TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE
GIVEN BY MR JAMIE SHEA AND MAJOR GENERAL WALTER JERTZ
IN BRUSSELS ON MONDAY, 3 MAY 1999

MR SHEA:
Ladies and Gentlemen. Good Afternoon. A hearty welcome to you all on this
day 40 of Operation Allied Force, and as you see to mark day 40 I can
introduce to you a new face up here at the podium, he is General Walter
Jertz, as you can see from the German Air Force. I am delighted to welcome
him as the SHAPE briefer and let me tell you that he joined the German Air
Force in 1965, he has over 3,000 flying hours to his credit, mainly on the
F104 and the Tornado, and recently he has been the Commander of the German
First Air Division and also a Commander of the air element in the NATO
operation in Bosnia, IFOR and SFOR. He has also been a Commander at Air
South, so he has extensive national, NATO and Bosnian experience. And I
don't know where he found the time to do this, but he is also the author of
a book called "Tornadoes Over Bosnia" and apparently this is the aircraft
variety, not the extreme gusts of wind variety. So a hearty welcome to you
General up here at the podium today and I would like to pay tribute to
General Marani for doing the job for several weeks as my partner here.


Ladies and Gentlemen, this is the beginning of an active week for NATO. We
have tomorrow a press conference by General Nauman, the Chairman of the
military committee, who is the outgoing chairman because he will be leaving
on Thursday when we will have a change of command ceremony and we will
welcome his successor, Admiral Ventoroni, from Italy.


At the same time, as you know by now, President Clinton, accompanied by
several senior members of the Administration, will be here on Wednesday
morning. I will have the complete timetable for you quite soon, but it
will mean an early start for everybody on Wednesday morning as the
President will be arriving around 7.00 and departing around 9.30. He will
be here to meet the Secretary General, the Chairman of the military
committee, SACEUR, the NATO community in the broad sense and to consult
naturally on the political and military aspects of Operation Allied Force
with the decision makers at NATO.


Now last night we had another very extensive range of operations over
Yugoslavia. There were 45 targets and 21 of those were in Kosovo itself,
so again I want to stress that we are really focusing on those Yugoslav
forces in Kosovo that have to withdraw if peace is to come to Kosovo
itself. And as I mentioned this morning, we now have had over 14,000
sorties in the last 40 days and last night the focus was on the Yugoslav
forces, their tanks, their artillery, but also on the headquarters of the
MUP, the MUP special police, on an alternate command post, on airfields and
ammunition storage sites.


But as you know, the new feature of last night's operations was the attacks
on the electricity systems that feed the command and control of the
Yugoslav Army, and as SACEUR has said and pointed out that a tank without
fuel is far less useful than a tank with fuel, and equally a command and
control or a computer in military hands without electricity simply becomes
a mass of metal, wire and plastic. And last night we attacked 5 main
electricity yards that distribute power to the great majority of the
Yugoslav military establishment, and of course this power feeds the
airfields, headquarters, communications and the entire command and control
network. No power means no runway lights, no secure communications at all.


Specifically our forces struck the transformer yards at Obrenovac, which is
a key electrical distribution station in western Serbia. We attacked the
transformer yard at Nis which has degraded the command and control of the
Third Yugoslav Army headquarters at Nis, and we hit transformer yards also
at Bajina Basta, Drmno and Novi Sad. And the fact that the lights went out
across 70% of the country I think shows that NATO has its finger on the
light switch in Yugoslavia now and we can turn the power off whenever we
need to and whenever we want to, and we can use this to severely disrupt,
degrade, diminish the capacity of the Yugoslav Armed Forces to operate over
long periods of time, delay their ability to repair the essential power
systems, and of course by disrupting in this way the integrated air
defence, improve the safety of our pilots flying over Yugoslavia.


