the ecological catastrophe
which threatened Belgrade, your military people targeted Baric which is a
chemical factory 15 km from the centre of Belgrade, very dangerous, as a
new ecological catastrophe. Could you please comment on your targets in
this way?


Mr. Shea, does NATO, for its part, have any more constructive approach to
this crisis apart from increasing bombardments?


GENERAL MARANI:
For your first question, the targeting process is not a matter I am ready
to discuss from this podium. What I can tell you is that every single
target is chosen having great consideration for possible collateral damage.
The fact that a chemical factory has been hit does not mean that this
process has been disregarded in this instance, it was a military target,
it has been hit, we knew what we were doing and we are not aware of any
ecological catastrophe that is going on.


MRS. SAVIC: (inaudible)


JAMIE SHEA:
Well Mrs. Savage, all that smoke and 500 burning villages and towns and
cities in Kosovo can't be doing the upper atmosphere and the ozone layer a
great deal of good either and of course, we also have inside Kosovo a
scorched earth policy in terms of dead cattle, wasted land and disease
coming from a number of unburied corpses of all kinds which, too, is going
to be a health hazard potentially for some time to come.


But to answer your question, this is a constructive organisation. We spent
the best part of a year, as Prime Minister Blair pointed out just a few
moments ago, trying to avoid having to use force. NATO is hardly an
organisation that can be accused of over-hasty reactions; we tried to
solve this at the negotiating table, we tried to solve this by sending
people to Milosevic - I myself was involved in those meetings with
President Milosevic - to see if we could get an agreement on troops and
special police reductions inside Kosovo that would improve the security
environment and stop the repression and in fact we even got the signature
of President Milosevic on one such agreement back on October 25th but it
lasted only for a few weeks regrettably and therefore it took a full twelve
months before NATO actually decided to launch an action, almost to the day,
twelve months after the Kosovo crisis began because we were so determined
to go via the political and diplomatic route. It was Milosevic who made
that impossible for us, quite frankly, and the determination of the Allies
is a reflection of the fact that everybody feels that Milosevic has largely
imposed this on us as well as on himself.


We want a constructive approach here, of course we do, we want to end the
violence as quickly as possible; we want then to be able to bring peace to
Kosovo and when the Washington summit starts up in just a couple of days'
time, I think one of the main headlines is going to be the attempt to
develop an overall strategy for dealing with the region as a whole once the
Kosovo crisis has ended particularly in terms of trying to see how we can
re-establish co-operative ties in the region, how we can provide - not
simply NATO but other institutions as well - economic assistance,
democracy-building assistance, promote the free media, encourage political
pluralism in that region because it has been something of a sore or a
bleeding wound in Europe for the best part of the 1990s and we would really
like to put that behind us now, we have just gone from crisis to crisis
area consequent on the break-up of the former Yugoslavia so I can assure
you we are not simply thinking about dropping bombs, we are already turning
our minds to the moment when that will be over and we can then get on with
that job of trying to develop an overall plan and of course, a democratic
Serbia will have a key role to play in all of that.


DOUG:
Can I ask about the Frog missile please? Was it a short-range tactical
missile?


GENERAL MARANI:
The Frog missile is, if I remember correctly, a 65 km maximum range
tactical missile.


DOUG:
Any chemical or biological warheads?


GENERAL MARANI:
Of course, the warheads can be chemical or conventional in principle but in
this case we have no news about there being a chemical, for us it is a
conventional warhead.


DOUG:
I am a little bit intrigued about why you are making so much of tear gas
because here it is associated with football hooligans and anti-nuclear
demonstrators.


JAMIE SHEA:
It is not used for ethnic cleansing purposes.


GENERAL MARANI:
I have known this news quite recently so I don't have the support of legal
advice on this subject but it seems to me that tear gas shouldn't be used
in combat although it can be used for counter-riot purposes, for police
work, where you pull somebody out of a house and arrest him but shouldn't
be used to pull somebody out of a house and shoot him and this it has also
been used.


DOUG HAMILTON, REUTERS:
I just have one follow-up question. The KLA in Skopje has been saying
that it is passing on information - or trying to pass on information to
NATO - about artillery that has been used for several days now to shell
IDPs on a place called Dulia Hill but it is not getting through or it
doesn't seem to be getting through and NATO seems to be ignoring that
information. Why is this if it could help you to stop…..


