Washington Post 5/8/99 Daniel Williams "...NATO missiles plowed into the Chinese embassy in Belgrade during a ferocious allied bombardment tonight that also struck the Interior Ministry and army headquarters and again plunged the capital city into darkness. The 26 Chinese staff members who lived in the building were taken to a hospital, and there were conflicting initial reports about the extent of the casualties. The official New China News Agency reported that four people were injured and four others were missing. Yugoslav Foreign Ministry spokesman Nebojsa Vujovic said "there are deaths and injuries," without providing details. The airstrike that hit the embassy seemed likely to complicate Western efforts to secure a diplomatic settlement to the Kosovo conflict and to raise new strains in U.S.-Chinese relations..... Earlier today, NATO cluster bombs struck a residential neighborhood and hospital grounds in Nis, Serbia's third-largest city, killing at least 14 civilians and wounding 30 others. NATO said tonight that it was "highly probable that a weapon went astray and hit civilian buildings" during an attack on a nearby airfield...."

AFP 5/7/99 "...The UN Security Council will hold an emergency meeting at 11:30 p.m. (0330 GMT) at the rquest of Beijing after a NATO bomb hit the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, council diplomats said. The independent Beta news agency in Belgrade reported at least one person had been killed in the strike, which Chinese diplomats here called a "barbarian act."

Itar-Tass 5/8/99 "...NATO's missile attack on the Chinese Embassy to Yugoslavia means that the Kosovo Albanians mean nothing to NATO, as they attacked today the embassy of a sovereign state, the Chinese Ambassador told Itar-Tass. Pan Zhanlien emphasized that "China's reaction will be tough". The ambassador also said there were victims among the staff. He could not specify how may people had died. According to the ambassador, the attack on the embassy was targeted, as the building is situated far from industrial or military objects. "That could not have been a pilot's mistake," he said...."

AP 5/7/99 "...Fehmi Agani, a prominent politician and member of the Kosovo Albanian delegation at February's failed peace talks in France, was found dead Saturday, the state-run Tanjug news agency reported Saturday. Tanjug said Agani's body was found by police in the village of Lipjan about 12 miles south of the Kosovo capital Pristina. The agency blamed the killing on the Kosovo Liberation Army. Agani was a close aide of Ibrahim Rugova.... ``Since Rugova went to Rome, the terrorists obviously lost interest in keeping him alive and they executed him.''..."

5/7/99 Itar-Tass Freeper thanatos "...The Ukrainian parliament has adopted a resolution on the humanitarian assistance to Yugoslavia. The law-makers instruct the cabinet to seek reserves for supplying medicines and foods to the country in distress. It will not be a matter of the military-technical assistance, head of the parliament defense committee Georgy Kryuchkov told Itar-Tass on Friday. He thinks, however, that Ukrainian specialists could take part in the construction of bridges, airfields and other military and civilian sites destroyed by the NATO air raids...."

5/7/99 AFP Freeper Thanatos "...The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) on Friday rejected an international peace deal for Kosovo and insisted that moderate Kosovar leader Ibrahim Rugova had no mandate to negotiate for the province. KLA spokesman Bilal Sherifi told reporters that several points in the G8 agreement were "completely unacceptable", and warned that the Balkans remain at threat so long as Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic remains in power...."

5/7/99 AFP Freeper Thanatos "...The three US soldiers who were freed by Yugoslavia last weekend surrendered without firing a shot after their armored Humvee was ambushed by Yugoslav troops 2.5 kilometers inside Macedonia, their commanding general said Friday. The gunner took cover inside the HUMVEE to escape a hail of fire because in keeping with the rules of engagement his 50-caliber machine gun was not charged and ready, Major General David Grange, commander of the 1st Infantry Division said. Grange, in a news conference via telephone from his headquarters in Heidleberg. Germany, defended their performance, however, as well as rules of engagement that allowed them to travel alone in the border area with their weapons at less than ready...."

The Independent 5/8/99 Rupert Cornwel and Colin Brown "....As the diplomatic search for a Kosovo settlement gathered pace, Nato air strikes hit a residential area in Yugoslavia's third largest city yesterday, reportedly killing up to 13 people. The latest civilian casualties, on the 44th day of the bombing campaign, came as Belgrade sent out new signals that it might be ready to study the outline peace plan agreed this week by the leading Western powers and Russia. But in London, Tony Blair ruled out any direct negotiation with the Serbian President, Slobodan Milosevic, whom he effectively branded a war criminal who should be removed from power. The Nato attack in Nis, some 120 miles south-east of Belgrade, caused horrific scenes as what appeared to be cluster bombs ripped into an area near a hospital and a market. Bloodied and partially dismembered bodies lay in one devastated street, alongside unexploded yellow bomblets....."

The Independent 5/8/99 Julian Manyon Freeper Prince Charles "...The elderly woman lay on her back in the street, her eyes sightless, her face turning the colour of wax. There was no mark on her apart from the small bloody hole in the centre of her forehead caused by a Nato cluster bomb which did extensive damage to several streets near the vegetable market in the southern town of Nis...."

The Progressive Review 5/7/99 Sam Smith Freeper dirtboy "...In short, we have destroyed a country, killed a lot of people and let many more become homeless and helpless in large part because some killer litigants couldn't tell the difference between a leveraged takeover and real life. And after all this, we find ourselves moving back to the bargaining table, falsely claiming as victory a negotiating position close to what we could have had before the first bomb was dropped...."

UNITED NATIONS (CNN) 5/7/99 "...NATO should reassess the role it has played in the Balkans and let the United Nations lead peacemaking efforts, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan said Friday. The secretary-general's comments came as NATO continued its bombardment of Yugoslavia, where officials said NATO planes killed 10 civilians in an attack on the southern city of Nis on Friday. Annan praised the decision of the Group of Eight countries to seek U.N. approval of a multinational security contingent as part of a negotiated settlement of NATO's air war against Yugoslavia. The United Nations, not NATO, should make decisions about using force, Annan said. "The Security Council should have primary responsibility for peace and security, and when it comes to the use of force, the council must be involved," he said...."

Congressional Record 5/5/99 Congressman Sherman's Special Order Speech "... I could go on about the camp, but there is one other thing I want to mention and that is I went there looking for verification of the stories of atrocities. I spent two hours at that camp. My colleagues, about 18 of them, spread out throughout the camp. Each was assigned our own translator, and I would say one out of 20 or 1 out of 40 or 50 of the residents of the camp spoke English at a sufficient level to communicate. So I went around the camp asking whether they could put me in touch or introduce me to a refugee who had personally seen rape or murder. We were not able to find, at least I was unable to find, a refugee with such a story, either one who spoke English or one who could speak to me through the translator. The story we heard instead, again and again and again, was that Serb paramilitary told people in this or that town or this or that neighborhood to get out and get out quickly, often on as little as 20 minutes notice, and the people decided to leave. Clearly, the stories of rape and murder from other towns and villages inspired such immediate compliance with such an outrageous order...."

Reuters 5/7/99 Philippa Fletcher "...NATO said Friday the Yugoslav military in Kosovo was largely contained after 44 days of air raids, but Serb officials said bombs crashed into a hospital and an outdoor market, killing 15 people and wounding 70. Cranking up pressure on Serbian security forces and their supply infrastructure, NATO underlined that a new peace plan for Kosovo agreed to by the West and Russia did not herald an end to bombing as long as Belgrade did not accept its terms...."

Col. Hackworth's DEFENDING AMERICA newsletter 5/7/99 Letter from Jeremy Brecher to Congressman Bernie Sanders 4/29/99 "...This letter explains the matters of conscience that have led me to resign from your staff. I believe that every individual must have some limit to what acts of military violence they are willing to participate in or support, regardless of either personal welfare or claims that it will lead to a greater good. Any individual who does not possess such a limit is vulnerable to committing or condoning abhorrent acts without even stopping to think about it. Those who accept the necessity for such a limit do not necessarily agree regarding where it should be drawn. For absolute pacifists, war can never be justified. But even for non-pacifists, the criteria for supporting the use of military violence must be extremely stringent because the consequences are so great.....It was your vote in support of this resolution that precipitated my decision that my conscience required me to resign from your staff. I have tried to ask myself questions that I believe each of us must ask ourselves: Is there a moral limit to the military violence you are willing to participate in or support? Where does that limit lie? And when that limit has been reached, what action will you take? My answers led to my resignation. ..."

Associated Press 5/8/99 NICOLE WINFIELD "....China called an emergency meeting of the Security Council on Saturday to condemn what it called the barbaric ``NATO attack'' on its embassy in Belgrade. The United States expressed regret over the incident but vowed to continue bombing. Chinese Ambassador Qin Huasun circulated a draft statement to the press -- which would eventually have to be agreed upon by the entire council -- that calls for the United Nations to investigate the bombing and for NATO to provide an explanation. China's official Xinhua news agency said two people were killed and more than 20 injured...... Qin said China was ``greatly shocked,'' by the bombing. ``We strongly condemn NATO's act and will express our indignation. NATO's barbarian act is a gross violation of the United Nations Charter, international law and the norms governing international relations,'' Qin said. He warned that NATO would bear responsibility for the consequences of the blast, and he called on NATO to stop the bombing. China has consistently voiced strong opposition to the NATO attacks, saying they were launched without authorization of the council and violate international law...."

Press Association (U.K.) 5/8/99 "...Britain is to use an emergency session of the UN Security Council to try to persuade China that its embassy in Belgrade had not been bombed deliberately, Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said. At least three people are reported to have been killed in the incident. "We will most certainly be seeking to convince the Chinese that there was no possibility, no question of deliberately targeting their embassy," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme. "Indeed, the target was elsewhere and was a legitimate military target," he said, adding that although he did not have full details he understood the alliance had been targeting a hotel used by indicted war criminal and paramilitary leader Arkan...."

AFP via Babelfish 5/8/99 "...More than 2.000 Chinese expressed by throwing stones Saturday against the embassy from the United States in Peking, under the glance of the police force, after the bombardment by NATO in the night of the embassy from China in Belgrade which made at least three died. The demonstrators, for the majority of the well organized students, encircled the vast complex sheltering the American embassy. They threw stones and bottles out of plastic against the building. " the United States is assassins ", shouted the crowd of demonstrators, whereas a hundred police officers were held close to the procession without intervening. On banners one could read: " NATO, Nazis " and " the United States, go to the devil ". ..."

Reuters 5/8/99 Benjamin Kang Lim Freeper starlu "...Angry students, chanting and waving banners, burned a U.S. flag outside the American embassy in Beijing Saturday during a mass demonstration against NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Students and onlookers cheered and clapped as the Stars and Stripes went up in flames outside the main embassy gates, and hurled empty plastic bottles, tomatoes and other debris over the compound's iron fence..."

USA TODAY 5/8/99 AP "...Several thousand students marched Saturday in front of the U.S. Embassy in Beijing to protest the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia, while the government accused NATO of a ''barbarian act.''.... A cheer of ''Hao,'' meaning ''Bravo,'' went up whenever a plastic water bottle or piece of pavement landed on the Embassy building. Police joined hands in a chain to block the embassy gate. Some of the protesters sang the Chinese national anthem, and others shouted ''Protect sovereignty, protect peace,'' and ''We don't want war.'' Signs hung on a bus that brought students to the embassy said ''Nato Nazis.'' Some police applauded the students when they sang the national anthem ....The protest was highly unusual for China, where authorities generally have banned any large gatherings or demonstrations for fear of unrest. Demonstrators said they had asked school authorities for permission to march, and it had been granted....Several hundred people with banners also demonstrated outside the U.S. Consulate in Shanghai, and several dozen protested in Hong Kong....."

5/8/99 CNN "....The protesters pushed toward the embassy, demanding to be let in and calling U.S. President Bill Clinton obscene names, CNN's Beijing Bureau Chief Rebecca MacKinnon said. Police pushed back demonstrators who tried to ram a van and hurl a burning American flag through the embassy gate. Protesters used pieces of concrete that had been left in piles by workers rebuilding sidewalks to break many of the windows in U.S. Embassy buildings. A group of protesters tried to flip a car and started shoving police who stopped them. Several cars were smashed with chunks of concrete...."

http://www.un.org/News/Press/docs/1999/19990508.SC6674.html 5/8/99 UN Security Council "...QIN HUASUN (China) read a statement from the Chinese Government that said that at midnight of 7 May, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), led by the United States, flagrantly attacked the Embassy of China with three missiles from different angles and caused serious damage. Two people had died, two were missing and many were injured. Flagrant bombing by NATO, led by the United States, had already caused enormous casualties and now it had gone so far as to bomb the Chinese Embassy. That was a violation of the sovereignty of China, and of the basic norms of international relations. China expressed the utmost indignation and severe condemnation of this barbaric activity. It made the strongest protest. NATO, headed by the United States, must assume the responsibility. China reserved the right to take further measures. The working buildings and the residence of the Embassy in Yugoslavia -- indeed the whole Embassy from the fifth floor to the basement -- had been destroyed, he said. All Embassy staff had either been sent to hospital for treatment or had been withdrawn to hotels. That was a serious incident and deserved the utmost indignation and the strongest condemnation. Even in times of war, it was recognized that diplomatic institutes should not be violated and diplomats should be protected. Violation of those principles was a serious threat to the maintenance of necessary and normal international relations. The indiscriminate attack constituted a serious breach of international conventions. It was a crime of war and should be punished. China demanded a NATO investigation of the incident and that NATO account for it. The frenzied bombardment by NATO, led by the United States, of Yugoslavia over the last 45 days had resulted in civilian casualties. It had now violated a mission. This was shocking. NATO should stop the air strikes immediately and unconditionally....Mr. QIN (China) said he had followed the comments by Council members and others closely. He thanked representatives for their expressions of sympathy and condolences. However, he had also heard the absurd argument expressed that NATO did not intentionally bomb the Embassy and therefore it could not be charged with contravening the convention on diplomatic protection. It was astonishing that a senior diplomat would say this. Facts spoke louder than words. Whether deliberate or not, this was a blatant transgression of international law. He reiterated that NATO must shoulder all responsibility for its actions. He also informed the Council that China had distributed a draft presidential statement on the situation, and it hoped there would be early action on this draft....."