But I want to emphasise that we took great care to ensure that important
civilian facilities like hospitals had the redundant power capacity to keep
their systems running through these power outages. We realise of course
the inconvenience that may be caused to the Yugoslav people, but it is up
to Milosevic to decide how he wishes to use his remaining energy resources
- on his tanks, or on his people - and we will continue to attack every
element of the Yugoslav military establishment until Belgrade accepts the
unconditional demands of the international community. I reiterate:
Belgrade must stop the killing; it must withdraw its forces from Kosovo;
it must accept an international military presence with NATO at its core to
establish security inside Kosovo; it must allow the unrestricted return of
refugees, all refugees; and work to build a permanent political solution
based on the Rambouillet peace plan. We are not asking for more but we
will accept nothing less.


Today our concern is with the plight of the people of the city of Prizren
in southern Kosovo. Prizren, which was once a cultural heritage of Europe,
and declared so, was a city of 180,000, in other words a major city. But
now it is practically empty. The UN High Commission for Refugees believes
that 50,000 people in the last few weeks have been forced to leave and have
set out towards Albania. But we are concerned by reports from many
refugees that at the border the Serb police have separated women and
children from the men and interestingly this time it is the men that have
been allowed to move on, and the women and children who have been sent
back, in other words the most vulnerable are those who are being forced to
suffer the most. And again interestingly, those with ID cards from other
cities have been allowed through, but for some reason those with Prizren
identity cards are being turned back and we have reports recently of the
Serb forces going from street to street, forcing people to leave but now
apparently forcing at least some of them back in a reversal of their
previous policies. The World Food Programme has reported the burning of
foodstores and the refusal of many Serbs to sell food to the Kosovar
Albanians that remain.


In fact in the last 3 days, over the May 1st weekend, normally a time to
celebrate peace, 21,000 people have gone to Albania and 15,000 to the
former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Indeed I was very struck to see a
quotation in a newspaper this morning from Stafan de Mistoura, who is a
senior official of the United Nations, who has a great deal of experience
in refugee situations, he has worked in 17 conflict zones, and he said that
this is probably "the most cynical, calculated, glacially coldly planned
humanitarian tragedy that I have seen in 29 years working for the United
Nations". And the situation in Prizren today again demonstrates why NATO's
5 conditions are so essential and unavoidable, because only the acceptance
of those 5 things which I spelt out a moment ago will allow the
international community to deal adequately with the refugee situation and
get all of these people back, now a considerable number, to achieve the
type of security that is going to be necessary if they are to go back, to
allow the international relief organisations, who are going to have a
tremendous and virtually unprecedented job to do, to go in in conditions of
security and with the military support that they are going to require, and
indeed to start a political process which will ultimately bring a solution.
I think the scale of what is going on shows that anything less than the 5
conditions would not unfortunately allow that humanitarian tragedy to be
adequately addressed.


Finally, before I hand over to General Jertz, let me just say that we
continue with our forces in Albania to do what we can to bring support to
the local refugee population there. COMARC, that is to say General
Jackson, the Commander of the Allied Forces in the Former Yugoslav Republic
of Macedonia, is now working with his counterpart, the Commander of the
Forces in Albania, General Reith, to identify three sites for refugee camps
in Albania near the city of Koka. That work will start in the next few
days in order to be able to settle refugees already in Albania and refugees
en route there from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and to make
life as comfortable for them as we can.


GENERAL JERTZ:
Jamie, thank you very much for the introduction. Ladies and Gentlemen,
Good Afternoon. Let me, before I do start into the briefing, let me give
you just a few words on what I think is going to be necessary for you to know.


I am a pilot so I know how Airmen feel while they are risking their lives
for others. I want to be credible, I want to be honest, I want to be
giving you timely information where our intent is to provide as accurate,
as timely information as possible. I am fully aware of the media's need to
report news as fast as possible, but please bear in mind, we do have to
investigate things carefully, thus taking up some time. And by finishing
with Klausavitz (phon) "Every age has been marked with its own kind of
war", and this is unfortunately true for this century.


