TRANSCRIPT OF PRESS CONFERENCE
GIVEN BY MR JAMIE SHEA AND MAJOR GENERAL WALTER JERTZ
IN BRUSSELS
ON SUNDAY, 9 MAY 1999

JAMIE SHEA:
Ladies and Gentlemen, good afternoon. Welcome to the daily briefing. You
see General Jertz once again beside me up here.


I would first of all like to give you an idea of the events that will be
taking place next week as far as NATO Headquarters is concerned. It will
be, as you would expect, a busy one.
Tomorrow morning the Council will meet and will hear Ambassador Eiff.
Ambassador Eiff is a German diplomat who is currently serving as our
political representative in the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and
he will be coming to brief on the situation and on his activities.


Tomorrow afternoon the Secretary General will travel to Bremen to
participate in the Ministerial meeting of the Western European Union. And
also towards the middle of the week the Secretary General is planning to
visit Albania and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. We are still
finalising the details and the timetable of the trip. I will obviously
give them to you as soon as they are ready. But he will be going to those
two countries with three things in mind: firstly of course to meet the
political leaders and to reassure them of NATO's solidarity and practical
assistance in this grave situation which they are currently facing;
secondly he wants, as you would imagine, to visit the NATO troops in both
countries and to see the good work they are doing to assist with the
refugees and to thank them on behalf of the Alliance for those efforts;
and thirdly, he wants to see the situation of the refugees at first hand
and to reassure them of NATO's determination to make sure that they will
ultimately all be able to go back to their homes under international
protection.


Let me just say a few words about the humanitarian situation. In Albania
yesterday 5,000 new refugees arrived at Kukes. Today so far I understand
that 4,000 people have crossed the border from Kosovo and most of these
people seem to be coming from the region of Pec, and many of them tell the
usual stories of beatings, of forced expulsions, little time to leave, not
being able to take any of their possessions with them. So again this does
seem to imply that there is a systematic expulsion campaign going on,
targeting particular areas and that there is nothing random about this at all.


In Albania the AFOR forces under NATO command are committing now all of
their engineering units and manpower to build as many refugee centres as
possible in both western and southern Albania, with the aim of having ten
camps up and running by the latest by the end of June. The engineers of
these forces are also repairing the road between Puke and Kukes to enable
more evacuations from border areas to take place by road. Indeed on Friday
we were able to move 3,500 refugees from Kukes to safer accommodation
elsewhere. This is one of our priorities.


I can tell you that one of the things that AFOR forces are also looking
into is guarding all of the tractors because many of the refugees have as
you know escaped Kosovo using their tractors, and so there are very large
numbers of tractors that are now parked at the border. We want to make
sure that these tractors remain in safe hands because obviously they will
be needed to restart agriculture in Kosovo once the refugees are able to
return home.


I am also pleased that yesterday, and thanks to a very big effort by the
United Arab Emirates, the airstrip at Kukes has been repaired and up-graded
and that a C130 transport aircraft in a test was able to land there, and
this availability of an airstrip at Kukes will further help on refugee
evacuation, take some of the pressure off the roads, some of the pressure
off of the helicopters.


In the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, NATO forces have been working
to expand the refugee centre at Segrani and in particular to put up extra
tent space so that all of the refugees there, numbering 31,000 at the
moment, can be securely accommodated under tents of course, very important
that all refugees should have some kind of shelter.


We still have plans to help to move, on behalf of the UNHCR, up to 6,000
refugees from the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia to Albania, but of
course this depends upon the willingness of those refugees to actually
leave and to be resettled in this way and the transfer has not yet taken
place. At the same time, every day we are assisting in the temporary
evacuations of refugees to other countries, they are now running at the
rate of about 2,000 a day and Italy in particular, along with all of the
countries, is making a big effort, accepting about 500 of these refugees
every day for temporary accommodation.


I would like just to make a few extra points in the way of up-dating your
information. The first is to let you know that the Russian inspection team
has arrived in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and under the
terms of the Vienna document 1994 on troop inspections, is carrying out an
inspection which involves NATO forces in the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia, that is going very smoothly, the Russians have split into two
teams: one covering the eastern part of the country; the other the
western part. NATO is co-operating fully with that inspection and
yesterday one Russian team visited the Petrovec airfield and observed the
training activities of the UK Fourth Armoured Brigade, the other Russian
team went to Kuminovo, which is as you know where the barracks are for many
of the NATO forces, and received a briefing on NATO's humanitarian efforts
by Dutch, German and UK Commanders.