The Independent 5/9/99 Andrew Marshall, Teresa Poole, Rachel Sylvester "...The last time such anti-Western wrath was vented on such a scale was during the Cultural Revolution, when the British embassy was sacked and burnt down by Red Guards. Such scenes have not been witnessed in Peking since the 1989 Tiananmen Square pro-democracy movement. Despite busloads of police and paramilitary soldiers, and half-hearted attempts to hold back the crowds from the embassy area, the authorities appeared to have neither the inclination nor the expertise to marshal the irate protesters..."

AFP 5/9/99 "...China may have bitten off more than it can chew as the authorities unleash a wave of mounting xenophobia across the country in the wake of NATO's bombing of its Yugoslav embassy. While giving assurances by the leadership that foreign nationals on its soil will be protected, the government has also sent a much more potent message -- that the angry and often violent protests which have erupted in major cities this weekend have its full backing. "There is a risk of things getting out of hand," said a Western diplomat in the capital who declined to be named. "They have done everything to make it boil over." ...The nightly news bulletin showed scenes reminiscent of the old days of political struggle sessions during the Cultural Revolution (1966 - 1976), with older people and schoolchildren sitting in rows chanting anti-NATO slogans.... The United States evacuated all personnel from its consulate in the southwestern city of Chengdu after angry protesters stormed the compound and set the residence of the consul-general ablaze. The American embassy and consulates across China will close Monday and Tuesday as a result of the violence..... "

The London Times 5/8/99 Matthew Parris Freeper starlu "...What a stupid, stupid adventure. What a catastrophe. What an unpardonably reckless blunder. What a misjudgment. What a bloody mess. Tens of thousands of deaths which it is only self-deceiving rubbish to insist would have occurred if the bombing had never begun. Around a million deported within weeks into abject poverty - exodus on a scale and with a speed and ferocity which to suppose Milosevic planned before the bombing, or could have achieved except under cover of the bombing, is a flight of pure, self-serving fancy on Robin Cook's part. If it were true, what a massive failure on the part of forward Allied intelligence and forward Allied planning, was that...."

Daily Telegraph (U.K.) 5/8/99 Patrick Bishop and Michael Smith Freeper HAL9000"...IBRAHIM RUGOVA, once voted "president" of the self-proclaimed Republic of Kosovo, has no right to speak for Kosovar Albanians, the Kosovo Liberation Army and political moderates said yesterday. Instead, the KLA called on him to renounce his lifelong pacifism and support the Nato air campaign and its own struggle. The standing of Mr Rugova has plummeted to zero among Kosovars since he was put under house arrest by the Belgrade regime at the start of the crisis...."

Lineone News - UK 5/8/99 Freeper starlu "...Anger at Nato's bombing of Yugoslavia spilled onto the streets of Britain today as thousands of protesters marched through London. More than 3,000 people with a wide range of ages, backgrounds, political beliefs and nationalities joined a demonstration organised by the Committee for Peace in the Balkans to demand a stop to the bombing campaign...."

STRATFOR's Global Intelligence Update 5/8/99 "...The Chinese have been playing a fairly quiet role in the war, opposing U.S. policy but having more important things on their mind. However, in the past 24 hours they have begun to be more aggressive, taking the position that Yugoslavia must be consulted in any proposed settlement. Their involvement now takes a quantum leap forward. In effect, the Chinese are arranging the Security Council meeting that Yugoslavia has been hoping for..."

Lineone News - UK 5/8/99 Freeper starlu "...The peace plan hinged on the passing of a UN Security Council resolution authorising foreign troops to enter Kosovo to supervise the safe return of ethnic Albanian refugees. Such a move, was thought to be the most likely way of persuading Milosevic to climb down and withdraw his troops. The agreement of Russia - a traditional ally of Serbia - to the plan was seen as a crucial breakthrough and diplomats had assumed China would back the deal if Moscow did. The attack on the embassy throws the whole process into doubt...."

Stratfor.com 5/8/99 "...1555 GMT, 990508 - The U.S. Embassy in Beijing has strongly protested to the Chinese Foreign Ministry over inadequate police protection from rock and bottle throwing students demonstrating against the NATO bombing of the Chinese diplomatic mission in Belgrade. "We felt the protection during the demonstration was inadequate and we protested strongly to the Foreign Ministry," a U.S. embassy official in Beijing said...."

UPI 5/8/99 "...Air Force Maj. Gen. Chuck Wald, spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff says (Saturday) a weapons malfunction is possibly to blame for the NATO bombing of a hospital and residential neighborhood in Yugoslavia on Friday. ..."

FoxNews 5/8/99 AP Freeper A Whitewater Researcher "...EXCERPTS: "...A large number of (Chinese protesters)...broke into the consulate compound in Chengdu (southwest China) and severely burned the (U.S.) consulate general's residence...U.S. officials (said) in Beijing, where the Embassy was surrounded by protesters...(they) were not getting adequate protection...."We feel that we are under a state of siege here. We don't have adequate security,"...the embassy had made a strong protest to Chinese authorities...to provide better protection...."We don't have the ability to move between our buildings like we should,"...All U.S. diplomatic offices in China, except in Hong Kong, would be closed Monday and Tuesday...The communist government...apparently felt that stopping people from publicly expressing outrage over the embassy bombing could further inflame them and possibly turn emotions against the government...U.S. officials in Beijing advised staff and other Americans in the Chinese capital "to raise their security awareness,"..."

Agence France-Presse 5/9/99 "...Gulf Arab newspapers on Sunday started to criticize NATO over its air strikes on Yugoslavia, a conflict in which this region has sided firmly with fellow Moslems in Kosovo. "NATO's action plan is stupid, given the negative results it has produced so far," said Al-Raya, which is close to official circles in Qatar. "The strategy of NATO has led to many blunders, such as the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, and provoked the expulsion of the people of Kosovo instead of granting them their rights," it said. "We have the right to think that what is taking place is in actual fact a plot against both the Albanians of Kosovo and the Serbs," the Qatari daily added...."

Reuters 5/9/99 Freeper starlu "...Russia celebrated the anniversary of Nazi Germany's defeat Sunday and many veterans said President Clinton and other NATO leaders had filled Adolf Hitler's boots in leading aggression against Europe. ``Clinton and NATO are worse bastards than Hitler. Shame on them!'' said Heidar Sufiyani, 75, who helped liberate Berlin in 1945 at the end of World War Two...."

Truth In Media (Bulletin) 5/9/99 Bob Djurdjevic Freeper Ron C. "...A group of Canadian lawyers has filed a formal complaint with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia against all of the individual leaders of the NATO countries, and the officials of NATO itself..."

AP 5/8/99 "...Ted Turner told University of Georgia graduates today to keep thinking and learning, then rained on their parade by suggesting that NATO bombing in Yugoslavia could lead to nuclear war. ``Here's the class of '99, and y'all are just starting out. Wouldn't it be terrible to have nuclear war in the next week or two and mess up y'alls careers before they have gotten started?'' Turner said in a commencement address to 5,000 graduates.... Referring to the NATO bombing of China's Embassy in Belgrade, Turner said: ``If we drop a bomb on the Russian Embassy, we could be at war with Russia and China tomorrow, and they both got lots of nuclear weapons. We might not even get to see the millennium.''..."

Agence France-Presse 5/8/99 "...NATO warplanes blasted a post-office knocking out telephone services in a small town and targetted television relay stations cutting off broadcasts to two regions south of Belgrade, the Serbian media reported Sunday...."

MSNBC 5/8/99 Dan Goure "...AT THE ROOT of some of the mistakes, is a decision to avoid NATO casualties, a decision that has meant bombing from high altitudes. And while it may save lives, it has also led to terrible errors. Prior mistakes acknowledged by NATO have involved a train, a bus, a column of ethnic Albanian refugees, dozens of homes and possible hundreds of deaths.... In reality, the air war's problems have little to do with the "smart bombs" and everything to do with the strategies employed by the two sides. Yugoslavia is pursuing a two-pronged strategy designed to resist attack by a more powerful foe and wear that enemy down. NATO is seeking to achieve a political settlement, while neither imposing nor suffering significant casualties...."

Agence France-Presse 5/9/99 Freeper starlu "...Moderate Kosovar Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova told Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin Saturday that he favoured disarming the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and wanted Kosovo to have autonomy within Yugoslavia, ITAR-TASS reported early Sunday. Chernomyrdin met Rugova in Bonn after holding talks with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder and new UN Balkans representative Carl Bildt...."

The Sunday Times (London) 5/9/99 Stephen Grey, Matthew Campbell, and Hugh McManners "...YESTERDAY Nato admitted it had bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade after mistaking it for a Yugoslav government office. At least three people were killed in the attack, which threw diplomatic efforts to end the war into turmoil. Alliance officials said they had believed the building was Yugoslavia's federal directorate of supply and procurement, which organises weapons imports and exports. It was hit by three 1,000lb precision-guided freefall weapons, thought to have been dropped by a B2 stealth bomber. Last night Nato diplomats were looking to General Wesley Clark, the supreme allied commander who now has sole authority for selecting targets, to take responsibility. Allied intelligence agencies, including the CIA, were also facing severe criticism. "It is absolutely incredible not even to know where the embassy of such an important world power is situated," one diplomat said....The embassy, purpose-built for the Chinese in 1993, was hit during the heaviest bombardment of Belgrade in more than six weeks of bombing. Witnesses said two missiles struck the roof and one penetrated its side. Two journalists and a reporter's wife died. A fourth victim was reported missing. Chinese diplomats, some with bloodstained clothes, watched in tears as rescuers brought out 21 injured. ...."

Wash. Post 5/9/99 Steven Pearlstein "...Embarrassed and apologetic NATO officials today blamed an "intelligence failure" for causing Friday night's accidental bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade that left at least three dead and 20 wounded, and threatened to derail diplomatic efforts to end the military conflict in Yugoslavia. NATO said its laser-guided bombs were mistakenly aimed at the embassy because CIA officials gave military planners incorrect information about the target, which they believed was the Federal Directorate of Supply and Procurement, which the alliance described as a military facility. Military authorities said the two buildings are 150 to 200 yards apart and are similar in size and age. Four bombs hit the embassy and were dropped by one or more U.S. planes, according to Pentagon officials. In an unusual joint statement issued late Saturday, Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and CIA Director George J. Tenet expressed regret about civilian deaths and said that "faulty information" led to the mistaken bombing...... Unlike earlier mishaps in the air war, when bombs strayed from their intended targets, officials said the Chinese Embassy was hit by four bombs that had been targeted on the new five-story building, in the belief that it was the Yugoslav military's weapons warehouse and procurement center. But throughout the day, alliance military spokesmen in Brussels and Washington could not provide details of how such a mix-up could have occurred. Officials declined repeated requests to produce a map showing where the embassy was in relation to the procurement center or even to estimate the distance between the two sites. Initial reports said missiles were used in the attack, but in fact they were laser-guided bombs...."

Stratfor 5/9/99 "...2030 GMT, 990509 U.S.-Chinese relations seem to have simply collapsed since the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Beijing. The rhetoric and the attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Beijing by mobs throwing rocks are all reminiscent of the worst days of the Cold War. Now, U.S.-Chinese relations have been rather poor for months, but to the unaided eye, this response seems fairly extreme. The U.S. has claimed that the bombing was an unfortunate accident. From the American point of view that, and some financial reparations, should end the matter. That is precisely what has the Chinese furious. They accept that it was an accident. What they don't accept is that accidents happen. More precisely, it is their view that such accidents happen only when there is carelessness and, more importantly, indifference to the consequences of the accident. In other words, the accident happened because making sure that such accidents didn't happen was not a top priority of U.S. and NATO planners....From an American point of view, the Kosovo affair is now getting completely out of hand. U.S.-Chinese relations, bad before, are now near collapse. Russian influence, even among NATO allies, is at an all-time high. Islamic powers, including the Iranians, that were previously split over the bombing because of the Islamic dimension in Kosovo, are now forming a solid anti-bombing phalanx. Milosevic is no nearer to capitulating today than he was at the beginning of the bombing campaign.....it is what happens when the use of military power is separated from crisp, strategic analysis in the name of humanitarianism. Not only has the military action not achieved control over the humanitarian situation, but also the unintended, yet foreseeable, consequences are piling up....."