NATO's military forces continue their intensive airstrikes against military
and other forces in Kosovo and against strategic targets throughout Serbia.
In the past 24 hours, fielded forces, electrical power transformers,
airfields and radio relay sites were struck. In our campaign to disrupt
and degrade the ability of Serbian forces to persecute the innocent
citizens of Kosovo, we have continued our emphasis on engaging the fielded
forces in Kosovo.


To this end, during the last 24 hours, we have successfully targeted a full
range of tactical targets deployed throughout Kosovo, including artillery,
tanks, armoured personnel carriers, military vehicles, mobile Sam 6
systems, ground to air systems, the Kosovska milicia station and border
posts at Dragas and Gorozup. We also hit dispersed ammunition storage
sites and fuel supplies.


As stated in yesterday's briefing, we will be giving you a more in-depth
assessment of the effects of our efforts against fielded forces in the near
future.


Turning now to NATO operations against strategic targets. As many press
services have already reported, last night we conducted a co-ordinated
effort against the electrical power distribution system in Serbia, as also
has been mentioned by Jamie. Let me explain further the rational behind
this. The supply of electricity is fundamental to the command, and
control, and support systems of a modern military or police force.
Alliance forces struck electrical power transformer yards at Obrenovac,
Nis, Bagina Basta, Drmno and Novi Sad. The cumulative effect was to deny
temporarily electric power to a large part of Serbia without undue effect
on neighbouring countries.


These strikes continued our campaign against the Yugoslav command and
control nervous system, they further degrade the Serbian ability to direct
and prosecute its continuing campaign of aggression and are part of
progressive action to disrupt Serbian military and police forces involved
especially in Kosovo. I would like to emphasise that these actions are
not, and I repeat, they are not aimed against the Serbian people.


Other strategic targets included additional command and control assets such
as radio and TV relay sites at Novi Pazar, Kosovaka and Krusevac, as shown
on the slide. This is a pre-strike image of the Veliki Jasterebac radio
relay site. This image was taken after one of our attacks three days ago.
We also attacked airfields at Ponikve and Pristina, along with a petroleum
production facility at Pristina. The ammunition production plant at
Valjevo was also struck.


Lines of communication supporting the resupply of Serb fielded forces were
again targeted to include bridges at Bistrica, Kokinbrod and Prijepole.
This photograph is a post-strike image of the Novi Sad refinery which we
have struck on numerous occasions. The following image is the Novi Sad
railroad and highway bridge, both pre and post-strike, which was attacked
last week.


Serbian forces infrastructure was also targeted throughout the FRY, as
shown on the slide. The next slide is an expanded view of these
infrastructure targets within Kosovo. This last image is a post-attack
image of Pristina airfield.


I would now like to turn to NATO's humanitarian efforts. Our support for
Non Governmental Organisations and the governmental institutions of Albania
and Macedonia continues. In turn the support of these organisations
contributes significantly to the relief efforts in these countries and
fulfil what we believe is humane, helps people to survive and gives them
back their dignity.


In the last 24 hours there were 17 aid flights flown into Macedonia
delivering 8 tons of food and water. For Albania there were 14 aid flights
delivering 17 tons of food and water and 11 tons of medicine. Thus far
NATO has assisted in the delivery of 3,334 tons of food and water, 968 tons
of medical supplies and 1,775 tons of tentage, 3,127 tons of general goods.


Finally let me turn to Serbian operations. First of all I will cover
ground operations in Kosovo. In general a reduction of Serb Army offensive
activity has been noted as they continue to attempt to conceal their
assets. This is in contrast with special police forces unfortunately who
continue to pursue and engage UCK elements away from the main lines of
communication. In northern Kosovo special police elements attacked UCK
west of the Podujevo/Pristina line.


The goal is to maintain the security of key terrain and protect the vital
lines of communication. In central Kosovo special police reportedly
conducted operations in the Stimlje and Gracanica area south of Pristina.
We have evidence that these operations were supported by Serb military
artillery.