Finally, I would like to draw your attention to an extremely serious event
that occurred yesterday but was overshadowed of course by the other very
serious event which occurred yesterday, and that is of course the fate of
Mr Femi Ogani, an adviser to Ibrahim Rugova, and as you know one of the key
members of the Kosovar Albanian delegation at the Rambouillet talks, and
indeed one of the must illustrious of the Kosovar Albanian leaders in
recent years.


We have seen reports, and you have as well, that he has apparently been
killed after having been detained by the Serb police. And Mr Ogani, who is
as you know a man of dialogue, a champion of a peaceful solution in Kosovo,
had been in hiding since 29 March. At a news conference in the Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia yesterday, Mr Ogani's son, Sheped Ogani,
told the press that his father had been arrested out of a train by Serb
police while attempting - and not for the first time - to be able to leave
the country. And according to Mr Ogani's son, the family members in
Pristina have now identified the body. A family member who had asked the
police for further information was apparently beaten.


Now a number of Allies have already demanded a full investigation of this
case by the government in Belgrade. The persons responsible for the death
of Mr Ogani must be punished, and the information that we have so far
clearly points in the direction of the Serb police forces who detained Mr
Ogani, even though Tanjug has reported that some in Belgrade believe that
the UCK may have been responsible, but that does not seem to be the way in
which the evidence is pointing at the moment. This looks like yet another
case for the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.


Having said that, I now ask General Jertz to give you his daily
operational up-date.


GENERAL JERTZ:
Thank you Jamie. Good Afternoon Ladies and Gentlemen. Yesterday and last
night our operations were affected again by weather, particularly in
Kosovo. Still, over 500 NATO sorties were flown and we were able to attack
many of our planned targets. Within Kosovo we struck targets, shown here,
including Pristina airfield and a Serbian military assembly area at Suvareka.


Speaking of operations within Kosovo, if you will recall on Thursday when I
gave you a comprehensive overview on what we achieved against fielded
forces in Kosovo so far, I showed you a couple of slides which showed you
the decreases in Serbian military activity in Kosovo over the past few
weeks. I would again like to show you a comparison of Serbian military and
special police activity from 29 March, and the activity we have noted in
the past 24 hours. You will note a very significant decrease in Serbian
operations throughout Kosovo. One trend we have observed, and you can see
this by the circles on the slide, is that as Serbian military units are
destroyed or driven into hiding, there is a resurgence of UCK activity.
Although when we look at where the hundreds of thousands of internally
displaced Kosovar Albanians are taking shelter, these locations very often
coincide with many of the UCK controlled areas. In fact it appears that
some sanctuary is being provided for these unfortunate people within these
areas. It appears that our operations against Serbian military and special
police in Kosovo may be allowing the UCK to provide some protection for
their kinfolk.


Turning now to our other air operations. This slide shows our fixed
targets. As you can see, we struck air defence and command and control
targets, including again the radio relay sites at Kosovac, at Ivanlica,
plus airfields at Sienica and Nis. We also struck petroleum production
facilities, lines of communication and other military targets as shown.


I have two images to show you from our attacks the night before last night.
First you will remember one of the targets we struck was the residence of
President Milosevic which actually housed a command and control bunker.
Here are both the pre and post-strike photos showing the significant damage
to the site. The second image shows the Ivanica satellite communications
facility which was an important command and control communications node as
you know.


Serbian air defences were light and all of our aircraft, I am happy to say,
returned safely.


I would like now to turn to our humanitarian efforts also. This topic is
already covered by Jamie, but as it is a political as well as military
issue, including of course non-governmental organisations, let me give you
some more information on that. In the past 24 hours the refugee relief aid
effort continued. There were 19 aid flights into Albania. Likewise there
were 21 aid flights to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In fact
we received a report this morning, as has already been mentioned, that at
least the refugees in Segrani are now all in tents or under shelter.


Just to give you a better feel for how this airlift is working, let me
elaborate a little bit. These two flights from a couple of days ago are
typical for our operations. As you can see, this German C160 aircraft
delivered 8 tons of supplies, including flour, milk powder, clothing and
blankets. Likewise, a Dutch 707 transport delivered 37 tons of medical
supplies, blankets, clothing and other supplies. You can imagine these are
all used to feed, to nourish and to help people survive. This slide shows
you a summary of our total deliveries thus far.