AP 5/9/99 "...Scores of demonstrators broke into a NATO communications facility in northern Greece in renewed protests against the alliance's bombing in Yugoslavia. Shouting anti-American slogans, the protesters broke into an unused army base and damaged communications equipment stored at the base, near the northern port Salonica, local media said. There were no arrests, and the extent of the damage was not immediately clear. The air campaign has been widely condemned in NATO-member Greece, where attention is largely focused on the damage and deaths caused by the bombing and sympathy has grown for fellow Orthodox Christian Serbs...."

Reuters 5/9/99 Simon Gardner "...The West should forgive Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for alleged massacres in Kosovo but it is too late now for a diplomatic solution to the conflict, Tibet's exiled spiritual leader the Dalai Lama said on Sunday . And he saw no hope in the short-term of securing Tibet's autonomy from China, which forcibly annexed the Himalayan region some 50 years ago. He urged Western governments to give Tibet's push for self-rule more overt support...."

The Independent 5/10/99 Editorial Freeper Prince Charles "...In any war, the wrong targets are going to be hit and civilians are going to be killed, but in this war the misjudgements and mistakes just keep coming. "If there is one building in Belgrade we would like not to have hit, it was the Chinese embassy," a Foreign Office official admitted on Saturday. It is not simply a matter of faulty intelligence. The use of cluster bombs - which are designed to maximise casualties - in a residential area in Nis was a terrible mistake. The bombing of the Serbian television station likewise, and that was a quite deliberate target...."

Serbian Unity Congress Illinois Chapter http://www.suc.org/sucinfo/chapters/Chicago/ 5/9/99 A Whitewater Researcher "...The Illinois Chapter (http://www.suc.org/sucinfo/chapters/Chicago/) of the Serbian Unity Congress (http://www.suc.org/) led 2000 Serbian-American protesters through the streets of downtown Chicago this afternoon to protest Clinton's mindless bombing of the former Yugoslavia....The demonstrators stopped at the Consulate-General of the People's Republic of China, 100 West Erie, to take note of Clinton's bombing of the Communist Chinese Embassy in Belgrade....The demonstrators chanted "Clinton/Hitler"; "Clinton/Nazi"; "Hey, hey, USA, how many kids did you kill today?"; "Stop the bombing now"; "NATO/Fascists"; "NATO/Nazi"; "Stop bombing bridges"; and "Stop NATO aggression". Many demonstrators wore t-shirts which read "Anti-NATO; Anti-War '99"; "Target: Serbia"; "Kosovo=Vietnam"; and "Don't let our soldiers die for this". There were no negative reactions by onlookers to the demonstrators, and many passers-by fell in with the blocks-long column of demonstrators as it snaked through downtown Chicago...."

Athens News Agency 5/10/99 Freeper Ymani Cricket "...An organisation calling itself Red Line todau claimed responsibility for two ride-by shooting attacks against an American bank and an insurance company on main Athens thoroughfares earlier in the day...."

The International Strategic Studies Association 5/4/99 Press Statements Freeper Bayou City "...NATO forces, including the United States, have lost numerous aircraft and have already suffered significant loss-of-life among ground troops in the Yugoslavia conflict, according to a report published today by the journal which in 1994 predicted the Kosovo war. "Strategic Policy", the monthly journal of the "Defense & Foreign Affairs" division of the worldwide International Strategic Studies Association (ISSA), a non-govern- mental organization (NGO) for senior national security officials from some 165 countries, said that NATO forces may have lost, up until April 20, as many as 38 fixed-wing aircraft and six helicopters in the Kosovo conflict. As well, it said, as many as 50 NATO ground troops - officially not acknowledged even to be in the conflict - may have lost their lives..."

Reuters 5/10/99 Matt Pottinger Freper HAL9000 "...Fearing that angry Chinese students would storm the U.S. embassy in Beijing, Ambassador James Sasser said Monday he and key staff holed up in the building had scrambled to protect sensitive documents. His comments in an interview with Reuters indicated how seriously the U.S. embassy views the threat from demonstrators, who have smashed most of the windows of the building in furious protests at NATO's bombing of China's diplomatic mission in Belgrade...."

AFP via Babelfish 5/10/99 Freeper HAL9000 "...- the pope Jean Paul II was to meet Monday with 10H00 GMT in the Vatican the moderate head of the Albanians of Kosovo Ibrahim Rugova, one learned at Saint-Siège..."

Capitol Hill Blue (The Rant) 5/10/99 DOUG THOMPSON "....Let's see if we have this straight. A NATO pilot, flying the latest in sophisticated jet fighter technology, launching a missile guided by the most up-to-date guidance system that money can buy, struck a target in downtown Belgrade selected by an intelligence analyst using an out-of-date street map? That's pretty much the gist of it. The "faulty intelligence" cited by the U.S. in the bombing snafu that left the Chinese embassy in flames and at least four dead was, in fact, an old street map that was out-of-date. And, it turns out, the CIA had the wrong street address for the Chinese embassy anyway. At first glance, this latest screwup makes you wonder just when the Marx brothers took over the Kosovo war. But, when you think about it, you realize the clowns have been in charge all along.....To fully understand just how messed up this military operation is, consider this: the only public "heroes" of this conflict so far are three U.S. Army soldiers who got captured early in the conflict. They were captured because they forgot the GPS receiver that was supposed to tell them where they were in the world, got lost, and wondered into Yugoslavia. ..."

NY Times 5/10/99 AP "...Chanting ``NATO, NATO!'' angry Kosovo Albanians protested the alleged beating of two refugees today by Macedonian police and demanded that NATO take control of the refugee camp. U.N. refugee workers persuaded the estimated 2,000 ethnic Albanians to disperse after promising them that NATO representatives would meet at an undetermined time with a small refugee delegation to discuss their grievances..."

New York Times 5/10/99 AP "...The intended target in the air attack Friday was a military supply office. But due to faulty information provided by the CIA and reviewed by NATO and the Pentagon, the pilots mistakenly bombed the Chinese Embassy several hundred yards away, the U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Sunday. ``They went through all these hoops, but for whatever reason it was not detected,'' the official said. He said the CIA was reviewing its published and clandestine sources of information to determine how the mistake was made. Another U.S. official said outdated maps showing the Chinese Embassy in a different Belgrade locale played a role in the error but were not the direct cause. The embassy was relocated three or four years ago, and this official said the CIA has determined that the mistake was caused by an analytical misjudgment. It was unusual for the CIA to be involved in target planning in the air campaign, the U.S. official noted. More often that is the responsibility of NATO, the U.S. European Command or the Pentagon. The Chinese said three people, all journalists, were killed and 20 wounded in the attack. ...."

STRATFOR.com 5/10/99 "...1316 GMT, 990510 - Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro said Monday that NATO should halt its air raids against Yugoslavia. Scalfaro, who arrived in the Macedonian capital earlier in the day, told reporters, "it is necessary for the bombing to stop, because we are very worried to see that the raids are apparently moving away from military targets and are being directed towards civilian targets."..."

Stratfor 5/10/99 "...Germany and Italy, whose simmering opposition to the U.S. led NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia has been kept in check through the intense efforts of Washington, have finally said "Enough." The bombing campaign has not succeeded in stemming the humanitarian crisis in Kosovo. It has not brought Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to the negotiating table. And it is now plagued with an increasing number of incidents of collateral damage, including the bombing of the Chinese embassy. Italian President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro said that NATO should cease its bombing campaign, "because we are very worried to see that the raids are apparently moving away from military targets and are being directed towards civilian targets." Germany, meanwhile, has called NATO Secretary General Javier Solana to Bonn to meet with German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. Schroeder wishes to discuss with Solana the aftermath of the bombing of the Chinese embassy, and its impact on the air campaign and the diplomatic process....."

Russia Today 5/10/99 Reuters "....Russia's Kosovo envoy, Victor Chernomyrdin, said on Sunday he had ended weekend talks in Bonn by outlining "new circumstances" by telephone to an appreciative Slobodan Milosevic, the Yugoslav president. Chernomyrdin told reporters in Moscow that Milosevic had reacted positively to the new circumstances, which he did not disclose. "Well. He took them very well," Chernomyrdin said. Itar-Tass news agency quoted Chernomyrdin as saying the call with Milosevic, which he made from his car on the way to the airport in Germany after weekend talks there, had been positive. "I can say there are some encouraging results from the conversation with Milosevic, but I will not say anything yet," Tass quoted Chernomyrdin as saying. "There is serious work ahead to defuse the crisis around Yugoslavia. For that I need to be in Moscow now." ..."

Jane's Defence Weekly 5/10/99 Greg Seigle JDW Reporter "...Yugoslav Serb forces are using chemical weapons (CW) to drive ethnic Albanians from their Kosovo villages and defeat the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), recent reports indicate. NATO officials last week received a report from a doctor working with one of the humanitarian relief agencies who said he had treated five refugees with blistering burns that appear to have come from a CW attack, US Department of Defense (DoD) officials said. "We don't have independent intelligence about these incidents, but we do have reports from refugees that chemical agents have been used," DoD spokesman Ken Bacon said on 28 April...."

AFP via Babelfish 5/10/99 Freeper HAL9000 "...Kosovo "must be independent", affirmed Monday evening the moderate head of the Albanians of Kosovo, Ibrahim Rugova. " Kosovo must be independent like the other States of the area, like Croatia or Macedonia ", declared Mr. Rugova with the press after one taken care of prayer close to the religious community San' Egidio of Rome...."

ABC News on-line 5/9/99 Stacy Lu '...Enraged hackers apparently attacked the official Web site of the U.S. embassy in China yesterday, took over the Web sites of the Departments of Energy and the Interior today, and established their own online convention center at a site called "killusa." The Department of Interior Web site on Sunday showed pictures of the three Chinese journalists killed on Saturday when NATO accidentally bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. The Department of Energy site read "Protest USA's Nazi action." It was unclear whether the hacking was done by Chinese or not, though several messages on Chinese Web sites and message boards based in China claimed that it was...."

Reuters 5/9/99 "....The State Department Sunday suspended official travel to China by all government employees and urged other Americans to defer plans to visit, citing the ``volatile'' conditions sparked by the NATO bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade..... ``The Department of State strongly urges American citizens to defer travel to the PRC (People's Republic of China) until the situation stabilizes. U.S. citizens should remain in, or very close to, their homes or hotels, review their security practices, stay alert to the changing situation and avoid crowds and demonstrations,'' the statement said. The statement said there had been large-scale demonstrations, incidents of harassment of private Americans and damage to U.S. business in China since NATO mistakenly struck the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade Friday night during its ongoing air attacks against the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. The bombing killed four people and wounded more than 20. The U.S. ambassador to China warned Sunday that protests could ``spin out of control'' in Beijing, where angry demonstrators hurled rocks, concrete and a homemade firebomb...."

Electronic Telegraph 5/10/99 David Rennie and Hugo Gurdon ISSUE 1445 ".....MOBS bussed in by the authorities were still besieging the British and United States embassies in Beijing last night as Nato's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade threatened diplomatic efforts to end the Balkans conflict. Screaming slogans such as "Kill America", thousands of students and workers pelted the missions with stones or fire bombs and beat Western journalists and passers-by. Li Zhaoxing, the Chinese ambassador to Washington, expressed fury at the bombing and hinted that Beijing might retaliate with a Security Council veto of peace initiatives if "anyone tries to whitewash it [the bombing] as a mistake". China's reaction would "all depend" on its own investigation of the attack, which killed four Chinese, and which the ambassador linked to recent "false" allegations that Beijing's spies stole nuclear missile secrets from weapons laboratories in the United States. Beijing's response would be "in accordance with the charter of the United Nations", Mr Li said, adding: "The US-led Nato has violated the charter. I am watching. The Chinese people are watching. We are indignant. We are waiting for their response.".....The American and British ambassadors were trapped inside their missions by tens of thousands of marchers carrying Red Flags and banners reading "Nato=Nazis", "Down with American Imperialism" and "Clinton is Hitler". Crowds shouted "Get Out Nato" and, in a return to the language of the Cultural Revolution, "Death to American running dogs"....."