Special police operations continue north and east of Suva Reka. Serb
military artillery also continued firing along the Kosovo Albanian border.


Let me turn now to Serbian Air Force activity. Serb early warning radar
activity was again noted. Also Serb air defences were more active than in
the past. Finally, while all Alliance aircraft returned safely, one
aircraft was damaged by Serbian anti-aircraft fire but landed at a divert
field.


That concludes the operations briefing for today. Thank you very much.


AUGUSTINO:
Jamie, one political question. I saw one interview of one very well known
Belgrade lawyer. He is saying that Milosevic's political future is
necessarily linked with his biological future, so if he cannot survive
politically he cannot survive biologically, therefore he is ready to
sacrifice everything, everybody, infrastructure, everything until the end.
Is NATO going to change the operation planning to be more concentrated
directly to Milosevic?


JAMIE SHEA:
Well are we going to target Milosevic, do you mean? No, I have made clear
we are not going to do that. His future will have to be decided by the
Serb people, they will have to decide if he really is the best man to take
him into the 21st century, or whether they would be better off under new
management as it were. But that is up to them to decide. It is true that
President Milosevic does seem to have a remarkable appetite for power, but
at the same time we are going to continue this operation until he realises
that it is not only in the interest of his people, that has been clear
months ago, but it is also in his interest to agree to the demands of the
international community.


GEORGE:
General, you were saying that you just temporarily have broken the
electricity supply, what does it mean temporary, how much effort is needed
to repair, how much time you secured that no supply for the time being?
And also do you have any assessment as to what extent the civilian
population could be affected by this operation in this respect? And
thirdly, do you know already what was the reason of the motor failure,
because yesterday the F16 went down and at the time it was said that it was
the failure of the motor, do you know the exact reason already, was it shot
down as the Serbs claim or not?


GENERAL JERTZ:
It is very difficult to give you an answer on how much time they will need
to repair. All we know is that at 5.30 in the morning, after the attack,
most of the power was back again, so you can work out approximately how
long it did take to do that.


On the F16, you know that the aircraft is not in our hands. We still are
under investigation and under review, trying to find out what really
happened and we just have to wait another few days before we really get you
the answer.


JONATHAN MARCUS:
Two questions: one, could you give us a little more detail about the
nature of the weaponry used against these power transformers? There is a
lot of stuff on the news agencies suggesting it was something similar to
what was used by the Americans in the Gulf war against similar Iraqi
installations. The other thing I am not entirely sure of is the exact
reason for doing this. If it gives such a short period of power outage, is
this something you are doing to achieve tactical superiority for one
particular set of raids? Does that mean that this is going to happen
repeatedly and surely if it does happen repeatedly isn't it much harder for
NATO to keep up this kind of fiction that it is not at war with the Serbian
people, but that it is only attacking military and strategic assets?


GENERAL JERTZ:
First of all, the nature of the bomb, yes you are right, I can tell you
that there is a bomb having been used which hasn't been in the theatre yet,
but unfortunately I am not in a position to comment in further detail on that.


On the effect on the electricity, well we are working according to a
special plan and of course we also want to make sure that civilians are not
harmed in an extent which we would not be able to accept ourselves. So
according to a plan, working systematically this plan, yes we did start
with attacking these electricity plants, on the other hand we will just
have to continue systematically if Mr Milosevic is not willing to really do
what he is supposed to do, take the telephone and tell us that he wants
stopping to be bombed, for the sake of his own persons and for the sake of
his own people.


QUESTIONS & ANSWERS (CONTD)


PIERRE BOUCHER;
Thanks Jamie. Any possible update on the "visit and search" thing?