Finally you may be aware of the excellent work which has been done to build
up the Kukes airfield. This one was also mentioned, but I also wanted to
show you a picture on that, so Jamie I hope you don't dislike it that I am
a little better than you this time by also showing pictures. This is an
important example of truly international efforts which are helping to
improve the humanitarian situation in Albania. This image shows this
airstrip. Engineers from the United Arab Emirates established this landing
strip to facilitate the movements of airlift aircraft up to the size of
C130 Hercules or C160 Transal. And we are all sure that this airfield will
significantly improve the situation in the Kukes area because it will allow
for the faster and more efficient delivery of humanitarian goods to
northern Albania.


Thank you, Ladies and Gentlemen, that concludes my part of the briefing.


NEIL:
Jamie, we have often heard in this room that time was on NATO's side, but I
am curious whether this weekend hasn't shown, to the extent that NATO has
found itself in an uncomfortable box, in all that it can do is continue to
accelerate and pound away at Serbia, but I am wondering to what extent you
don't fear losing the propaganda war before you win the actual win, in that
the more that one has to accelerate this, the more that one has to go after
increasingly sensitive and delicate targets, especially in the centres of
large cities, and we are not going to see more of this kind of damage that
then does extraordinary damage to NATO's own reputation.


JAMIE SHEA:
Neil, as you well know, armed conflicts always bring their fair share of
accidents and mishaps, that has been the same throughout human history and
no doubt it will be the same in all future conflicts as well, no matter how
much the technology moves on, and that is one reason of course why NATO
would have greatly preferred to have not been obliged to have recourse to
force. That is why we had a long period of one year in which we were
trying to seek a way out without having to use force, because clearly it is
never an easy option. But Milosevic had different ideas for us, as you
well know. But having started the campaign, despite the obvious problems
that one will have from time to time along the way, we recognise that, we
are determined to push it through because we believe that to stop now would
simply hand Milosevic ethnic cleansing on a plate. In other words, that we
are not going to follow a mistake by the even greater mistake of allowing
ourselves to be intimidated or to stopping before we have achieved our
goals. That would serve no purpose and nobody's interest except those of
President Milosevic.


At the same time, I believe that we have been conducting this campaign in a
professional as well as a deliberate way. We have so far struck at 1,900
aim points, that is the number of individual targets even if they may
sometimes be on the same building, like an oil refinery, 1,900 aim points.
We know that we have dropped around 9,000 pieces of ordnance, missiles and
bombs. Only 12 have gone astray as a result of either mechanical error, or
some other error, or the mistake that occurred yesterday. If you do a
mathematical computation you are talking about a fraction of 1%, and so we
continue to be accurate. Obviously I understand that sometimes
international attention, or TV pictures, prefer to focus on the 12 that
went astray, as opposed to the 8,988 that didn't go astray. But let's
remember that if you look at the big picture, the overwhelming majority of
these weapons are landing every day and every night accurately against
legitimate military targets.


And you have seen after yesterday, with our apologies, with our regrets to
the Chinese authorities, that we have continued this operation because we
know that at the end of the day it is the only way that we can secure peace
with justice for the people in Kosovo. And do not forget that sometimes
again when you have a dramatic event like what happened yesterday, you tend
to forget that other things in the meantime were going on elsewhere in
Yugoslavia, particularly in Kosovo. I have mentioned the 5,000 refugees
that were thrown out of their homes and forced over the border yesterday,
the 4,000 this morning, the death of Mr Ogani, all of the other accounts
which are now all over the newspapers of individual suffering, of mass
executions and so on. I am afraid the tally of destruction is still
overwhelmingly on the side of Milosevic, so let's not lose the wood for the
trees, that would be my main message today.


MARK:
General Jertz, do we have any more details on yesterday's bombing of the
Chinese Embassy, notably which aircraft used it, which kinds of weapons
were being used? And secondly, seeing the targets in Kosovo, the overlap
of the KLA activity helping the internally displaced people, does that
suggest that you should be directly trying to assist the KLA in their
fighting seeing as they are protecting refugees in a way that you find
difficult, given that it is an air campaign? And are you in fact
deliberately trying to help them with the attacks on the border where they
are trying to put troops and materials across the border with Albania, are
you actually directly trying to aid them and prevent the Serbians actually
getting at the KLA?