Washington Post 5/10/99 John Pomfret Michael Laris "...Today's protests in Beijing took on a harsher tone than demonstrations Saturday. An American reporter was hit with a rock, other Americans were threatened and one was rescued from an angry crowd by concerned protesters. "I want to kill Americans," shouted Li Guangqiao, a 25-year-old graduate student, as he marched toward the embassy. "Kill the big noses!" Attacks against U.S. diplomatic missions have already occurred in Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenyang. In the southwestern city of Chengdu, protesters burned the residence of the U.S. consul general and pelted the consulate with rocks. "This hasn't been seen in 10 years," said a police officer outside the embassy in Beijing. "The masses are huge, and it's incited people's nationalist feelings." Asked if the police could lose control of the situation, he answered: "Yes." Once the protesters snaked their way through the city to the front of the U.S. Embassy, demonstrators uprooted pavement slabs and hurled them at the embassy. They also tossed burning U.S. flags and flaming effigies over the compound's white iron gates, and launched three molotov cocktails. Several Chinese tried to scale the fence surrounding the building but they were pulled back by police. Protesters shouted: "Take down the flag!" Protesters have made four demands known: that U.S. flags be flown at half staff across the United States; that NATO immediately stop its bombing campaign in Yugoslavia; that the United States issue an open apology for the attack; and that NATO be dismantled. But today, the protesters seemed to want something more violent. "Don't get Chinese mad," said one. "Remember the Korean War!" when Chinese and American troops fought each other in the early 1950s.... Sasser said he had been assured by the Chinese Foreign Ministry that the police and the People's Armed Police would be responsible for the safety of U.S. diplomats. But "there were instances today when it was very questionable as to if they could hold back the mobs," he said. "We're fully prepared to evacuate if necessary," he said. Asked where the U.S. officials would go, he responded: "That's the $64,000 question."..."

London Daily Mirror 5/10/99 LT-GEN SIR RODERICK CORDY-SIMPSON "...We have not only destroyed their embassy but killed three of their people. In one fell swoop we have managed to alienate China and Russia, two key members of the UN Security Council. And for these two sensitive nations this could be one Nato mistake too many. It's very difficult to understand how on earth we made an error on such a massive scale. Apart from bombing the Russian Embassy, it's the worst thing we could have done. To be honest it beggars belief. The Serbian government building which was the real target is nearby but the two buildings don't look even remotely alike. Nato sources are claiming we were duped by a double agent. But it's incomprehensible, with the technological intelligence at Nato's disposal, from satellites to spies on the ground, that we didn't even bother to check a good old-fashioned map....Diplomatically we will have to pay a heavy price. We have a weakened Nato which may be forced into a hastily agreed partition of Kosovo. It will be everything we said we weren't prepared to negotiate and will leave Milosevic laughing in Nato's face...."

Reuters 5/10/99 "...In mistakenly targeting the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, U.S. intelligence officials were working from an outdated map issued before China built its diplomatic compound several years ago, the Washington Post reported Monday. "The tragic and embarrassing truth is that our maps simply did not show the Chinese Embassy anywhere in that vicinity,'' a senior NATO official told the Post. Quoting unidentified U.S. and NATO authorities, the newspaper said it was the CIA that initially misidentified the site, although there has been no explanation from the agency about how such an error could have occurred. At the same time, responsibility for the blunder was said to extend beyond the CIA, according to the Post. Describing a targeting process that has numerous levels of review built in, government officials said members of the Joint Staff, the U.S. European Command and NATO all signed off on the target after failing to detect that the address they were given was wrong. "They all have a variety of means of checking on a proposed target and none of them seemed to come up with an objection to this one,'' one official told the Post...."

South China Morning Post 5/10/99 "...A CNN reporter was struck by a demonstrator in Beijing. "An older man in the crowd hit me on the back of the head," Rebecca Mackinnon said. "He was going to go at me again but the students stopped him. People were shouting 'Beat her, kill her'," she said. Mackinnon said she was shaken but not seriously hurt. Several Western reporters were punched and kicked in Beijing. The US Embassy advised American nationals to get off the streets and the International School of Beijing said it was cancelling classes today...."

Washington Post 5/10/99 Bradley Graham and Steven Pearlstein "... The erroneous B-2 bomber attack, which dropped several satellite-guided bombs on the embassy, killing four people and injuring 20 others, marked the latest in about a dozen strikes that have gone awry during the 6 1/2 weeks that NATO has been pummeling Yugoslavia from the air. The mistakes have had varying causes, with no evidence of any pattern, officials said yesterday. But they all have involved U.S. aircraft. And while the incidents amount to only a minuscule percentage of the more than 18,000 combat missions flown and 9,000 bombs and missiles fired, NATO officials from several countries acknowledged that the succession of accidents is having a damaging effect on public confidence in some alliance countries. Gen. Wesley K. Clark, NATO's top military commander, yesterday reaffirmed his confidence in the target selection process. He termed the mistaken bombing of the Chinese embassy "an anomaly" and insisted the allied air campaign would continue to intensify, although there were no new attacks on sites in Belgrade yesterday. "We're not going to let an incident like this deter us from doing what we think is right and necessary," the four-star American general said on ABC's "This Week." He called NATO's effort "the most precise, effective and collateral damage-free air operation ever conducted." ...In a joint statement issued late Saturday, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen and CIA Director George J. Tenet acknowledged that "faulty information led to a mistake in the initial targeting" of the Chinese embassy. "In addition, the extensive process in place used to select and validate targets did not correct this original error." But the two officials concluded that "a review of our procedures has convinced us that this was an anomaly that is unlikely to occur again."..."

South China Morning Post 5/10/99 "...With estimates of participants nationwide at more than 400,000, it was the largest turnout of protesters since the pro-democracy crusade in the run-up to the Tiananmen Square crackdown. Diplomatic sources in Beijing said the protests would go on until Washington paid compensation, made a commitment to de-escalate the strikes and looked for a diplomatic solution..... Popular anger was also directed at US businesses. In eastern Nanjing, students staged a sit-down protest outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant and plastered posters on windows saying: "Strike the US economy." As bricks and blocks of concrete rained on the British Embassy, a man and his adolescent son weaved through the crowds carrying a sign that read: "We beseech President Jiang [Zemin] to declare war on the United States." ..."

South China Morning Post 5/10/99 WILLY WO-LAP LAM "...Sino-US ties could take a leap backwards if Washington does not take substantial action to mollify Beijing. Senior cadres, including Politburo Standing Committee members, who met in emergency sessions on Saturday and yesterday, have ordered an overall assessment of relations. A Beijing source said the "minimum requirements" set forth by relatively moderate cadres was that the US and Nato authorities issue a full apology, pay adequate compensation and allow China a bigger role in the resolution of the Balkans conflict. However, the hawks, including PLA generals, were pushing for more pressure to be applied to the US - and overall scaling down of relations - unless Nato agreed to halt hostilities against Yugoslavia. The hardliners, one of whose leaders was PLA Vice-Chief of Staff General Xiong Guangkai, have held meetings in which they insisted the embassy strike was a pre-meditated attempt to trample on Chinese sovereignty.... Foreign diplomats said that even if Washington and Nato were to meet some of Beijing's demands, a pall would still be cast over relations. "Many cadres think Kosovo heralds a new wave of 'neo-imperialism' which will cut into Chinese interests sooner or later," a Western diplomat said. "Beijing cannot live with Nato's ideal that humanitarianism is above national boundaries." A Beijing University expert said last night Nato had become a "military machine" that might one day use Tibet or Taiwan to interfere in Chinese affairs...."

WorldNetDaily 5/10/99 J.R. Nyquist "...Other reports indicate that the Chinese government is behind the protests, shipping demonstrators into the city, orchestrating their movements. Senator John McCain, R-Ariz., said on NBC's Meet the Press: "It is clear that the Chinese are orchestrating this for some political reason." What political reason could there be? Chinese Defense Minister Chi Haotian met last week with Cuban Defense Minister Raul Castro. What was discussed? Military cooperation between Cuba and China. Soon China will join Russia in having a strategic presence on Fidel Castro's communist island-stronghold. This would further complement the Chinese position in Panama, where Chinese-controlled front companies now operate the ports of entry on either side of the Panama Canal. Meanwhile, the Chinese Ocean Shipping Company (COSCO) continues its campaign to get operational control of the former Long Beach Naval Station. According to Timothy Maier, writing for Insight magazine, if the Chinese fail to get the Long Beach facility, they will attempt to get a base in Los Angeles. The idea, as in Panama, is for Chinese front companies to operate their own port facilities. Concerned U.S. intelligence experts say that Chinese control of a U.S. mainland port could create a "national security nightmare." In fact, the Chinese Ocean Shipping Company has already been linked with heroin and arms smuggling into the United States.... Anyone acquainted with recent Chinese moves should not be surprised at China's furious anti-American outburst. This outburst is, to a large extent, contrived. Everyone knows the NATO attack was an accident. President Clinton has apologized for it again and again. But the Chinese propaganda machine will not admit any accidents. Any close observation of China's strategic behavior reveals a war psychology at work behind the scenes. And before you can have a war, you must demonize your enemy, mobilize the hearts and minds of your people -- especially to justify your own actions, which might well include the unleashing of nuclear weapons.....Therefore, the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade was a lucky hit -- for the Russian-Chinese alliance. In Russia, popular outrage against America has reached such an extreme that tourists dare not speak English on the Moscow subway. People have been roughed-up for reading English language newspapers. Hundreds of thousands of Russians have gone into uniform. A colossal military mobilization is underway. Slavic brotherhood has been extolled by the presidents of Belarus and Ukraine, showing that solidarity yet exists between former Soviet republics. Meanwhile, Russian officials have been openly worrying about the approach of World War III. Last week Russian President Boris Yeltsin commented on the possibility of an accidental nuclear war, saying: "Just let Clinton, a little bit, accidentally, send a missile. We'll answer immediately. ..."

NY Times 5/10/99 AP "...China broke off talks on human rights and arms control with the United States today, and waves of demonstrators hurled stones at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing for a third day to protest NATO's bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Yugoslavia. The government also demanded that U.S. officials apologize for the NATO bombing, investigate the attack and punish those responsible. Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan issued the demands to U.S. Ambassador James Sasser, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported..... Instead of halting the violence, police orchestrated the protest, directing the demonstrators past the U.S. and British embassies. Police also blocked nearby streets and ordered foreign reporters away from corners where they could see the embassy...... China suspended diplomatic relations regarding human rights, arms control and international security, Xinhua said, citing Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhu Bangzao. The suspension affected areas of key interest to the United States, including concerns that China has provided nuclear weapons or missile technology to Pakistan, Iran or other countries....."

USA Today 5/10/99 Editorial "...China's ambassador to the U.S. said Sunday, after mentioning the deaths of three Chinese and calling for an investigation, that he's piqued that Washington has accused China of nuclear spying and human-rights violations. In China, the manipulation is less subtle. U.S. diplomats deliberately are being spooked. Crassly, state TV isn't informing the public that Washington apologized or that the bombing was an accident. Students, once starry-eyed about the U.S., are angry and confused. The propaganda is helped by the White House's failure to find a way to take its apology to the Chinese people directly. The U.S. ambassador apologized in private to officials, who had no wish to pass the condolences on....."

XINHUA 5/10/99 "...China's foremost newspaper, the People's Daily, has lashed out at the U.S.-led NATO as the archcriminal of the ongoing humanitarian disasters in Yugoslavia and called on the international courts to bring it to justice. The U.S.-led NATO outrageously attacked the Chinese embassy in Yugoslavia with missiles on May 7, killing three Chinese journalists and injuring more than 20 Chinese diplomatic functionaries. "This is a rare barbaric crime in the history of international relations. The inhuman atrocity of trampling on the international law has incited extreme indignation in the Chinese people and strong condemnation from the international community," said the newspaper in a commentary to be published Tuesday. The commentary, entitled "Archcriminal of Humanitarian Disasters", said that amidst denunciations and condemnations, NATO was still going ahead with its violent bombardment of Yugoslavia...."

Stratfor 5/11/99 "...1935 GMT, 990511 ... The U.S. and U.K. are trying to create a split inside of Serbia by holding open the possibility that the fall of Milosevic would mean the inclusion of Serbia in the western alliance system, with all the economic and political benefits deriving from that status. The intention is reasonable, but the probability of success is low, as Blair and Albright undoubtedly know. What they may not be aware of is that the campaign plays directly into Milosevic's hands by confirming one of the prevailing theories about the origins of the war, at least in Serbia. According to this theory, NATO's hostility to Serbia was that it alone, among all the countries of Europe, was neither a member of NATO, nor on any list to become a member of NATO and had no interest in becoming a member of NATO. According to this Serbian theory, Serbia's independence from NATO was absolutely intolerable to NATO, which has waged a campaign for over five years designed to bring down Milosevic and thereby liquidate the last pocket of resistance to NATO in Europe..."