JAMIE SHEA:
No, that's still being worked on by the NATO military authorities in
conjunction with the North Atlantic Council, that will take obviously a day
or two. As I have said earlier, Pierre, we want to get this right.
Obviously, it has got to be something, as I mentioned yesterday, which is
based on international law, which is militarily effective, is going to do
the job and is going to gain not just the support of allies - which it has
already - but the support of the wider international community.


If I may, let me make the fundamental point. What counts here is the oil
embargo. If the stuff isn't leaving in the first place then obviously a
"visit and search" regime has less to do at the receiving end. That is
the thing, cut off the oil tap at source, and this has been the focus of
the Alliance's political efforts and with the new ban coming into effect a
couple of days ago with the United States over the weekend promulgating a
very extensive range of sanctions with a dozen or so other countries in
Europe that have joined on to this oil embargo - and Canada also has taken
measures, every ally has done so - we have now got 30-plus countries that
used to be among the suppliers of oil to Belgrade that are not doing it any
longer and so the tap has gone from a run to a drip and that counts, that
is really the important thing in this business. But to answer your
question directly, as I have more for you as the operational planning
develops, I'll brief you on that but it's still being worked on.


MICHAEL (NEW YORK TIMES):
Just to clarify, is the intent now to take the electricity off and keep it
off from now on or just to disrupt it temporarily? What type of aircraft
dropped this bomb?


Jamie, you said that various research and studies were made to limit the
effect on hospitals and the civilian population; what exactly was done?


A last question, you mentioned that an aircraft was hit by anti-aircraft
fire and diverted - was that an A-10 and was the pilot wounded?


JAMIE SHEA:
OK Michael, let's try to answer those and of course, some of them are for
the General.


On the last one - the last ones are always the easiest to answer - it was
an A-10, it was diverted to Skopje, it was as you know, an engine problem
occasioned by some anti-aircraft fire. I don't believe unless the General
can contradict me here, the pilot sustained any injury, at least I haven't
heard of any. That's the first point.


Secondly, on the business of the electric grid, the basic approach is not
to destroy the producing infrastructure for electricity but to be able to
disrupt in a substantial way for a period time which shuts down the
military computers, which shuts down the command-and-control, which
complicates life for the Yugoslav Army which is of course our objective, in
such a way that they are even less able to respond to NATO operations and
that their own operations elsewhere in Yugoslavia, particularly in Kosovo,
become disrupted as well, it complicates their planning, it complicates
their life, they then have to take all kinds of measures to try to get
around that, it ties them down and keeps them focused on at least trying to
counter our measures and the more they are focused on keeping up their
command-and-control, the less able they are to focus on causing mayhem in
Kosovo and that's what we want to do and I can't tell you when we are going
to do it again but I think last night we demonstrated that we're able to do
it quickly, professionally and effectively and that is the main purpose.


As far as the other aspect of your question, Michael, yes, obviously we
have our information on hospitals that have back-up transformers and
obviously we are quite pleased that those hospitals are able to continue to
function, that is the main point. We want to use this as an extra way of
disrupting military operations, no more and no less than that.


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
I would like you to accept at the moment that we are not talking of a
specific type of aircraft using this kind of bomb but we will come to it
later on and on the other hand, back-up power, as Jamie already mentioned,
is the main emphasis. We know that hospitals and other civilian
facilities, if they are important enough, do have back-up power.


Secondly, let me mention that Jamie is really a good military expert
already as you might know by his answers.


JAMIE SHEA:
That's the only exaggeration in these whole briefings!


QUESTION (FOX NEWS):
What is NATO looking for from Milosevic, a statement, a letter or a
pull-back of his troops?


JAMIE SHEA:
As you know, actions always speak louder than words. What we want is a
clear sign that Milosevic has now accepted the conditions of the
international community. What would be the clearest sign? He obviously
could make a statement and if he made a statement accepting those
conditions then obviously our ears would prick up and we would listen very
attentively. But we would want to see any statement that he made followed
up immediately, real time, by evidence which we can monitor of the Serb
forces packing their suitcases in Kosovo, turning around their tanks and
heading back into Serbia whence most of them came by the way. I think it
would be pretty clear if this was for real or not.