GENERAL JERTZ:
Thank you very much for this question. Let me for the first part hand over
to Jamie, because I think he would be the one to answer the question on the
Chinese part.


JAMIE SHEA:
I have no further information on the incident with the Chinese Embassy
yesterday. I referred this morning, as you know, to the statement that was
put out in the United States yesterday and which make it clear that the
error started in the intelligence gathering, obviously went through the
system and was not identified. But as for the operational details I don't
have anything to add to what was said yesterday.


GENERAL JERTZ:
On the UCK, let me state the first sentence. We are not the Air Force of
the KLA, this is very important and we should all bear that in mind. And
we are not supporting the UCK either directly or indirectly. Our goal in
Kosovo is to attack FRY forces, Serb forces and keep down their fighting
capability, and by doing that UCK might take advantage of what we are doing
but there are no direct links between them and us.


QUESTION (CNN):
A follow-up to the first question, how do you account for the fact that
there are still such widely-held views by people in the NATO countries and
especially beyond, that what has happened here is that NATO has taken a
disaster - and I don't underestimate the disaster that confronted you - but
NATO has taken a disaster and turned it into a catastrophe?


JAMIE SHEA:
Your words, not mine. I think we have done what anybody would do in these
circumstances, first of all we have acknowledged responsibility clearly,
unambiguously, quickly; we have expressed our regrets to the Chinese
authorities; we have acknowledged where the error occurred quickly,
honestly, in the intelligence-gathering process; we have also stated just
as quickly, just as clearly, that the procedures have been reviewed to make
it very unlikely that such an error would occur again; finally, we have
also done the responsible thing which is not allowing one mistake, no
matter how tragic, to divert us from the fundamental purpose of why we are
doing this which is to save hundreds of thousands of lives in Kosovo, to
repair one of the worst crimes in Europe in the 20th century - a century by
the way which has not been short of major crimes - and to allow those
refugees to go home.


Nobody in the international community would thank us if we were blown off
course because of one mistake. We are not going to be blown off course
and I think that is the clear message that came out of the meeting of the
North Atlantic Council yesterday. We have acknowledged this but we are
moving on and we will move on, we will move on not only on the military
front, as we demonstrated yesterday, but we are going to move ahead on the
diplomatic front and when you speak of "catastrophe", I don't see anything
either in terms of the military campaign or in terms of the way in which
the diplomatic activities are ongoing today which suggests that this was a
catastrophe. It was not, it was a mistake but no more than that.


SAME QUESTIONER:
A follow-up please, Jamie. I wasn't referring specifically and only to
the hit on the Chinese embassy and the question was your thoughts on why
then so many people in the world do not get your message and prefer to see
this differently to the way you insist it is.


JAMIE SHEA:
There are always going to be people in democracies who will see things
differently, that is why of course we are fighting this particular
conflict, to uphold the standards of people being able to dissent and have
their view, even against our own air campaign, without being put in prison
or without being murdered as a result. There, I believe, is where the
fundamental difference is in this whole operation and accidents, mistakes
or no mistakes, will continue to occur until the very end.


DOUG:
I have two questions about the Chinese embassy for you. One is to clarify
a slight difference in statements. The one that came from SHAPE during
the night appeared to say that the intended target was the weapons
warehouse of the Federal Directorate of Supply & Procurement, a later
statement said it was the Federal Directorate itself. Which was the
target and is the weapons warehouse in a different place and if so, where
is it?


Secondly, does NATO have any information that there was in fact secret
collaboration between China and Belgrade, that China was giving
intelligence on the conflict to Belgrade and that Serbia had moved
equipment and people into the Chinese embassy making at least one part of
that embassy a legitimate target?


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
I don't see too much of a difference in the wording of what we were
attacking, headquarters or warehouse, because they both serve the same
purpose and it is a kind of procurement installation and as we already
indicated, we thought it was there where we attacked so I don't see a
difference between what we said in the morning message and later on.


On the second question, this is an intelligence matter. We still and will
continue to degrade Milosevic's command-and-control facilities wherever
they are and wherever we can find them and we are in the process of finding
and defining those targets.


On collaboration, I could only speculate as I already indicated yesterday
but I'm not going to do that.