The Nation 5/24/99 Stephen Cohen "....It is imperative to focus on the essential reason Americans must unequivocally oppose the US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. There are, of course, many reasons--the five-week campaign having utterly failed in all of its declared purposes. But for all its other failings, the US-led bombing must be opposed first and foremost because it is a moral outrage. By so greatly increasing the number of Kosovar victims and by having done so recklessly without any precautionary steps to help them, the initiators of the air war have compounded Milosevic's evil deeds and thus made the United States deeply complicit in them. Still more, the bombing and missile attacks are growing into an all-out assault on the economic and other civilian underpinnings of Yugoslav society. NATO sorties are literally demodernizing Serbia. Two or three decades of its economic development--the foundation of the elementary well-being of ordinary men, women and children--have already been destroyed....The Clinton Administration bombers and their apologists must not be allowed to represent the rest of us. They have imposed a moral barricade on the soul of America, and to that barricade Americans must go in moral opposition. The pulverizers' purported morality rests primarily on a fraudulent analogy--equating Serbian treatment of Kosovar Albanians with the Nazi extermination of Jews....."

Australian Broadcasting Corporation 5/11/99 HAL9000 "...Flags at the US embassy in Beijing and at its consulates throughout China will be lowered to half-mast when the ashes of the three victims of the NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade return to Beijing...."

THE WASHINGTON TIMES 5/11/99 Bill Gertz Freeper sunshine "...The Albanian government is stepping up support for Kosovar rebels by providing training and military officers for the Kosovo Liberation Army, according to Pentagon intelligence officials....Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon declined to comment when asked about the attache's report from Tirana.....NATO and Pentagon spokesmen have said the alliance's military attacks have not made it "the Air Force for the KLA," although they have acknowledged that the bombing does benefit the rebels' battle against the Serbs...."

New York Post 5/11/99 "...The accidental bombing of China's embassy in Belgrade - based on an outdated map provided to NATO by the CIA - says it all about the way the Clinton administration has bungled its military campaign against Slobodan Milosevic. From the outset, Clinton and his top military and diplomatic advisers have approached this campaign with a tentativeness that is profoundly disheartening and a level of incompetence that is downright astonishing. Unable or unwilling to clearly articulate his specific goals against Milosevic, Clinton has shown that merely having the title of commander in chief does not bestow a president with either military knowledge or moral authority..... A man who dodged the draft and declared that he ''loathed'' the military is now boasting about how he's picking out specific targets. And his top advisers - the secretaries of state and defense, the national securityadviser - are all lacking in personal military experience..... The embassy bombing, which follows a series of accidental NATO attacks on non-military targets, is a perfect example. No one can guarantee that civilians won't die in a war. But there is also no excuse for a breakdown in military intelligence so breathtaking in its sloppiness. Until a few weeks ago, after all, Belgrade was an open city. If, as the White House maintains, this operation was months in preparation, it should have been no problem to properly identify all the targets in Milosevic's capital. Yet somehow we bomb the Chinese embassy - less than one month, by the way, after the White House managed to publicly and thoroughly embarrass Chinese Prime Minister Zhu Rongji, arguably the most pro-Western official in the Beijing government...."

Boston Globe 5/11/99 Charles A. Radin Freeper canuck1 "...Ra'anan said the use of the refugees to justify policy is blocking Congress and the media from attempting unsentimental appraisals of how the campaign against Milosevic's forces is going, and whether the assumptions on which the assault on Yugoslavia was launched remain valid. He particularly bristled at assertions by defenders of the policy equating events in Kosovo with the genocides in Rwanda and Cambodia, or suggesting a similarity to the Holocaust. ''The people who are using this know it is absurd nonsense,'' he said of the analogy. ..."

Washington Times 5/11/99 Bill Sammon "...President Clinton said questions about his trustworthiness and credibility have not hindered his ability to run the Kosovo war but acknowledged his lack of military service has forced him to spend "major, major chunks of time . . . learning about how the military works." ....."The American people made clear in the election in 1998 who they trusted," Mr. Clinton said. "They want their lives and their children and their future and their national interest put first....."When we started it, I never thought it would be a three-day wonder," Mr. Clinton said. "I have always been -- relaxed is the wrong word -- but patient about the timetable. And I'm looking forward, frankly, to May and June and July, where the weather is much clearer and we'll be freer to pursue our strategy."..."

AP World 5/12/99 Greg Myre "...Yugoslav troops fighting ethnic Albanian rebels swept over the border into Albania in one of their deepest incursions yet from Kosovo, international observers reported today.....``The conflict is not going to be sent into Albania,'' Solana said. ``I want to reassure the people of this country that NATO will not tolerate any action against this country stemming from the presence of NATO forces.'' ....Witnesses also say a crashed Yugoslav MiG fighter, which was reportedly downed Tuesday at the height of the fighting, is on the Albanian side of the border near the village of Padesh, a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said...."

The Strategic Studies Association 4/18-21/99 "...The International Strategic Studies Association organized a fact-finding mission from Washington DC to Yugoslavia on April 18-21, 1999. The purpose was for the Association and a key US Congressman to determine to a greater extent factors important to future policymaking with regard to the war being prosecuted against Yugoslavia. ISSA worked with a Yugoslav NGO, the Institute for Geopolitical Studies, in facilitating the mission... 1. The Flow of Refugees: The international media, because it is largely on the external borders of Yugoslavia, has seen only the flow of refugees out of the country, to Albania and Macedonia. However, some one-third of the Albanian Yugoslav and other ethnic group refugees appear, in fact, to be fleeing further into Serbia, to avoid the Kosovo Liberation Army. Yugoslavia has already been burdened since 1992 with almost one-million refugees from Bosnian Serb areas and Croatian Serb areas, as well as Croatians and Muslims fleeing into Serbia-proper from what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina and Croatia. ....4. We saw extensive destruction of civilian targets, many of which could not be justified by NATO as military targets nor vital to the maintenance of a Yugoslav strategic power base. Given the widespread damage to these purely civilian targets which we saw, including the direct destruction of homes, it is not difficult to believe the claims of the Yugoslav Government that some 400,000 to a half-million people have been thrown out of work because of the destruction of their workplaces. This means that some 2-million Yugoslavs of all ethnic origins are without income, out of a population of some 10+-million people. 5. Justification for bombing civilian targets has now been given that these facilities were owned by relatives of President Milosevic, but the vast majority of these factories were either State-owned, privately-owned by non-Milosevic family members or, for the greater part, owned jointly by the State and by the workforces of the various factories. As a result, this has directly contributed to an attack on the average Yugoslav family.....

UPI 5/12/99 SID BALMAN Jr. "...The United States and its NATO allies are scrambling to stop the leakage of support for the war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and their diplomatic approach to resolving a conflict that has stretched on far longer than expected. NATO officials concede that some "hand holding" was necessary this week to maintain Greek and Italian support for continuing the air strikes in the wake of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, which the Clinton administration said was the result of inaccurate targeting information from the CIA...But Russia's position has shifted since NATO's tragic mistake in Belgrade, which took the lives of three Chinese journalists in the embassy. Moscow has joined Security Council member China in demanding the air strikes stop before any further consideration of a resolution, an approach NATO has so far flatly rejected...."

The Times-UK May 12, 199 "...The diplomatic consequences of the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade might in time be contained; the political fallout may not. A single crass mistake has compounded the already growing public unease that the conduct of this war is fundamentally unserious. Nato is floundering; and this is not because the Alliance cannot prevail against Slobodan Milosevic, a vastly inferior adversary, but because of the crippling constraints laid on its commanders by their political masters...."

USA Today 5/11/99 Jack Kelley and Barbara Slavin "...As Serb forces continue the wholesale destruction of Kosovo, refugees and Western governments are already thinking about what it will take to rebuild. From Mitrovica in the north to Prizren in the south, refugees say, homes have been burned beyond repair. Nearly 500 of the 800 major villages and towns in Kosovo have been partly or completely destroyed by the Serbs since February 1998, 200 of them in April alone, according to NATO spokesman Jamie Shea...."

USA Today 5/12/99 Freeper Stand Watch Listen "...Five days after the foolish bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, Washington is rife with bureaucratic excuses. The people who make target maps suffer from low morale and are mistake-prone, say some. The CIA director isn't given enough power, say others. Most oddly, some senators who oversee the CIA say the tragic bombing occurred because the intelligence community needs more money. How about another 35 cents? That would have paid for the tragically missing phone call between a CIA analyst and a government mapmaker to double-check an address. Beyond that, no amount of money could fix the sloppy procedure that led to the bombing...."

The Nation 5/24/99 Stephen F. Cohen Freeper Stand Watch Listen "...The Clinton Administration bombers and their apologists must not be allowed to represent the rest of us. They have imposed a moral barricade on the soul of America, and to that barricade Americans must go in moral opposition. The pulverizers' purported morality rests primarily on a fraudulent analogy--equating Serbian treatment of Kosovar Albanians with the Nazi extermination of Jews. The analogy wantonly debases the historical reality and memory of the Holocaust: Milosevic's reign of terror has turned most Kosovars into refugees fleeing toward sanctuaries; Hitler gave most European Jews no exit and turned them into ash. And even given Milosevic's real atrocities, what has become of the American ethical axiom, Two wrongs don't make a right? Or the central moral lesson of this awful political century, that ends do not justify means? ..."

5/12/99 Xinhua Freeper Thanatos via NewsEdge Corporation "...The Russian State Duma on Wednesday passed a resolution on establishing a commission to study and sum up information on crimes committed by NATO during its air campaign against Yugoslavia. The 450-seat lower house of parliament approved the measure by 309 votes, the Itar-Tass news agency reported. The resolution said that the aggression must be considered a military crime, and that NATO leaders must be punished...."

5/12/99 Xinhua Freeper Thanatos via NewsEdge Corporation "...China's leading newspaper, the People's Daily, has accused the U.S.-led NATO strikes against the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade as brutal infringement upon China's sovereignty and national dignity, and a serious threat to world peace and security. In a commentary entitled "Serious Threat to World Peace" to be published Wednesday, the paper pointed out that the lunatic U.S.- led NATO strikes against the Chinese Embassy have shocked the whole world and ignited wide-spread condemnation and indignation among the world people. Quoting Chinese President Jiang Zemin as saying, "The U.S.-led NATO must bear full responsibility for the atrocity, or the Chinese people will not leave the matter at that," the paper pointed out that any prevarication such as "mistaken bombing" or " accident" can never be accepted...."

5/12/99 Nando Media/AP Freeper Thanatos "...Yugoslav troops fighting ethnic Albanian rebels swept over the border into Albania in one of their deepest incursions yet from Kosovo, international observers reported Wednesday. Witnesses also say a crashed Yugoslav MiG fighter, which was reportedly downed Tuesday at the height of the fighting, is on the Albanian side of the border near the village of Padesh, a spokesman for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe said. The area is too dangerous to approach the plane, and there was no word on the fate of its crew. Fighting between Yugoslav forces and the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army raged all Tuesday well into nightfall...."

Stratfor 5/12/99 "...Operation Allied Force, by comparison, is arguably the Internet war. Besides the web sites of news networks like MSNBC and CNN, and the official sites of NATO, NATO member governments and militaries, and the Yugoslav government, military, and media, scores of pro-Serbian and pro-Albanian sites are providing minute by minute coverage of the conflict. Admittedly, STRATFOR, too, is expanding its reputation and recognition through its coverage of the conflict. But given the significance of this medium, the conflict is apparently spilling over onto the Internet itself. Early in Operation Allied Force, Serbs and their supporters effectively shut down the official NATO web site with denial of service attacks, pinging the site repeatedly to tie up access. The pro-Serb web site beograd.com recently reported that the Internet advertising agency Ad Club Network had broken its contract with the site, after an organized Albanian campaign put pressure on Ad Club Network's advertisers. Today, the pro-Serb site beonet.yu alleged that the U.S. government was ordering satellite service providers to shut down service to Internet providers in Yugoslavia. ...."

Stratfor 5/13/99 "...0010 GMT, 990513 - Primakov's fall is bad news for Milosevic. As we have argued from the beginning, Milosevic's decision not to capitulate to NATO bombing was, to a great extent, predicated on Russian support. Milosevic's sense was that with Primakov and Ivanov in charge Serbia could not be completely isolated by the West. ...Suddenly, Milosevic must face the fact that the hints may be turning into a policy. It is possible that this has been the rationale for NATO's continuation of the war. By most reads, the bombing campaign has not been successful. Stubborn continuation of the bombing appeared to us and to others as irrational. However, assuming that NATO and Washington had intelligence that Yeltsin was planning to oust Primakov, an interesting assumption given that Strobe Talbott was in Moscow as Yeltsin's strike took place, Washington might have been waiting for just this moment. There is now a proposal on the plate and Milosevic must decide what he is going to do, without the warmest support Russia has to offer. It has to be remembered that NATO cannot regard this as a permanent shift. In fact it may be a very small window of opportunity. Primakov's ouster will raise the furies in the Duma, and a very serious move is underway to impeach Yeltsin. Should Yeltsin have to change course again, Serbia might shortly find more friendly faces in Moscow. Therefore, NATO needs to end the war now...."