We would be looking for dust on the tracks as all of these artillery, tanks
and vehicles begin to move and obviously we would do what we could to
facilitate that withdrawal. It would soon be clear if it were a feint or
for real and Milosevic can do that very quickly. As I said yesterday, if
he can order the release of three US servicemen within an hour, he can
order his forces to turn round within a hour.


In an interview he gave, as you know, to certain American media a couple of
days ago, he sort of indicated that his paramilitary forces were
undisciplined. Well, he orders them into action as much as he orders his
army into action, I don't believe in the myth of autonomous Serb
paramilitary forces. We know that they get their orders - as they get
their equipment and they get their protection - from Belgrade so that is
what we would be looking for first and foremost, the withdrawal of those
forces.


JAN:
After 40 days of bombing, is there any way we can put a figure on the
extent of the degradation to the Yugoslav economic infrastructure? Is it
possible to say its ability to general GDP is down by whatever it is?


JAMIE SHEA:
Well Jan, I've constantly made the point that the Yugoslav economy was in a
fairly dilapidated state well before NATO even came close to the action
that we are in today. It has been on a kind of hard piste downhill ski
run for the best part of a decade unfortunately and I constantly made the
point that Yugoslavia was probably the wealthiest of the emergent
post-communist societies back in 1989. Its GDP per capita is about $1500
now which is one of the lowest in Europe but that of course is not because
of NATO action, that is the result of sanctions consequent upon the
collapse of Yugoslavia in 1991, that is of course because of a lack of
economic reform because of the sort of crony capitalism that has been
introduced, that is because a great deal of the talent, realising that
there was not much of a future, quit a long time ago and went off to work
in California or Australia. As you know, there is an enormous Yugoslav
diaspora around the world and you have to wonder why. That is one reason.


So whatever the economic consequences of NATO's campaign - and I don't
believe that they are either lasting or devastating, far from it - the only
salvation for the Yugoslav economy is going to come from Belgrade doing the
same kind of things that Hungary, Poland, Slovenia or the Czech Republic
and countless other countries have been doing which is of course to go
towards democracy, the market economy and integration and as you will
remember, Jan, at the Washington summit we made it perfectly clear that if
that is the direction that they want to move in, we are going to help, we
stand ready to help them do that.


This is something of a tragedy for the Yugoslav people because Yugoslav of
the post-communist emerging societies was probably the most industrialised
back in 1989, probably the most skilled labour force, the highest standard
of living and look where it has come but it is not the result of NATO. I'm
afraid the rot had set in a long time before and the end of NATO action is
not going to turn the situation around, that can only come from a
leadership that wants to move in the direction of the world economy.


DOUG:
Jamie, you said that NATO regrets any inconvenience to the Serb people from
turning the power off. If one of the side effects of shutting the power
off to 70 per cent of the country was to undermine the confidence of the
people in the regime of Slobodan Milosevic, would NATO regret that too?


General Jertz, do you have any information on a report by Serb media that
NATO aircraft have hit a bus on the road from Pec to Rozaje in Montenegro,
about 12 km outside Pec, causing some civilian casualties?


JAMIE SHEA:
Perhaps the General could answer the first question.


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
The second question is the easier one. I too have seen the reports, I've
read them but I have no information on whether that is true or not so I
will have to come back to you again when we find it out. So far it is
only in the press.


JAMIE SHEA:
Doug, it's not for me of course to try to represent the mood of the Serb
people but I do read - and I think you do too, I think everybody here does
- more and more reports that the climate of nationalism has subsided, we
are not seeing at least so much the big demonstrations in support of the
government in Belgrade that characterised the first few weeks of the
operation. I think most people now are weary of this and they know that
this is something which Milosevic has imposed on them and why is this
happening in the first place? Because their government has refused to
co-operate with the international community and has avoided every single
opportunity to solve this crisis through diplomatic means which could have
avoided NATO having to use force.


