NATO Speech: Press Backgrounder - SHEA / 16 May 1999

JAMIE SHEA:
Ladies and Gentlemen, good morning. Welcome to the morning operational
update. As you know, yesterday was Day 53 of Operation Allied Force. The
NATO aircraft focused their attacks against Serb forces in south and
south-eastern Kosovo, particularly in the areas of Junic, Prahovo,
Boljevac, West Rogovo and Pristina. Once again, there was a focus on the
Serb forces deployed in the field in Kosovo. As you've seen from the
update that we distributed to you earlier, the NATO aircraft struck 6 tanks
and also focused on armoured vehicles, artillery pieces, other military
vehicles, troop concentrations and military storage and command-and-control
facilities.


I can give you a little bit more detail now than what we had in the morning
update: mortars and military vehicles were struck near Srbica. Artillery
and armoured vehicles were struck near Decani and near Prizren; we were
able to target concentrated artillery near Urosevac and also military
vehicles and troops units near Stimlje.


Yesterday, the weather was generally good but it became worse late in the
day and this resulted in the cancellation of some sorties. The NATO
strikes knocked out the electrical power transformers supplying the
Smederevo iron and steel plant and the Bor copper smelter and refinery.


As you know, apart from the attacks in Kosovo itself, there were also
attacks against strategic targets elsewhere - a military radio relay site
at Urosevac and highway bridges in five different locations. Two we gave
you in the morning update earlier on - that is Kosmaca and Kursumilija, but
there were also bridges which were struck at Vladicin, Svetozarevo and
Cuprija. Three border posts - one at Kazazak but also at Cestak and near
Djakovica. An ammunition storage site at Boljevac, a military storage area
at Besinje and an army barracks and command post at Pristina. We also
struck at three different command-and-control locations at Uzice, Krusevac
and at Novi Sad and as you know from the morning update, petroleum storage
sites at Prahovo, Batajnica, Padinska, Bor and also Novi Sad.


All aircraft, as we reported earlier, returned safely and for those of you
who like statistics, the number of sorties flown in toto is now 21,903,
strike sorties 7,710. But if you take away from those strike sorties the
ones which are aimed at suppressing air defence, you have a total of 5,912.


A few other pieces of information for you today just so that you are fully
aware of what is happening:


This afternoon, a Russian team will be arriving in Albania to begin another
inspection under the Vienna Document 1994. You will recall that last week
there was one that was conducted by Russia in the former Yugoslav Republic
of Macedonia. Once again, NATO will co-operate fully with that routine
inspection in Albania.


As far as the humanitarian situation is concerned, AFOR staff are working
now with the UNHCR in Tirana to assist in the UNHCR long-term planning,
once again the main focus being to move at least 1,000 refugees a day from
Kukes up in the north to the camps which are now being constructed
elsewhere in Albania and which are in safer locations. The idea is to move
those 1,000 refugees a day, beginning on 20th May so just in a few days'
time. In particular to two camps which are now ready - one called Rushwall
and the other one is called Fier and the German engineers that are also
part of AFOR should complete engineering work on the Quatrum Camp today so
that will be a third camp available to help with this evacuation.


Those are the main points I have for you at the moment. Just a few
questions but needless to say I will be back with General Jertz at 3 p.m.



QUESTIONS & ANSWERS



QUESTION:
The Italian Prime Minister, Mr. d'Alema proposed in an interview published
today that NATO should decide a unilateral truce if Russia and China agree
the text of a UN resolution on Kosovo. What is NATO's position on this
proposal?


JAMIE SHEA:
NATO, of course, welcomes all diplomatic initiatives that can help to
resolve this crisis on the basis of the five conditions of the
international community without which the crisis cannot be resolved, but
only postponed, and that is what we do not want. And as you know, NATO's
policy - the policy of all NATO governments - is to continue this operation
until such time as President Milosevic accepts the five conditions. Any
diplomatic process which can hasten the moment when President Milosevic
will accept the five conditions, particularly via a UN Security Council
Resolution, would be welcome.


PHILIPPE:
Jamie, est-ce que les Apaches ont étaient mis sous le commandement de
l'OTAN ou est-ce qu'ils sont toujours sous le commandement américain ? Et
dans ce cas, est-ce que pour qu'ils soient engagés au Kosovo il faut qu'ils
soient sous le commandement de l'OTAN et pas américain ? Parce-que vu que
Clark a la double casquette, c'est pas très clair.


JAME SHEA:
Oui. Ma compréhension des choses, Philippe, c'est que les Apaches sont
toujours sous le contrôle opérationnel des Etats-Unis et c'est aux
Etats-Unis de transférer le commandement à l'OTAN en temps donné au moment
opportun. Mais je dois insister sur le fait que les Apaches ont complétés
leur entrainement, leur préparation et comme le Pentagon a rendu clair
l'autre jour, ces Apaches sont maintenant pleinement opérationnel. Mais le
"timing" bien sûr de leur intervention dépendra des commandements de l'OTAN
en consultation bien sûr avec le gouvernement des Etats-Unis. Mais ceci
c'est une procédure, rien de plus. Simplement une procédure.


Mark.


MARK LAITY, BBC:
Do you have a sorties total to give us now because I know you logged some
strikes, so just to give us an idea of how the operations were affected?
Also, would it be possible just to get an updated list because the World
Service occasionally loves having these names even though they can't
pronounce them any better than the rest of us?


JAMIE SHEA:
Mark, an updated list is no problem at all because my pronunciation is far
worse than the BBC World Service, as you know, so I am quite happy to give
you the spelling. That's the first one. On the second one, no, I don't
yet. I always try to get these things but I don't yet have the sortie
total but I am sure General Jertz will have that at 3 p.m.