QUESTION:
A question for both of you. Jamie, there is less and less information
about the internally-displaced persons and about your plans for air-dropped
food for Albanians inside Kosovo. Does that mean that you have abandoned
all these plans or that there will be something to air-drop soon?


JAMIE SHEA:
No, we haven't abandoned those plans, we've never said we were going to do
this but we did say that we would do some planning. We've done some
planning and that planning is there.


I think the focus internationally in the last few days is where it should
be, quite frankly, which is try to get humanitarian relief organisations
into Kosovo; they are in the best position, both professionally and being
on the ground, to identify the problem and obviously to bring food in in
large quantities, much more than you can do using aircraft and more
reliably, making sure that the food actually gets to the people to whom it
should be given.


As you know, there is a mission under way of the UN Secretary General to
see first of all if the UN can have access and then to try to assess the
needs particularly in terms of seeing in what actual physical and mental
condition these people are. NATO totally supports that, we will
co-operate with it in every way and Secretary General Annan of the UN has
written to the Secretary General of NATO, Mr. Solana, to ask for that
co-operation and the UN will have it.


Secondly, there are other initiatives under way by various private,
non-governmental organisations, the Greeks in particular and Medicines du
Monde have had some success at least in transporting medical supplies in.
Milosevic should allow these humanitarian organisations to operate under
the terms of their charter and we will co-operate with those types of
missions.


CRAIG WHITNEY (NEW YORK TIMES)
I have a question for both of you which is whether the statement that was
issued late last night by the Defence Department and the CIA constitutes
the last word that we're going to hear about the investigation which I
assume you are saying is complete because the statement says: "a review of
our procedures has convinced us that this anomaly is unlikely to occur
again". Does this mean that SHAPE and whoever else was involved in the
targeting have completed the review and that we won't hear any more results
than this because it leaves a lot of things vague, it says "those involved
in targeting". If you read between the lines, you could say that's the CIA
and by implication also the Defence Department, including SHAPE, but it
doesn't say, that is hanging in the air.


Another thing hanging in the air, General Jertz, is did you really mean to
say that if you discovered collaboration between the Chinese embassy and
the Serb athorities, that the Chinese embassy or places like that could
become targets because that was the implication in the answer you just gave?


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
I hope it was not just because my English is not as good as yours. No, we
will never target anybody except military targets directly related to
Milosevic so I'm really thankful for the question just to clarify it.
We will continue to use the targeting process which is very robust, which
is very systematic, to identify targets which are valid, to downgrade, to
degrade all the capabilities Milosevic has and these will be the only
targets which are going to be attacked also in the future. I thank you
once again for the question so that I had a chance to clarify that.


JAMIE SHEA:
Yes, Craig, we don't consider embassies to be targets, as you well know, we
made that abundantly clear yesterday.


As for the question you addressed to me, we ascertained quickly that the
error was in the intelligence process unlike when you have a pilot error or
some technological or mechanical error and as intelligence, particularly
with targeting policy, Craig, is something that obviously has to be
carefully guarded for strict operational reasons, I am certainly not going
to give you any promise that we will have further information. The North
Atlantic Council will be briefed on the circumstances as ambassadors asked
yesterday but I am not going to promise any more information at the present
time.


NICK (DEUTSCHE WELLE):
General, with the Apaches, OK, they are deployed there at the moment, there
are a lot of training missions going on but has the military got the
go-ahead, the authority, to actually use these Apaches in a combat
situation as opposed to training, has it actually got the authority to use
them?


Regarding the Chinese embassy, coming back to this again, with the
investigations what happens in military intelligence circles? Is someone
held responsible or are people held responsible, does the commander walk,
what actually happens here because this is actually by most people
considered to be gross incompetence, knocking out someone's embassy, it's
not just a mistake, it's just incompetence and surely someone is going to
walk for this?


JAMIE SHEA:
Nick, I think the most important thing is to try to find out why you made a
mistake - and this is what has been happening - identify where it came from
to see if it was because of some problem in the system as it were and then
to take steps to make sure by tracking back to first origins that you
ensure that that sort of mistake is not going to happen again and that is
clearly what has happened and that is of course the priority. We don't
want this thing to happen again and therefore we need a system that almost
guarantees that it doesn't happen again so that is the focus. I am not
going to comment on the question of any individual responsibility.