We have given Milosevic hundreds of golden opportunities to settle this in
a reasonable way and Milosevic tends to prefer meeting foreign journalists
and speaking to them rather than speaking to his own people - contrary to
what most democratic leaders normally do - as to why this is happening and
why the Yugoslavs are in this situation and they know now that it's only if
Milosevic accepts these five key conditions that this is going to stop so,
yes, I would hope that he would start getting some echoes up from the grass
roots over the next couple of weeks, particularly with more and more brave
opposition leaders having the courage to speak out that the population is
decreasingly behind him on this and they would very much like this to be
solved and so let us wait and see.


But in the meantime, sometimes I wonder if some of the leaders really want
to deny reality. You may have seen an interview that Mrs. Markovic,
Milosevic's wife, gave on the CBS Sixty Minutes programme yesterday where
she actually denied that there was any ethnic cleansing or whatever going
on in Kosovo and said that anybody who believed that was happening was
thinking that it was Wednesday when indeed it was Saturday. But this is
Monday and we know very well what is happening unfortunately.


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
Jamie, this is the political part of it but let me add some military
aspects on that please. First of all, by doing that, confusion and
disruption to most military command-and-control and communication systems
will occur just degrading of course the power of the military forces,
including special police forces, the air-defence systems will be degraded
by doing that, you know that is good for our aircraft and they cannot be
shot at; tv and radio will be interrupted and of course the last point I
would like to make is that the emergency generators will also have to burn
fuel which we hope they will not have for too long, or Milosevic will have
to make a decision as where and how he uses the fuel he has.


STEPHEN (BRT):
Thank you, Jamie. I would like to come back to the attacks on the power
transformers. Does that not illustrate that for NATO a legitimate military
target actually unattended may be of use to the military even if the
civilian population is also wholly dependent upon it?


General, you said that we want to make sure that civilians are not harmed
to an extent we can't accept ourselves so my question to you is that if you
were a citizen living in Serbia and one or more of your relatives or
friends was killed during one of the bombing incidents that NATO is
responsible for, would you consider that acceptable because of the greater
aim of restoring peace to Kosovo?


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
Let me bounce this question back to you. Would you accept living in
Kosovo, that hundreds of thousands of Kosovars are being driven out of
their homes losing maybe their lives, atrocities, being raped and things
like that? Would you answer this question also? It is very difficult.
What I am trying so say is that of course it is a matter of what we want to
achieve and what we want to achieve is that Kosovars can return safely home
to the country where they were born, where they grew up and we take all
military action which we think is necessary - of course under political
guidance - which is necessary to achieve that goal.


JAMIE SHEA:
Stephen, let me also comment, if I may, on that briefly and then we will
obviously move on.


We waited a year before used military force, one year. That is a long
time, in fact many people said we should have used it earlier but we didn't
even though there were many fatalities in Kosovo we know of that were
documented because we had international observers in those days who could
actually count the bodies. We also had 250,000 internally-displaced
persons and upwards of 100,000 refugees but we tried to solve this without
using force. We believed we had the obligation to do everything that we
could to exhaust all other possibilities before embracing force as a last
resort. We threatened force but with the aim of trying to avoid having to
use it by having a diplomatic solution.


We made an agreement with Milosevic in October, I've seen his signature on
the paper, I was at meetings where we were negotiating this, he promised to
stop the killing, he promised to withdraw his forces, he promised to keep
those that remained in barracks and use them only for normal police duties
or border-guard duties; he signed agreements not just with NATO but with
virtually everybody else in the international community. Every single one
was broken but still we didn't use force.