GENERAL MARANI:
As you will know, there are no formal ties between KLA and NATO and also,
we must be aware of false information arriving from somebody pretending to
be a KLA member. By all means, we are not disregarding any piece of
information that we can have about possible artillery sites or tanks or
whatever but we have to treat it as a piece of intelligence because we are
not sure whether it is genuine or not.


JAMIE SHEA:
I've also heard reports on Mount Borissa as well, Doug, about that but as
the General said, the targeting policy is in the hands of the military
commanders and it is up to them to decide what they wish to make the
priority of the day but clearly we want to go after every piece of
artillery firing on every internally-displaced person that we can but it's
up to the military commanders. Now, Craig, you have not asked a question
for several days so please go ahead!"


CRAIG:
Thank you, Jamie, a question to you from the "New York Times". Is Nato
asking Bulgaria, when the Prime Minister comes here tomorrow, for
permission to base planes there or to use the air space?


JAMIE SHEA:
It's the second, Craig, it's permission to use the air space, we've asked
Romania as well for that permission. These two countries are Partner
countries, they are also countries that have expressed the desire to join
NATO in due course. I have seen this morning an announcement from the
coalition in Romania of a willingness to grant this in principle but
subject of course to approval by the parliament, I understand the vote is
scheduled there for Thursday.


As far as Bulgaria is concerned, the government has a constitutional
requirement to consult the parliament and we await the outcome of that
decision so yes, the request has been made and we await naturally the
decision and of course, those decisions are sovereign decisions and we will
respect them.


Having said that, I would like just to let you know that the Secretary
General has written to the heads of governments of both Bulgaria and
Romania in the last 24 hours to reassure them of the well-known NATO policy
that we have a direct and material interest in their security and as for
the 19+1 meeting, I'll comment on that after it takes place tomorrow on all
aspects of the topics that are going to be discussed but I said a moment
ago Craig that we generally welcome the many indications of solidarity that
we have received from the states of the region and as I said, it is a
common task, it is not simply a NATO task. Thos countries will probably
benefit in the most direct and immediate way from an end to this crisis and
from the emergence of a more co-operative, more democratic security
structure in the region.


QUESTION:
If the Apaches do arrive this afternoon and are probably deployed within
the next couple of days, we are going to be entering in a more close-range
air-type war with an enhanced chance for Allied casualties so after a month
of bombing, what's the status of the air-defence system and is there truth
in reports that they have managed to rebuild some of what we've actually
bombed?


GENERAL MARANI:
Trying to rebuild something that has been damaged I would say is very
natural, I would try to do the same, everybody would try to do the same.
Of course, the integrated air-defence system has suffered significant
damage and we have proof during tactical operation of the fact that
although they still have some capability, this capability is significantly
lower than what it used to be at the beginning. Attacks are carried out
not in a co-ordinated and integrated way, for instance, especially from the
missiles air defence; artillery is shooting when they see the target
really and quite often is also a barrage fire.


CHRISTOPHER:
General or both of you if you could answer this question. This question
of tear gas is not the first time that the chemical weapons capability of
Yugoslavia has been raised. I'd like to know if the production facilities
for chemical weapons have been targeted, if they've been hit and if they've
been hit, what precautions have been taken to make sure that there was no
contamination from those chemical weapons? And if they haven't been hit,
is it because of concern of contamination that they haven't been?


Secondly, another question on targets. There was a report today that many
of the economic or seemingly economic targets that were hit were hit
because they were owned or run by people in the inner circle of President
Milosevic and in order to target him, for instance a cigarette factory was
hit and it is hard to see what the use of that would be for military
purposes but apparently it is owned by Milosevic's son, so could you
comment on that?


GENERAL MARANI:
The targeting process and specifically the targeting of chemical weapons is
not something that I am ready to debate here.


CHRISTOPHER:
I don't want to debate it, I just want to know who did it.


GENERAL MARANI:
And I am not ready to tell you whether we did or not, whether we had the
intention to do it or not. The production of chemical weapons is within
the capability of Milosevic but what we are going to because of this I
cannot tell you.


JAMIE SHEA:
Christopher, as far as I know, I haven't seen anything other than petroleum
and oil lubricant targets on the list.