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
On the Apache side of course, you all know that just one-and-a-half weeks
ago - I don't know the exact number because at that time I wasn't here -
plans had been set up to have the Apaches stationed in Albania and these
plans are well under way and the Apaches are still training and bear in
mind as I think I already indicated two or three days ago, that of course
it takes a little while until the Apaches finally can be employed because
it is a completely different terrain and they have to be trained according
to the geographic area they will be working in. You also have to bear in
mind that we have to make sure on the military side of the house that once
we employ them every precaution has been taken to really make sure that
they will be employed so that on the one hand they can attack with success
and on the other hand not be shot down by anybody who is trying to shoot
them down so the plans are under way and as I already indicated several
times, in the near future the Apaches will be also in the fight.


JAMIE SHEA:
If I could just trespass on General Jertz's domain, I also would like to
point out that you should not have the impression that because the Apaches
haven't been used that we are not hitting Serb tanks and artillery. With
the assets we have at the moment, every night we hit a number of Serb
tanks, artillery, vehicles and everything else. The Apaches are a useful
addition to this capability but it is not the 7th Cavalry, it's not in
other words that we cannot get on with the job perfectly adequately with
the tools that we have at the moment, we have them and we are doing the job.


ALEXANDER:
This is a follow-up on the question about aid to the internally-displaced
persons in Yugoslavia, about this Greek/Russian/Swiss initiative to move
the aid directly into the Yugoslavian hospitals etc. What security
guarantees can the convoys of Russian, Greek or Swiss trucks have coming
into these areas?


JAMIE SHEA:
Alexander, first of all, we will co-operate to the extent we can, for
example the other day we knew in advance through co-operation with the
Greek authorities about the Medicines du Monde convoy and having that
information is very valuable to our military commanders and that convoy
arrived perfectly safely intact in Pristina which is of course what counts
so we obviously need to have the information and that is what we would like
but the air campaign is going to go on, let us make that clear, for the
simple reason that we are not going to allow President Milosevic to divert
us away from our aim so that he can continue to expel large numbers of people.


The problem, as I pointed out, for the Kosovars is not simply a question of
supplies, it is also a question of bullets, it is a question of physical
violence, not simply shortages of supplies no matter how serious they are
and therefore we can only stop the humanitarian crisis when we stop the
war, the war is producing all of this and so we have to get to the problem
at source and therefore the air campaign is going to go on until those Serb
forces leave, then we can really tackle - and not simply in a short-term
way but in a durable way - the humanitarian crisis both by making sure that
those internally-displaced persons inside Kosovo are adequately cared for,
sheltered, provided with food, provided with protection, that we give them
assistance to rebuild their homes, to reconstitute their livestock, their
farms and get the economy going again and in terms of settling the
refugees. The answer is that we will co-operate to the extent we can with
all of these initiatives, which we welcome, but we will continue at the
same time the air operations because unless we stop the war, we cannot stop
the suffering.


QUESTION:
I have a two-tier question for General Jertz. Some unconfirmed rumours
coming from Belgrade are saying that the radio station belonging to the
daughter of Milosevic which was bombed a few days ago started broadcasting
again and most of the broadcasts, as it was tv station, were Chinese
programmes. Is there a possibility that these programmes would have been
broadcast from the Chinese embassy and that the missile would have been
homing-in on the broadcast?


Secondly, in Washington the sources commenting on the Chinese embassy
bombing said they had a problem with the local intelligence source. Is
there any possibility that a manipulation could have taken place to push
the Americans towards bombing the Chinese embassy?


MAJOR GENERAL JERTZ:
On the first question, I do have to elaborate it because I am not aware
that this radio relay station is used to broadcast Chinese-made programmes
so I would have to go into the military details if this relay station is
really already working again. I am not in a position at the present time
to give you an answer on that but I will come to you later on once I have
found it out.


On the other question, I already mentioned that we cannot go into
speculations. We really do not know so far if there were any tricks or
traps or collaboration as I already indicated so I also cannot elaborate on
that because that would be speculation and as I already promised you when I
started my job here I am not going to do that when I don't have evidence.


QUESTION:
Today, the Chinese Vice-Premier made a speech televised nation-wide in
China concerning the NATO attack on the Chinese embassy and the violation
of international law and saying NATO must take full responsibility for
that. How do you comment on the violation of international law and what
would be the result of Chinese doubts expressed for only an apology and
regrets?