STRATFOR 5/14/99 "...0105 GMT, 990514 - Loral Space and Communications Ltd. of New York said that it might be forced to cut satellite service to Yugoslavia. Loral satellite service supports at least two of Yugoslavia's major Internet service providers (ISP). Rumors have circulated that an executive order signed by President Bill Clinton banning the sale of goods and services to Yugoslavia might be applied to Internet service. Loral is still seeking guidance from the U.S. Treasury Department. Spokeswoman for the company, Jeannette Colnan said, "We're still not clear on this whole thing. It depends on the interpretation of the executive order." Neither the White House nor the Treasury Department has responded to inquiries on the issue. State Department spokesman James Rubin said that he had no information on the subject.

Toronto Sun 5/13/99 Peter Worthington "...Dare I mention the unmentionable? That after 50 days of air strikes, Kosovo is losing its news appeal - unless another embassy or refugee train is hit. It's increasingly clear that the Russians are the best hope of saving face - not for Milosevic, but for NATO and Bill Clinton and the "me too" allies. Whatever the terms of the eventual ceasefire, NATO and the West have already lost. It's their own damn fault. Remember, Clinton and his secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, were convinced Milosevic and the Serbs would buckle in two days, after the first "boom"...Defending your own country doesn't work that way. No matter what Milosevic eventually agrees to, reality is that twice as many ethnic Albanians have left Kosovo as remain in it. The province has been pretty well "cleansed." Which was Slobo's goal....."

Stratfor 5/13/99 "...1517 GMT, 990513 - NBC News is reporting that a plan has been in the works for weeks to put thousands of ground troops in Kosovo in what could be a hostile environment. The plan would call for 16,000 heavily armed Marines with tanks and armored personnel carriers. They would constitute first wave of any peacekeeping force and would not be sent into Kosovo until Yugoslav forces started to withdraw and there was a cease-fire. Beograd.com is reporting that this would include the entirety of the 2nd Marine Division....."

Stratfor 5/13/99 "...1810 GMT, 990513 Walter Stuetzle told reporters that an investigation into NATO's bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade is not yet complete. Furthermore, Germany is not totally convinced that an outdated map is to blame for the mistaken attack on the embassy. An article due to be published tomorrow in the Berliner Morgenpost quotes a senior NATO official as saying that Germany has evidence that the position of the Chinese embassy was correctly marked on maps used to make the strike on Yugoslavia last week. The article adds that there is speculation that NATO might have been tricked into attacking the embassy, but adds no further details....'

BBC 5/13/99 Caroline Wyatt Freeper Fulbright "...Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has reportedly threatened to resign if the pacifists push through a motion demanding a unilateral, indefinite and unconditional NATO ceasefire - a move which could bring down Germany's governing coalition...."

Freeper FISHHOG analysis 5/13/99 "...According to NATO there were three -- NO, there was only one smart bomb that hit the Chinese Embassy by mistake because it missed a building across the street that houses the "Federal Supply and Procurement Office" -- NO, that wasn't the problem. The missiles (because we're back to three missiles again) didn't miss -- they hit right on target except it turned out the target was all wrong, t wasn't the Federal Supply and Procurement Office at all, it was the Chinese Embassy and somehow the targeteers got it all confused but one thing is definite: the mix-up was not the result of using old maps. But that's not right either because if a target is important a great deal of care is taken, and given that this was such an important target, even more care would be taken to make sure it really was the a) Federal Directory for the Supply and Procurement and NO, that should be the b) Weapons Warehouse of the Federal Directorate for Supply and Procurement, NO, that isn't right either it wasn't just a warehouse, it was the c) HEADQUARTERS of the Directorate and - NO! Forget everything I've said so far. It was the maps. The maps were very old so you couldn't tell that the building on that site was an Embassy. And there were three missiles, of course -- who ever said anything about there only being one? ....This writer has just spoken to a Serbian gentlemen whose family lives a few blocks from the Embassy. He says the Embassy was built 4 or 5 years ago and that prior to the building of the Embassy, the only thing there was: a park. A park: tress and grass... Therefore the notion that NATO could possess a map drawn before the Chinese Embassy was built which showed any building occupying the land on which the Embassy now stands is simply impossible. There was nothing there but trees and grass. Therefore NATO is lying. And since NATO is lying, we are left with the Chinese gentleman's explanation. It is the only one that makes sense. NATO deliberately blew up three apartments inhabited by Chinese journalists in the Chinese Embassy. This was a high-tech execution. What will NATO do next? ..."

New York Times 5/13/99 Steven Erlanger Freeper Lonnie "...But there are foreign journalists based in Pristina, nearly all of them Greek. Even though Greece is a NATO member, it makes little secret of its pro-Serb orientation, and the Greeks have been quickest to provide needed relief assistance -- both medicine and food -- to the Serbs and Albanians who are living in Kosovo. There are also a Turkish journalist, who largely covers the Turkish minority in Kosovo; various Serbian journalists who work for the Serbian media or for Western news agencies, and one Canadian, Paul Watson of The Los Angeles Times. Watson managed to drive back to Pristina after having been expelled, with other Western journalists, in March. Having shown up at the dreary Grand Hotel in the midst of chaos, his car was stolen or confiscated. So Serbian officials let him stay, said Milivoje Mihajlovic of the Media Center, based at the Grand, mostly because they had no car or gasoline with which to expel him again...."

Yahoo! News Top Stories Headlines Reuters 5/12/99 "...U.S. congressional negotiators agreed late Wednesday to free up $11.7 billion to finance the air war against Yugoslavia, aid ethnic Albanian refugees and boost America's military preparedness -- nearly double the amount requested by President Clinton. The compromise between House of Representatives and Senate negotiators also would provide $1 billion for hurricane-battered Central America, $100 million for Middle East ally Jordan, and hundreds of millions of dollars more for struggling U.S. farmers. Brushing aside a White House veto threat, negotiators approved a provision to bar the federal government from taking a share of the U.S. states' $200 billion-plus settlement with tobacco companies. They also agreed to set up a $1 billion loan guarantee program for financially troubled steel companies, as proposed by Sen. Robert Byrd, a West Virginia Democrat. Those and other controversial and costly provisions that had nothing to do with the nation's defenses bogged down negotiations, preventing House and Senate negotiators from finishing work on the emergency spending bill...."

Chicago Tribune 5/13/99 Michael Kilian "...More than a month after NATO urgently requested U.S. Army Apache attack helicopters for action in the Kosovo conflict, the alliance announced Wednesday that the heavily armed gunships were poised to go into combat against Serbian ground forces. For weeks, NATO and Pentagon officials have been publicizing the imminent introduction into battle of 24 helicopters in the U.S. Task Force Hawk Apache, only to face repeated delays and embarrassing setbacks.....Rather than shooting laser-guided smart bombs at Serbian ground targets from 15,000 feet, as conventional NATO aircraft have done, the A-64 Apaches are designed to operate at treetop level, seeking hidden enemy tanks and armored personnel carriers and destroying them with powerful, flying artillery. The helicopters' high-tech weapons are capable of destroying 95 enemy tanks four miles away, at night in a single engagement lasting only a few minutes....."

The Independent 5/14/99 "…Living conditions are so bad now for civilians trapped in the mountains of southern Kosovo that the rebels are encouraging them to seek refuge in Albania rather than stay in their homeland. Soldiers of the Kosovo Liberation Army and civilians alike are subsisting on bread, potatoes and the meat of livestock roaming wild, with the milk of cows and goats set aside for children and babies. They are living in huts made of branches and covered with tarpaulins, or out in the open, sleeping on piles of grass….According to the military journal Jane's Defence Weekly, claims by the Serbs that they have defeated the KLA are close to the truth. Jane's says the KLA has only about 4,000 fighters still left in Kosovo penned into three small areas. Most of its force of 20,000 have fled to Albania…."

Reuters (via Drudge) 5/14/99 "...CNN Friday broadcast a video apparently showing the aftermath of a Serb massacre of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo last month which had previously been reported by NATO. Kosovo journalist Liri Loshi, who made the video, told CNN that 127 ethnic Albanians, all of them men, were killed in the massacre in the village of Izbica on March 28....

MSNBC 5/14/99 "...This town in southwestern Kosovo on Friday was the scene of charred bodies and terrorized ethnic Albanians - victims, Belgrade claimed, of NATO bombing overnight that left some 100 dead. NATO and U.S. officials would only say an investigation had begun, but privately some told NBC News that they feared the Yugoslav charge was accurate because of news accounts and TV footage from the scene. PEOPLE IN Korisa said nearly 700 refugees had just emerged from 10 days of hiding in nearby woods and decided to spend the night on their tractor-pulled trailers, which were clustered together between a road and the village. "We decided to spend the night here. Some time around midnight, they bombed us from their warplanes ... It was a horror," said Dostan Rexhaj. "Many people burned up instantly." "We still can't collect all the bodies," he added. "They are all around the place - in the fields and nearby farms. ... I am convinced that more than 150 have been killed." Rexhaj's son-in-law, Hasan Ahmetaj, said that "many of the children burned in the flames. I don't know what happened to my two sons and their families."

"I had seven grandchildren," he added. "The youngest one was only a year old, the eldest would have been 10 next autumn. I have been left alone like a mountain eagle to spend my remaining days here." ....Moreover, said one U.S. official, "despite all their other lies, the Serbs have been fairly accurate" in describing NATO's bombing mistakes. NBC's Jim Miklaszewski reported that the sources felt a mistaken NATO strike "probably" happened. NATO spokesman Jamie Shea promised the "full story ... full facts" - and an admission of wrongdoing if an investigation shows NATO warplanes made an errant airstrike...."

The Indian Express 5/14/99 Stephen Abbott "...The recent announcement of Yugoslavia's leadership that they have begun a partial withdrawal from Kosovo was met with an immediate denounciation from NATO. Officials of the newly-aggressive military organization stated that it "wasn't enough", and even called into question whether it was "real", saying that it was simply a few busloads of soldiers being paraded back to Belgrade for the media's benefit. What isn't real, and is in fact surreal, is the ongoing, uncritical reaction of the western media to this and other Kosovo-related stories. With hardly any tough questioning from reporters, everything NATO spokesmen say seems to be given the status of scripture, and is rarely questioned....What isn't making the news is the Serbian side of the equation, and there is more to this side than simply some quaint 19th century romantic "mythical" attachment to Kosovo. The issue runs far deeper than that, and NATO's use of brute force against Yugoslavia has greater and more complicated consequences, for both NATO and the world community of nations, than the media are letting us know...."

United Press International 5/14/99 Freeper Jai "...Russia's mediation efforts in the Yugoslav crisis are intensifying despite warnings from Moscow earlier this week that a pullout from the negotiating process could not be excluded. In a new initiative extending Moscow's diplomatic offensive, President Boris Yeltsin ordered his deputy chief of staff Sergei Prikhodko to travel to New Delhi to discuss the Yugoslav situation with Indian officials . . ."

Washington Times 5/14/99 Bill Gertz "...Russia's government has ordered high-ranking military officers to sever all ties to Western military officials in Moscow, prompting what a senior defense official called a "return to the Cold War." Army Brig. Gen. Keith Dayton, the top U.S. defense attache in Moscow, stated in an April 29 intelligence report that the Russian anti-spying measure was partly due to NATO's military bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, which Russia opposes. Details of the report come from high-ranking Pentagon officials who have seen the document and Thursday revealed its contents to The Washington Times. An aide to Gen. Dayton, who was reached by phone in Moscow, said the one-star general was not available to comment on his report...However, one ranking U.S. official who saw the report said, "The feeling [among Russians] is that if NATO bombs Serbia to help the Kosovars, it might bomb Russia to help the Chechens." Russian military forces invaded the southern Muslim enclave of Chechnya in 1994....Rep. Curt Weldon, a Pennsylvania Republican who has frequent contacts with Russian parliamentarians, called Gen. Dayton's report disturbing and "very scary." In an interview, he said, "It's not a good sign and is an indication things are getting worse." Russian sentiment against the United States is growing as a result of the NATO bombing, and many in the Russian government who favor democratic reforms are being pushed aside by anti-U.S. communists and nationalists, the representative said...."

Freeper Thanatos 5/14/99 AFP "...Visiting moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova on Friday said the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was an "extremist" organization. "I am the leader of the Albanians of Kosovo in exil; as such I enjoy the support of people in the camps currently in Macedonia and Albania," said Rugova in an interview with Channel 4 television. But he added: "There is at the moment an extremist group who keeps criticizing me and that is regrettable," in a reference to the KLA...."

Reuters 5/14/99 Philippa Fletcher "...At least 100 ethnic Albanians were killed and scores injured when NATO missiles tore into a village in southwest Kosovo during the night, survivors and Serbian civil defense officials said Friday. NATO said it was investigating the report which, if confirmed, would mark the Western alliance's deadliest error so far in its 52-day-old campaign of air strikes on Yugoslavia. The Civil Defense Information Center in the Kosovo regional capital Pristina reported that 100 people died and some 50 were injured in the attack, but said the toll was expected to rise. Reporters reaching the village of Korisa, 70 kms (45 miles) southwest of the Kosovo capital Pristina, saw scenes of devastation, with dismembered bodies scattered around, several badly charred and some with smoke rising from them. Survivor Fehmi Ahmeta said the village was packed with some 500 refugees on their way home after hiding in the woods when it was hit by six missiles shortly before midnight...."