Having said that, on your second question, as you know, Yugoslavia is a
state based on nepotism, it's almost impossible to strike at any industrial
target without ruining the stocks and the shares of one of Milosevic's
ministers or his own family because they are the state, it's rather like
Louis XIV who said (words in French). We have a modern version of the
son, that is to say passing on the control of media, the control of
businesses and so on to the direct family and so you can't unfortunately
distinguish between the two in that particularly case. I have seen this
coming from Belgrade but I'm generally not aware that NATO struck a
cigarette plant, I haven't seen that on any of the reports on targets that
we have struck.


QUESTION (OSLO):
One question first about the convoy affair. Has the information situation
that has been going on for the last week resulted in a discussion in the
NATO Council? I have reports that our Foreign Minister, Mr. Volbek, who
is also Chairman of the OEC, is saying today that he feels that NATO has
misled him during this whole information situation.


A question about the reports you mentioned about Serb troops in Montenegro.
Is the ethnic cleansing you are talking about taking place inside Kosovo
or inside Montenegro?


JAMIE SHEA:
I mentioned it, if I may answer that, because it was inside Montenegro
albeit on the border.


As for the convoy, I obviously was waiting for that to be raised. Let me
give you an example.


Imagine that in your country you have some kind of accident, a train crash
or whatever - these occur unfortunately all of the time - or an accident
with an aircraft or at an airport and the government decides to launch an
inquiry to establish all of the facts, it sets up a commission. Since
when has ever a commission reported within five days on the facts that it
knows? Sometimes in our countries these sorts of things go on for months,
I know from my own country several examples of this. So again I fail to
understand, if you'll forgive me for saying so, how you can describe
something which you saw yesterday from General Leaf's presentation was a
rather complex business in which there was a good deal of uncertainty
because we didn't have access on the ground, how you can say that five days
was a long time. I promised you the facts and yesterday you got them. We
kept our word. Of course, I would have liked to have been able to do it
on Thursday morning but again, I think by the record of inquiries we didn't
do too badly even if obviously we can't clear up everything and General
Leaf was totally open and totally honest in telling you why that was the
case. There was confusion but you have got to remember this is a
conflict and conflicts are confusing always and we may have more instances
like that in the future where we have some confusion. We will try to be
better next time in clearing up that confusion and obviously we'll do our
best not to create it in the first place but as I say, I think that
yesterday you saw an honest, straightforward attempt to put the facts on
the table and I don't have anything more to add.


SAME QUESTIONER:
Has this incident and all this mayhem resulted in any discussion at a
higher political NATO level regarding NATO information strategy?


JAMIE SHEA:
The information strategy is personified by the General and myself, we stand
here every day, it is for you to judge but we do our best to give you all
the information that we have in our possession. Looking at previous
exercises of this type - and I have been going through them in the evenings
when I get home at night, the five minutes before I go to bed - I honestly
don't believe we are giving you less information than what has existed in
previous campaigns of this type quite frankly. I started to look into
this a little just to reassure myself that we're not doing such a bad job
and we're giving you all of the information that we possibly can but
conflict is not the same as a ministerial meeting at NATO when a spokesman
is a first-hand witness of everything that's going on and can say: "Oh
yes, I was there! I can give you every detail because I was involved in
the meeting form 9 o'clock in the morning until the ministers all went
home!" It's a different situation as you know now, events are taking
place far away, it's a military operation, it takes time for the
information to come up with the best will in the world, there are certain
operational things that have to be kept confidential for good reason.
After all, our objective is to win this first and foremost and secondly, as
I have pointed out, the situation in Kosovo is surrounded by a kind of
modern-day iron curtain which makes it difficult to know exactly what's
going on but within those constraints we are doing the best job that we
possibly can do to get you the information.


RICHARD:
Jamie, there have been some reports of additional prisoners being taken
from the Yugoslav side. Do you have any update on prisoners and when the
Red Cross President is here will he be instructed or asked, if he has got
to go to Belgrade, to enquire about the US POWs, any exchange talk coming
up already?


JAMIE SHEA:
Richard, on the second one, yes, we'll certainly ask him if he has any
information as to the current condition of the three US servicemen because
we haven't heard from them for a while and of course access to the Red
Cross is fundamental and has been given to the Yugoslav soldier detained by
the US military authorities in Tirana so we'll have to wait and see if
there is anything there.


On the second point, yes, I did see a report that the KLA was alleged to
have captured I think three additional…did they say one Russian volunteer,
did I see that in a news report? But no, really, via my traffic I've had
no confirmation of that report.


I think we've gone on for rather a long time today so let's sort of wrap it
up with a few final questions. Charles, you haven't had one for a while
so please go ahead and then Antonio!