JULIE:
Could you comment on the status of the Apaches and can you also shed some
light on reports that have been published that General Clark is pressing
for the Apaches to enter into the combat and that he is getting resistance
from the Pentagon Joint Chiefs-of-Staff and Secretary Cohen?


JAMIE SHEA:
I have seen those reports but as far I am concerned - and General Jertz I
am sure will confirm this from the SHAPE perspective this afternoon - is
that the Apaches have been deployed. There has been intensive training
obviously because this is a terrain with which the pilots have to be fully
familiar. They have got to be prepared for this mission obviously and so
you would understand that they had to undertake some training. The
Pentagon, as I said in reply to Philippe a second ago, has announced that
now the training is completed, the aircraft are already operational and it
is up to SACEUR, in conjunction with the US Government, to decide on the
exact moment and timing of their employment but I am not aware of any
problem in that respect. As I said to Philippe, it is simply a procedural
question.


Yeah, go ahead John.


JOHN:
I know you've said many times that NATO does not either directly or
indirectly support the KLA but would you care to comment on newspaper
reports today that British and US special operations teams are working
alongside KLA fighters under an Operation called Picnic?


JAMIE SHEA:
No, I would not care. Thanks for the offer, John, but I would not care to
comment on those newspaper reports.


Rick.


RICK:
My map is not very good but I was doing some numbers while you were giving
the statistics about the number of sorties flown, the number of strike
sorties, the number of strikes against Serb air defence systems. So, just
under 1800 strikes against Serb air defence systems in almost two months.
What kind of air defence capabilities do the Serbs still have and the
question I think is important so that maybe we can gauge when NATO planes
might be able to dip down to lower altitudes and eliminate some of the
mistakes that we have seen?


JAMIE SHEA:
Okay, Rick, first of all the Serb air defence systems have been very
seriously degraded when it comes to the central command-and-control, the
ability to track NATO aircraft arriving in the theatre, the ability to
direct radar-guided fire against those aircraft in a systematic way. That
has been severely downgraded. On the other hand, the air defence is
something like Lego - you can always sort of find a way of patching
something back together by moving radars around and having a local tactical
effectiveness even if your countrywide cover has been seriously depleted.
So, clearly, this is something that NATO will always take seriously. We
will never become complacent about air defence, otherwise we would start
losing planes. But, thankfully, thus far, as you know, we have lost
relatively few and particularly when you consider the enormous number of
sorties that we have flown.


The other thing is that the ability now to operate 360 degrees around
Yugoslavia, in other words to bring planes in from a variety of different
directions, will help to further confuse and overwhelm the Yugoslav air
defence. It will take us away from a kind of routine entry point procedure
which the Serb air defence could obviously exploit, so that is very
important as well. But they have a variety of different systems including
the manned portable-type systems which we have to respect.


The second point I would like to make is that I am not going to comment on
altitude, that is an operational matter. But I would like to get away from
this idea that because of the altitudes at which we fly we cannot hit
targets accurately. This is wrong. We have pointed out in previous
briefings, we have fired an immense number of missiles and ordnance at
targets throughout Yugoslavia. In 99.99 per cent of cases, whatever
altitude the NATO planes have been flying at, those targets have been hit
accurately and I am not just talking about large immovable objects like oil
refineries, I am talking about tanks, troops concentrations, artillery in
the field and even in an instance where civilians have been killed that
does not mean that the military target was not hit accurately. It was. So
I don't believe that there is a correlation between the altitudes at which
we fly and our ability to be accurate. We are being accurate - that is the
main point - at least in the overwhelming majority of cases and we will
continue to be so.


John.


JOHN:
Just to follow that up, Jamie, have any efforts been made over the last 48
hours or so following the attack on Kerisa to better try to establish
whether or not there are any human shields being deployed to try to prevent
the sort of public relations problems which NATO suffered from that attack?


JAMIE SHEA:
John, obviously we are going to continue to take every endeavour to make
sure that we have got the best intelligence that we can and I think so far
our record on all of these military targets has been good. And secondly,
of course pilots will, as always, verify the target before attacking and
that certainly happened in the case in point which you referred to. We
know that we are up against an adversary that has no scruples when it comes
to using civilians as human shields. I have pointed to a number of
examples over the last few weeks of people being rounded up and put in
industrial plants for instance. I referred to this already weeks ago;
secondly, people being put on bridges or under bridges. We know very well
of mixed military and civilian convoys, so human shields are a factor but
they are not obviously going to stop us continuing this air operation.
That's the key point. We are going to continue the air operation. From
what you saw last night it's clear that we are going ahead, but again I
reiterate: we will never. never intentionally target civilians. The
other day, when I was last here on Friday, I reported on a case where on
two occasions last Thursday NATO pilots, although having a legitimate
military target on the ground to strike at, aborted their operations
because they could not discount the risk of hitting civilians and we
continue to make every effort to avoid inflicting any casualties on civilians.


Yes, we take one final one and I'll be back at three o'clock.


QUESTION:
Jamie, some weeks ago, you told us that General Mladic war crimes were
involved also in operations in Kosovo. Since then, do you have any news of
these war criminals that are in Kosovo?


JAMIE SHEA:
No, I don't have any further information about the activities of General
Mladic and his supporters but all I am saying - and I continue to make this
point - is that once the conflict is over, the International Criminal
Tribunal will have of course unrestricted access to Kosovo and it will be
able to conduct an extremely thorough investigation and I would not be
surprised - and this is an understatement - if several further indictments
against those responsible were made.


Having said that, of course the Government of Belgrade has a responsibility
under the UN and international law to hand over to the Tribunal all of
those people on its territory that have been formally indicted by the
International Criminal Tribunal.


Thank you very much, I will see you at three o'clock.