JAMIE SHEA:
Thank you very much for that question and let me again, particularly to you
here in the audience, express the regret of NATO for the attack upon the
embassy of your country. Obviously, I listened to the Vice-Premier today,
I watched him on television and we have taken the responsibility already
for the mistaken attack on the embassy so there is no ambiguity about that.


Secondly, I was encouraged by the fact that he called for restraint and
calm by the Chinese people particularly in terms of the demonstrations
around various US and other NATO embassies. As you know, it is the
responsibility of governments to ensure that embassies and diplomatic
personnel are protected and that all demonstrations remain peaceful.
Those demonstrations are totally legitimate but obviously we would hope
that they would remain peaceful and I was encouraged that the government
clearly shares that view and intends to keep those demonstrations calm and
peaceful.


Third, Chancellor Schröder of Germany will be visiting Beijing this week, I
know that he will convey on behalf of the Alliance again the expression of
our regrets but he will also be making the point that this was a mistake
and no more than a mistake, it has no political significance and the
Chinese government, as a member of the Security Council, hopefully will
work with us, with Russia, with the Allies, towards the elaboration of a
Security Council resolution which will stop the war. What I believe the
Chinese government wants to do is exactly what the NATO governments want to
do which is to be able to resolve the crisis and stop the fighting but we
can only do that if we manage to secure, with the help of the UN,
compliance with the essential five conditions of the Allies.


The idea that we can have peace with something less than those five
conditions is an illusion, it is simply buying a breathing space before the
next bout of killing and mayhem begins; we know that, we have had that
experience since 1991 and therefore I hope that the Chinese, despite the
anger that clearly they feel at the moment and which I wholly understand,
will put the long-term interests of all of the international community in
stopping the fighting in Kosovo on the basis of the five conditions ahead
of other considerations and will accept our apologies for what is a bad
mistake but nonetheless nothing more than a mistake.


SAME QUESTIONER (INAUDIBLE)


JAMIE SHEA:
I think that the violation of international law in Kosovo is on one side
which is in the hands of Belgrade. NATO would never be there in the first
place, there would never have been any strikes at all, we would not have
had six weeks of NATO air operations if President Milosevic had first and
foremost obeyed international law, if he had listened to three UN Security
Council resolutions which your country, China, along with the other members
helped to pass and which called on him to stop this fighting and to pull
his forces back and take immediate steps to assist the Kosovar people and
so I believe that if we are talking about international law, we have a good
case for doing what we are doing.



Luc Rozenzweig, Le Monde:


L'erreur que vous avez signalée pour laquelle vous vous êtes à plusieurs
reprises excusé n'est pas une erreur mineure, c'est une erreur majeure.
Donc, ce que j' aimerais savoir c'est si le niveau de responsabilité de
cette erreur a d'ors et déjà été établi et deuxièmement s'il va y avoir des
sanctions publiques contre les responsables de cette erreur.


JAMIE SHEA:


Quelqu'un d'autre a déjà posé cette question et donc je pense avoir déjà
répondu. Nous avons établi que l'erreur provient d'une défaillance dans le
système d'intelligence et que les mesures ont été prises biensûr pour
encore minimiser la possibilité d'un renouvellement d'une telle erreur. Et
quant à la responsabilité individuelle, je n'ai aucun commentaire à faire.



AUGISTINE:
Jamie, you mentioned the fate of Mr. Fehmi Agani. Do you have any
information about the other Albanians who disappeared, who are missing
knowing that Agani was a key member of the Kosovar delegation in
Rambouillet which helped to build a common front of Albanians, to get
together the KLA and the LVK? What is your comment now on the position of
Ibrahim Rugova whose best friend is killed and is giving no statement about
that?


JAMIE SHEA:
I can imagine that Mr. Rugova is very deeply affected by the death of Mr.
Agani so I don't have any comment on what statement he would make. The
position of the Allies is very clear.


I have no other information as to the fate of those Kosovar Albanian
leaders that are still in hiding in Kosovo but the fate of Mr. Agani
suggests that they have every reason to be in hiding and I hope that they
will be able to remain in hiding until the international community can
liberate them from their Calvary and obviously ensure that they are able to
go about their normal political activities as any of us in a democratic
society would believe to be necessary so obviously I don't have any
information but the fate of Mr. Agani suggests that we have every reason to
be very deeply preoccupied with their fate.


Ladies and Gentlemen, thank you! Normal update tomorrow at 10.30,
briefing in the afternoon at 3 p.m.