QUESTION (THE TIMES, LONDON):
General, I'd just like to ask, please, do you have reports of further
reinforcements to regular forces or special police inside Kosovo and can
you tell us your estimate now of the number of overall forces in the province?


GENERAL MARANI:
Not that I'd aware of, not something very recent but what we estimate to be
in Kosovo now is something around 40,000 men.


JAMIE SHEA:
Antonio, would you like to have the last one for today and I promise
everybody else tomorrow.


ANTONIO, PORTUGUESE TV:
Thank you Jamie. Concerning this oil embargo, is it possible that in the
past three weeks ships from member states of this Alliance have been
delivering enormous quantities of oil to the port of Bar in Montenegro at
the same time as pilots of probably many nationalities are risking their
lives bombing the oil reserves of Milosevic and does it make sense to keep
bombing the refineries because the oil comes from another place?


Concerning Bulgaria, is it true now that there is no more delivery from
Bulgaria concerning oil from the pipeline that used to work before?


JAMIE SHEA:
Regarding the question to Bulgaria, I don't have the latest information. I
know that Croatia on 28th March closed down its pipeline and again we are
grateful for that act of solidarity. I understand the same has happened
to Hungary but I don't have the exact date there. With Bulgaria, I think
that's a question you should put to the Bulgarian government obviously for
clarification there.


Obviously, as I said yesterday, Antonio, what we do has to be consistent
with international law naturally and the exact provisions of UN Security
Council resolution 1160 on the arms embargo vis-à-vis Yugoslavia and on the
definition of arms-related products in that Security Council resolution but
yes, clearly we obviously would like the international community to show a
degree of solidarity with us in exercising restraint. The best way to
solve this is for the member states of the international community to
exercise restraint in not supplying Yugoslavia with refined petroleum
products, that will help us to shorten this particular conflict, it will
hasten the day when the barrel dries up as far as those Yugoslav forces are
concerned and I think also it will have a major psychological impact on
President Milosevic over and above its physical impact in showing him that
basically the noose is tightening and that really he is up against the
entire international community, that we are prepared to do what is
necessary to put ourselves in a situation to prevail.


As I mentioned before, Antonio, the European Union is looking at this,
we'll have to wait and see where they come out but the voluntary track is
there as well as the track of seeing what we can do with our military
activities inside Yugoslav itself. That's the best answer I can give you
for the time being until these decisions are taken.


ANTONIO:
Can you consider going back to the United Nations because 1160 doesn't work?


JAMIE SHEA:
As I say, I think the most immediately useful thing would be for everybody
to exercise a degree of restraint so that we can bring peace to that region
as quickly as possible. I've made this point so many times that the
potential of a reconstructed Yugoslavia which used to be a very prosperous
country - and I keep on making this point - it was way above in economic
terms the pro capita GDP of eastern Europe at the time of the fall of
communism, way above and now it is much below but it has an industrial
tradition, it has a skilled work-force, it has a degree of openness
vis-à-vis Europe at least until Milosevic came along, all the tools are
there for a democratic Serbia in a reconstructed region to go through a
sort of period of growth. The Wirtschaftbunde can happen there and so I
think the basic argument is a little bit of restraint today in order to get
things back on track means jam tomorrow, if I can quote a famous British
prime minister, it is true and everybody will benefit no longer from black
market trading or smuggling across borders but from a genuinely open
economy in which there would be an inflow of investment money and
opportunities for all.


QUESTION:
What will NATO really do about the internally-displaced persons who are
dying every minute in Kosovo?


JAMIE SHEA:
The best answer I can give you apart from repeating what I've said about
looking into air drops and these things, is to stop the fighting. That is
the best thing we can do because there is no end to the humanitarian
catastrophe until the fighting ends and we have to do that but if
organisations like the International Red Cross, the three Greek
non-governmental organisations that have sent food and doctors to Pristina,
can play a role then we will be happy to help them but there is an irony
here in the sense that what we would like to do is to give information on
displaced persons to these international organisations to help but
Milosevic is sort of flushing the civilian population around Kosovo up and
down. I spoke yesterday of a Grand Old Duke of York strategy, in other
words up and down, up and down in a way that makes this sort of specific
localisation increasingly difficult.


Ladies and Gentlemen, we'll see you tomorrow afternoon at 3 o'clock. Thank
you for today, bye bye.