The Hindustan Times 5/15/99 "... THE UNITED STATES President Clinton yesterday acknowledged the error of his own previous conceptions about the Balkans when he laid out the rationale for the allied intervention over the Kosovo crisis. He was addressing a veterans group here. Referring to the theory that ethnic conflicts in the Balkans are the inevitable result of centuries-old animosities, Clinton admitted: "I myself have been guilty of saying that on an occasion or two and I regret it now, more than I can say." Asserting that such a theory was a gross over-simplification and misreading of history, the President pointed out that for centuries the various ethnic groups had lived together in the Balkans and southeastern Europe "with greater or lesser degree of tensions, but often without anything approaching the intolerable conditions and conflicts that exist today."...."

The Village Voice 5/12-18/99 Nat Hentoff "...Even after American military involvement in Vietnam increased, it took a considerable amount of time before most Americans had a clear, vivid sense of the killing and other atrocities there-on both sides. But in 1999, at the very beginning of the bombing to "save" the people of Kosovo from ethnic cleansing (George Orwell should be alive), there has been no escaping the daily and indeed hourly news of the results of that calamitous rescue operation. Death rains not only on the ethnic Albanians being "cleansed," but also on civilians in Yugoslavia and even Bulgaria. None of us can say we do not know what is going on in terms of rampant violations of the most fundamental human rights. But there will be additional devastating effects from the great NATO adventure that generals Bill Clinton and Tony Blair are commanding. Already, as The Nation reported in its May 10 issue, "There are credible reports from Belgrade of NATO strikes on petrochemical plants, as well as in the vicinity of a nuclear power plant. And both Britain and the United States include in their Yugoslav war arsenal depleted uranium weapons, which have been linked to leukemia and birth defects in the Persian Gulf region since Desert Storm." These environmental degradations know no borders, as the Serbs say..."

The American Spectator 5/14/99 R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. "...Last month Our Wartime President bombed Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Bulgaria. Earlier he had bombed Afghanistan and the Sudan. The bombing of Bulgaria was an accident. Our forces were aiming at Belgrade and hit Sofia. As progressives in Congress are wont to say, "So what!" Also last month, Our Wartime President became the first American president to lose the "football," the attaché case containing the country's nuclear launch codes... Finally just last week Our Wartime President bombed China's embassy in Belgrade, despite that country's generous support for his 1996 presidential campaign. Charlie Chaplin at the height of his comic powers could not have imagined such rich material....... So let us pause to put Bill Clinton's Balkan War into historic perspective. The United States has never fought a more stupid war. It has never bungled its way into a war more artlessly. It has never relied on a more dubious strategy. And it has never failed in its goals so rapidly. The homeless Kosovars will soon be hating us as intensely as they hate their erstwhile Serb neighbors. Though many of us Clinton critics predicted that foreign affairs would reveal the forty-second president for the humbug that he is, I doubt that any of us could have envisaged the full calamity that the Boy President has visited on the Balkans. ...."

5/14/99 UPI Freeper Thanatos "...NATO is using radioactive bullets to penetrate the heavy armor on tanks and artillery pieces stationed throughout Kosovo, NATO and Pentagon spokesmen have acknowledged. The military need for such weapons is real, but the long-term health effects remain a relative mystery. A-10 "warthogs," the Air Force's premier tank-killer, are loaded with 30mm rounds of which one in four is depleted uranium. DU is twice as strong as steel, ignites on penetration and actually gets sharper as it moves through armor. This makes it ideal for destroying enemy artillery. Apache helicopters, M-1 Abrams and Bradley tanks also carry the rounds...."

Stratfor 5/14/99 "...The Pentagon is revising its plans for a peacekeeping force to be deployed in Kosovo once the fighting ends, because Clinton administration officials have concluded the original estimate of 28,000 troops won't be enough. ''Everybody now believes that that force is probably too small and that a larger force will be required to go in as a peacekeeping force,'' Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said. Bacon said new figures have not been nailed down, either for the total planned force or for U.S. participation. ''We don't know whether it'll be twice as large or three times as large or 50 percent as large as we initially planned,'' Bacon said...."

5/15/99 AP Newsday Freeper Thanatos "... After 12 hours of semantic wrangling between the United States and China, the Security Council formally responded late Friday to NATO's strike on Beijing's embassy in Belgrade -- one of several disputes over Kosovo that had deadlocked the Security Council's work. A statement adopted by consensus expresses the council's ``profound regrets over the bombing and deep sorrow for the loss of lives, injuries and property damage caused by the bombing.'' ..."

Yahoo News - BRUSSELS (Reuters) 5/15/1999 Douglas Hamilton "...- NATO said Saturday that the Kosovo village of Korisa was being used as a military camp and was not hit by alliance cluster bombs, which Yugoslav Serb authorities said had killed scores of civilians in the area...."

The New York Times 11/1/87 "...Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II. The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants. A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others. The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided. Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults. Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls. Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats. The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia...."

AP 5/15/99 "... The NATO bombing campaign in Yugoslavia is pursuing a just cause by reasonable means, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said Saturday, as the Pentagon described the latest incident of civilian casualties as the unfortunate fallout of war..... At the Pentagon, spokesman Kenneth Bacon said the bombing near a Kosovo village that killed scores of refugees also successfully hit the intended military subpost. ``This was successful in that we hit the target. It was clearly unsuccessful in that we hit civilians that we hope not to hit,'' Bacon said...."

http://www.un.org 5/14/99 UNSC Freeper Thanatos "...The Security Council tonight expressed profound regrets over the bombing of the Embassy of China in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia on 7 May. The Council expressed deep sorrow for the loss of lives, injuries and property damage caused by the bombing, and noted that regrets and apologies were expressed for the tragedy by members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In a statement read out by its President, Denis Dangue Rewaka (Gabon), the Council reaffirmed that the principle of the inviolability of diplomatic personnel and premises must be respected in all cases in accordance with internationally accepted norms. Expressing its deep distress and concern over the bombing of the Embassy and its deepest sympathy and profound condolences to the Chinese Government and families of the victims, the Council further stressed the need for a complete and thorough investigation of the bombing by NATO...."

BBC News - Europe 5/16/99 "...Nato has admitted dumping unexploded bombs into the Adriatic Sea after fishermen found several in their nets off the coast of Venice. A Nato spokesman said bombs had been dumped on several occasions. "The procedures were carried out in international waters in 'designated areas' for this sort of operation," he added. David Willey reports from Rome: "Growing public disquiet" The bombs are thought to have been dropped by some of the hundreds of Nato planes flying missions over the Balkans. The major Aviano air base is close to Venice and it is standard practice to jettison weapons if a military plane is in difficulty as it comes in to land. Italian army officials who examined the devices said they probably dated from World War II. But Nato admitted some bombs could have been prematurely dropped by pilots because of mechanical problems...."

PRNewswire 5/16/99 Freeper Brian Mosely "....President Clinton has been told that he won't win the war in Kosovo without the use of ground troops, Newsweek has learned. A few weeks ago the Joint Chiefs of Staff sent a letter to Defense Secretary William Cohen saying that only ground troops would guarantee fulfillment of the administration's political objectives, Newsweek reports in the current issue...."

Freeper Denos observations 5/15/99 "... Let us take a look at another vastly different situation in our own country, crime fighting in the Bronx. We have heard a lot about the horrible mistake of the killing of Mr. Diallo, an unarmed African man, by heavily armed police crime fighters. It was just one mistake after thousands of successful excursions of the crime fighting units in the Bronx, which were successful in dramatically reducing the crime rate in the city. In fact, this was exactly Mayor Giuliani's reaction when he heard the accusations of police brutality. A paraphrased quotation might be, "What are you talking about? Can't you see how good the tough attitude of my police has been for the city?" We all know what the reaction of African Americans was to this justification of "just one mistake". They rose in indignation at an attitude which profiles an entire race as potentially criminal in order to fight crime, even if it results in their own improved safety. The end just does not justify the means, even if the overall benefit far outweighs the harm of a small mistake. Let us now return to Kosovo. Here the situation is far worse. Not only have we had more mistakes during our intervention, but a case can be made that the overall magnitude of the damage caused by the mistakes far outweighs any benefits that may have accrued, or will eventually accrue, from our intervention. We have profiled the entire population of Serbs as criminals, we are destroying their country in order to punish their leader and an undetermined number of his followers for their criminal acts, and we are damaging in the process the people we are trying to save plus several innocent bystanders. And we are hearing Mr. Rubin justify this record on statistical grounds as brilliant, since only a small percentage of our bombs kill innocent bystanders....'

Pittsburgh Tribune-Review 5/15/99 Christopher Ruddy "...Nobody knows yet whether Bill Clinton's war in Yugoslavia will fizzle or erupt into a global crisis. But it is becoming increasingly clear that Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has been the driving force behind the aggressive NATO action. This week TIME's cover touts "Madeleine's War" and declares that Albright "helped push the U.S. into Kosovo. It was part of the assertive, moralistic new world role she is urging for America."... Albright, by Powell's and other accounts, has been preoccupied by the Serbians. In essence, she believes the Balkans are her personal department. Why the interest in this particular region? One provocative analysis comes from the Jewish Voice, a monthly published in the suburbs of New York City. The Voice notes that Albright has historical ties to the region. When the Nazis took over Czechoslovakia, Albright's Jewish family, the Korbels, fled Czechoslovakia to a Serbian village..... Albright has even said her motivation for NATO action against Serbia comes from World War II. Her "mindset is Munich," she said, indicating she does not want to repeat a policy of appeasement that helped Hitler. The Voice suspects that other negative experiences Albright experienced in Serbia may be a hidden cause of her antagonism to the Serbs. For instance, the Voice notes Albright's family decided to hide their Jewish ancestry. Albright, who says her family never told her that she was Jewish, was raised as a Catholic...."

WORLD 5/8/99 Mindy Belz Freeper laz "..."If I were president of the United States and I wanted to start World War III, I would do exactly as this president has done [in Yugoslavia]." That is the stark assessment of Sen. James Inhofe (R-Okla.), one of the few elected officials to oppose the NATO war. Sen. Inhofe, just back from a trip to visit American troops, says the debate over ground forces is over. The question is no longer whether, he says, but when..."

Newsweek 5/24/99 Michael Elliott "... The war in Kosovo has soured Washington's relations with Moscow and Beijing. Are we on the brink of a new era of superpower rivalry? "It's been a pretty dull week," said a senior White House aide last Thursday. Makes you wonder, what would it take to excite those guys? It was a week when Chinese demonstrators made the American ambassador a prisoner in his residence. It was a week when the befuddled, unpopular president of Russia sacked his prime minister and narrowly avoided impeachment. It was a week that saw Robert Rubin, the secretary of the Treasury and the most respected member of Bill Clinton's administration, announce his resignation. And it was a week when diplomatic initiatives on Kosovo seemed to stall and the Serbs charged that NATO bombs had once again killed scores of Kosovars. If that's dull, heaven preserve us from interesting times. Suddenly, the world looks like a troubled, dangerous place again....So for Clinton, a crucial decision cannot be delayed much longer. Nobody fair-minded can doubt that the president is deeply, even passionately, engaged in a search for policies to bridge ethnic divides. Growing up in the American South, he saw what happens when hate poisons communal relations. His humanitarian instincts are surely genuine. But it is still unclear that he has drawn the obvious conclusion of the Kosovo war: you can't stop a humanitarian outrage from 15,000 feet in the air. Clinton's failure, so far, to acknowledge that truth has led to deep misgivings in Europe. The last week has seen an astonishing outpouring of vitriol by European commentators, many of whom are natural ideological supporters of Clinton. To wit: Hugo Young in The Guardian, London: "Bill Clinton does not want to lead... We are witnessing, I believe, the slow disintegration of American purpose." Francois Heisbourg, chairman of the Geneva Center for Security Policy: "He hasn't taken the war seriously; he's a draft dodger." The Berliner Zeitung: "Clinton's chance to go down in history as a strategic thinker is vanishing." All of those comments were made on the "narrow" issue of Kosovo. But from the day bombing started, it was plain that the war would raise international issues far larger than Kosovo...... "

Reuters 5/17/99 Freeper HAL9000 "....Kosovo Albanian moderate leader Ibrahim Rugova said in an interview published on Monday he would not join a government-in-exile led by the Kosovo Liberation Army and that NATO should keep bombing Yugoslavia until Serb forces quit Kosovo. Rugova told the German daily Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung the KLA government formed last month under Hashim Thaqi was not legitimate. He said his Democratic League of Kosovo, which eschews the KLA's military methods, would not accept the seats it was offered in the government...."