We then said: "Fine" Let's try to get another negotiation started!" We
had three weeks in Rambouillet, one week in Paris, we came up with an
agreement which against all expectations was signed by the Kosovar
Albanians, they agreed to compromise; it was a tough agreement for them,
they gave up a lot of things that they held dear but they agreed to
compromise. Milosevic made it clear that he was interested in only one
thing and one thing only, a military solution on his terms and damn the
consequences so we then took the decision to use force.


I don't believe that under any criterion of a just war we could be accused
of not having exhausted all ways of trying to solve this diplomatically.
If people therefore are killed as a result, as badly as this affects me
personally and everybody in the Alliance, the responsibility is with
Milosevic. He is the person who has made it inevitable that force has to
be used to stop force.


(QUESTION IN FRENCH)


JAMIE SHEA:
(REPLY IN FRENCH)


QUESTION:
Jamie, if you've used these so-called "soft bombs" against the electricity
facilities in order to protect the infrastructure and I assume lessen
civilian casualties, why then did you not simply jam their television and
radio communications rather than bomb the Hell out of that infrastructure
and kill those civilians?


JAMIE SHEA:
I think the term "bomb the Hell out of" is an insult to the NATO military
commanders who do nothing of the sort, quite the reverse. When historians
write the account of this in the future, they will emphasise the opposite,
the extreme precautions that have been taken to spare civilian lives, the
great professionalism of the pilots in striking only at legitimate military
targets. There has never been an air campaign in history which has been
discriminating against the military but in favour of civilians as this one
even if we haven't been able to achieve - nobody can, nobody ever will -
100 per cent perfection. But what we have to do is to try to end the
conflict so we have to balance on the one hand the discriminatory means
that I've described, on the other hand with a degree of military pressure
which is going to persuade Milosevic to stop what is - and everybody agrees
with this - the most significant human tragedy in Europe since the end of
the Second World War and we are going to keep that up.


If I could use your term of "bombing the hell" out of somebody, then I
would refer it to those Serb forces who have been shelling
internally-displaced people on hillsides in Kosovo.


SAME QUESTIONER:
The phrase was used with regard to infrastructure.


JAMIE SHEA:
I don't think we are doing that either. I think when this campaign is
over, you will see that the targets that have been struck for the great
majority are strictly military targets which have strictly military uses,
there isn't much of great civilian use in an ammunition storage depot - I
can't think what else you could use it for - or in a military radio relay
station for example or in a tank shelter or whatever. The great
percentage are military targets, there are lines of communication where
they serve military purposes but I stress in response to what I said to
Stephen, if President Milosevic had seized the 100-plus opportunities that
he was given by the international community to resolve this peacefully,
NATO pilots would not be flying over Yugoslavia today.


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
Let me mention the military aspect on that, this one can be a very short
one. If you really want to jam and do nothing but jamming, you need a
continuous effect and to reach continuous effect you need a lot of aircraft
for a special amount of time and you would not be able to reach the same
amount which we did by using the weapon. Jamming, of course, is also an
ongoing thing, we do it in other areas also and we do continue jamming.
When dropping this bomb, even the aircraft flying-in use jamming by
themselves.


SAME QUESTIONER:
I was looking for substance rather than rhetoric, thank you.


JAMIE SHEA:
All right, let's go for a final question today because it has been rather a
long briefing, let's go to Luke Rosenseig (phon)


LUKE (QUESTION IN FRENCH)


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
Once again, all I can say, which I have already said at the beginning of my
briefing, is that we will in a very short time come back to you and tell
you about the effects on fielded forces which includes of course the
effects on artillery, tanks and everything that is in the Kosovo area so I
would ask you to just wait another day or two because it is not a military
situation which we discuss at the present time and of course we do want to
continue to be as effective as possible to really stop the terrible things
which are happening in Kosovo.


JAMIE SHEA:
(REPLY IN FRENCH)


Ladies and Gentlemen, I think we'll stop there for today, I look forward to
seeing you again tomorrow and I reiterate that tomorrow we will also have a
briefing by General Naumann. I will give you the time later but some
time in the afternoon.