5/17/99 BBC News Freeper Thanatos "...Nato leaders have been asked to draw up a possible timetable for sending ground troops into Kosovo. The news coincided with the resumption of diplomatic efforts to try to find a basis for an international settlement to the crisis. For its part, the United States has said it intends to free two Yugoslav prisoners of war held at a US base in Germany. Doubts over air war The assessment of a possible ground deployment was announced after senior US military leaders raised doubts over the effectiveness of the air campaign...."

www.stratfor.com 5/17/99 stratfor "...0300 GMT, 990517 There are now a number of indications, small though they might be, that the United States is shifting toward terminating the Kosovo war. First, the United States has apparently refused to release the Apache helicopters to NATO for use in Kosovo, in spite of the fact that they are ready to go operational. More important perhaps, the Clinton administration allowed this refusal to be leaked publicly. Second, Clinton rebuffed Tony Blair's attempts to get him to shift to a ground war strategy. Someone in Blair's entourage appears to have leaked it to the Sunday Times, but if so, it reinforces the image of Clinton wanting to wind the war down. Finally, the Defense Department leaked the news tonight that two Serbian POWs would be released tomorrow....."

Newsday 5/17/99 AP Freeper virgil123 "...Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova says he was acting under duress when he backed Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's call for an end to NATO airstrikes last month, according to an interview published Monday. He told the newspaper he cooperated with Milosevic in an attempt to ``gain some freedom for my family.'' ..."

The UK Mirror 5/18/99 "...THERE has been a groundswell of military opinion since the campaign started that Nato could not win this war by bombing alone. Sooner or later ground troops would have to be committed. Milosevic has now started using human shields and Nato seems shocked..... The President's own joint chiefs of staff are advising him that the war cannot be won by air power alone. And now Gen Colin Powell, the architect of the allies' victory in the Gulf War, has come out openly and criticised the current strategy...."

5/17/99 AFP Freeper Thanatos "...Convinced the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia is working, the United States and its allies have begun discussing the size of a peacekeeping force for Kosovo and the conditions under which it could be deployed, Pentagon officials said Monday. A NATO assessment has concluded that a force of about 50,000 -- more than twice as large as originally planned -- will be needed to keep the peace in the wake of the devastating conflict, now more than 55 days old with no end in sight, Pentagon and NATO officials said...."

http://www.independent.co.uk/sindy/sindy.html 5/18/99 'Independent on Sunday' (London) Freeper yuri "...Two NATO commandos have died in a secret operation in Kosovo, the London-published weekly "Independent on Sunday" reported. According to the weekly, a group of US and British commandos disguised as Yugoslav servicemen was infiltrated into Kosovo prior to the bombings to guide NATO planes at targets. The operation is being carried out jointly with the so-called "Kosovo Liberation army". Last week, a group of NATO commandos supported by 100 Albanians made a raid in Kosovo as a result of which tens of civilians were killed...."

New York Post 5/16/99 BRIAN BLOMQUIST Freeper laz "...NATO officials said yesterday it's a mystery to them how 87 civilian refugees were killed when NATO dropped bombs on a Serb military base near a village in Kosovo. The officials said it's possible the Kosovar civilians were brought to the base to be used as "human shields" by the Serbs, but they brushed off Serb accusations that NATO bombed Kosovar Albanians by mistake...."

Washington Post Company 5/16/99 Steven Pearlstein Page A23 "... NATO acknowledged that two laser-guided bombs fired from a pair of U.S. F-16 fighter bombers may have accidentally killed ethnic Albanian refugees who had camped out for the night next to a Yugoslav special police command post in the war-torn Serbian province of Kosovo. While expressing regret about the civilian casualties, NATO spokesmen said blame for the deaths in the village of Korisa rests with Yugoslav authorities, whom they said had originally driven the ethnic Albanians from their homes and knew of the risk of a NATO air attack. Yugoslavia said today that 87 people died in the attack. "If there were civilians at a target that was a military location, it wasn't NATO that brought them there," said NATO spokesman Peter Daniel. "Why were those people not sleeping in their houses?" At the Pentagon, Maj. Gen. Charles Wald said the pilots, flying at altitudes of two miles or more, would not have been able to see civilians camping out around the military target...."

Yahoo News - WASHINGTON (Reuters) 5/16/1999 Los Angeles Times Freeper sunshine "...The U.S. agency that provided the map used in the accidental attack on China's embassy in Belgrade was involved in three tragedies in the past 15 months in which 28 people died, including the shearing by a U.S. plane of a ski cable in Italy that killed 20 people, the Los Angeles Times reported Sunday. ``The current (Defense Department) system to generate and distribute imagery and mapping products for use in mission planning is broke,'' Lt. Col. Phil Meteer wrote on April 30 in an internal Air Force report obtained by the Times...."

New York Times 5/16/99 MICHAEL R. GORDON ERIC SCHMITT "...In a behind-the-scenes struggle over military strategy and tactics, the Pentagon is blocking a plan by the NATO commander, Gen. Wesley K. Clark, to send Apache helicopters into combat against Serbian troops, Pentagon and NATO officials say. ...."The issue is that Clark is being aggressive, and there is some resistance to doing what he wants to do," a senior American official said. ....Since General Clark first requested them 48 hours after NATO's air strikes began on March 24, the Apaches have been a particularly sensitive matter for the Clinton Administration, which has been reluctant to use combat troops in Kosovo. It took weeks for Washington to agree to General Clark's request to deploy the Apaches. Then it took weeks more to lug the men and supplies for the helicopters and the Army units that accompanied them to Albania. Further, Washington only agreed to send the Apaches and rockets on the condition that they not be used in combat without the formal approval of President Clinton. That approval, which Apache commanders expected by early May, has yet to take place, largely because top Pentagon officials have refused to recommend such a step to the White House, fearing the possible domestic and international consequences if the missions fail. Nor are the Apaches allowed to conduct "live fire" exercises without the Clinton Administration's consent. Such exercises, in which the helicopters fire their guns and missiles, are an essential prerequisite for employing them in combat. ..... But General Clark wants to conduct the "live fire" test by shooting at targets in Kosovo, and he still has not received permission to do so. Two of the helicopters have already crashed during training missions, killing two pilots....."The Army's concern is that this is a very dangerous mission," a Pentagon official said. "The avenues into Kosovo are limited, and the opportunity for shoulder-held weapons is very real. We have to really have all our act together. No one thinks the mission can't be done, but in an age when the American people believe we're in a zero-defects war, there's real apprehension we're going to bring solders back in body bags." ....Another Pentagon objection pertains to barrages of rockets and artillery that would precede the Apache attacks. While the rockets would be aimed at air defenses, there are no NATO ground troops in Kosovo to direct the fire, raising the prospect of civilian casualties....."

Washing ton Post 5/17/99 Anthony Faiola "...Such feelings [anti-NATO/US] are common in Argentina -- and in many other parts of the world far from the conflict over Kosovo. As the air war against Yugoslavia concludes its eighth week, and blunders like the bombing that reportedly killed nearly 90 ethnic Albanians at Korisa and the strike on the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade grab headlines worldwide, NATO's warplanes are inflicting collateral damage of another kind -- on the alliance's international reputation. And Uncle Sam, NATO's dominant power, is bearing the brunt of people's anger. Here in Argentina, one of Washington's closest Latin American allies, a poll last week showed that 64 percent of the public opposed the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia. More respondents had a negative opinion of NATO than of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. In Latin America, Asia, Africa, the Middle East and other regions with little direct interest in the conflict, opposition is surfacing in statements by elected officials, newspaper editorials, opinion polls, public protests, Internet banter and street graffiti. Increasingly, there is little subtlety in NATO-bashing. "NATO is blindly bombing Yugoslavia," Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said in a fiery political speech in India last week. "There is a dance of destruction going on there. Thousands of people rendered homeless. And the United Nations is a mute witness to all this. Is NATO's work to prevent war or to fuel one?" In the view of analysts here and elsewhere, the anti-NATO backlash shows how Washington's portrayal of the conflict as a humanitarian mission is being superseded by lingering anti-Western feelings in countries with bad memories of U.S. intervention and European colonialism...."

The Daily Oklahoman 5/18/99 Mark Green "....COLLATERAL damage in Bill Clinton's air war against Yugoslavia is everywhere. A train, a bus, a civilian convoy, an embassy. National Journal editor Michael Kelly was right when he wrote that America would be better off with a ham-and-cheese sandwich running its foreign policy instead of Bill Clinton's crew, which has entangled the United States in a costly, open-ended civil war. Yet there is another victim in addition to innocent Kosovars, Serbs and Chinese embassy staffers. It is an endangered infant: The toddling, teething democracy in Russia. That was the message at a press conference last week in the U.S. Capitol Building. Organized by the conservative Free Congress Foundation, the event featured members of Congress and Russia's pro- democracy movement, who warned that Clinton's war against traditional Russian ally Serbia is killing them politically. "The most underreported part of the whole Kosovo story is what it is doing to the political situation inside Russia," said Paul Weyrich, Free Congress' president. "Our policy couldn't do more to promote ultranationalist and communist forces inside Russia."..."

AP 5/18/99 "...The vaunted Apache attack helicopters that were to have added a unique punch to NATO's air campaign are unlikely to see combat over Kosovo anytime soon. The risk to pilots is simply too great, President Clinton suggested Tuesday, after the Pentagon dispatched more ground-attack A-10 jets instead. ``When the weather is good - as it generally is at this time of year - most of what the Apaches could do can be done by the A-10s at less risk,'' Clinton said, referring to Air Force planes that are operating over Kosovo from bases in Italy....."

Evening Standard (London) 5/18/99 Charles Reiss Freeper HAL 9000 "...Serb forces are exhuming mass graves in Kosovo in a bid to hide their war atrocities, Nato alleged this afternoon. Bodies are being reburied in individual graves, either at sites bombed by the Allies or in areas formerly occupied by the Kosovo Liberation Army, said spokesman Jamie Shea...."

AP 5/18/99 Candice Hughes "...Proclaiming moral victory, a senior Yugoslav official said Tuesday that Belgrade is ready to ``cut a deal'' on Kosovo despite unspecified ``reservations'' about the formula put forward by the United States and its major European partners. Two Serb prisoners of war released by the United States, meanwhile, were handed back to Yugoslavia in drizzling weather at a Hungarian border post. U.S. officials said the return was not a payback for Belgrade's release of three captured American soldiers this month but done in the hope that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic would swiftly release any NATO forces taken prisoner in the future...."

UPI Spotlight 5/18/99 "...President Clinton told reporters (Tuesday) that "all options are on the table" when questioned about the use of ground forces in Kosovo, adding that the air war had accomplished a great deal and that he expected NATO to achieve its objective. Also, Clinton denied that the U.S. had blocked the use of Apache helicopters in the Kosovo conflict and declared that it was a "military decision," not a political one...."

LA Times 5/17/99 PAUL WATSON "...Something strange is going on in this Kosovo Albanian village in what was once a hard-line guerrilla stronghold, where NATO accuses Serbs of committing genocide. An estimated 15,000 displaced ethnic Albanians live in and around Svetlje, in northern Kosovo, and hundreds of young men are everywhere, strolling along the dirt roads or lying on the grass on a spring day. So many fighting-age men in a region where the Kosovo Liberation Army fought some of its fiercest battles against Serbian forces are a challenge to the black-and-white versions of what is happening here. By their own accounts, the men are not living in a concentration camp, nor being forced to labor for the police or army, nor serving as human shields for Serbs. Instead, they are waiting with their families for permission to follow thousands who have risked going back home to nearby villages because they do not want to give up and leave Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic. "We wanted to stay here where we were born," Skender Velia, 39, said through a translator. "Those who wanted to go through Macedonia and on to Europe have already left. We did not want to follow."..."

Stratfor 5/18/99 "... Sir Charles Guthrie's assertion that a ground war remains a possibility opens a fascinating question. Why are the British, virtually alone among the NATO allies, so intensely interested in the ground war option? ....Part of the answer probably is that they know that there won't be a ground war. Knowing that they will not be asked to pay the price of a ground war frees the British to advocate one without risking anything. The primary purpose for this now pointless public posturing is that it allows Blair to score domestic political points. By advocating a ground war, Blair projects himself as a resolute and forceful leader surrounded by weaklings. He shores up his strength in the area in which Labor is traditionally weakest, national security policy...."

Reuters 5/17/99 "...A rash of protests in Serbian towns against the deployment of local troops in wartorn Kosovo was reported on Monday, and a Serbian government official was said to have been lynched by a mob in one incident. Television in the tiny neighbouring Yugoslav republic of Montenegro said in a broadcast monitored by the BBC the worst violence erupted in the town of Aleksandrovac, southern Serbia...."

5/18/99 Valerie Richardson Washington Times ".... The last flowers, banners and candles from the Columbine High School memorial have barely been cleared away and already debate is bubbling over whether a permanent memorial should take account of the deeply held religious faith of several of the slain students. The Foothills Park and Recreation District, which manages Robert Clement Park next to the school, wants to build a monument to honor the victims of the worst school shooting in U.S. history. Organizers acknowledge there is strong community support for a memorial with a Christian