The New York Times

Friday, May 28, 1999

Kosovo Rebels, Once Weak, Start Taking a Toll on Serbs

By ERIC SCHMITT

WASHINGTON -- Kosovo Liberation Army fighters, led by more experienced commanders and buoyed by NATO's escalating air campaign, are waging increasingly effective hit-and-run attacks against Yugoslav troops in Kosovo, Pentagon officials said on Thursday.

"They appear to be a resurgent group which has taken advantage of NATO air strikes, general Western sympathy, and the groundswell of volunteer fighters in Albania," said Rear Adm. Thomas Wilson, director of intelligence for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The assessment on the Kosovo fighters came as allied warplanes bombed the two main power transmission stations supplying Belgrade with electricity late on Thursday, plunging most of the capital into darkness.

As NATO continues to pummel Yugoslav forces in Kosovo and strategic targets like electricity distribution systems, with no signs of surrender from the Yugoslav president, Sloboban Milosevic, Pentagon officials say a subtle shift is beginning to emerge on the ground.

A broken, demoralized force of roughly 3,000 fighters just two months ago, the Kosovo Liberation Army has swelled to between 15,000 and 17,000 soldiers in Kosovo, with another 5,000 training in Albania, American officials estimated on Thursday.

New commanders, including an ethnic Albanian from the Croatian army, are executing better tactical operations, the officials said. In addition, new recruits and improved supply lines from Albania have revitalized a rebel force that had been routed by Yugoslavia's Third Army before and shortly after the air war started on March 24.

The rebels are still outgunned by the heavily armed Yugoslav forces, which are equipped with tanks, artillery and armored personnel carriers, Wilson said. But the growing number of Kosovo fighters, coupled with the air war's forcing many of the 40,000 Yugoslav army troops and police to dig into defensive positions, has started to equalize parts of the battlefield.

"Because of the relative immobility of the Serb armored mechanized forces, the playing field is somewhat more level," Wilson told reporters on Thursday.

Despite the intensifying bombing, NATO and Pentagon officials conceded that there are no signs that Yugoslav troops in Kosovo are beginning to withdraw, one of NATO's main conditions for halting the bombardment.

"We obviously have not destroyed their will to conduct what they're doing in Kosovo yet," Wilson said.

NATO officials on Thursday reported heavy fighting in southwest Kosovo, with the rebels launching a major offensive in the Mount Pastrik area, pinning down Serbian forces there. Last week, the rebels scored one of their biggest victories in the past two months, overrunning a Yugoslav weapons depot in Jablanica, capturing mortars, artillery and a large cache of ammunition.

Yugoslav forces continued their shelling overnight of Albanian villages just across the Kosovo border, which Belgrade believes are being used as staging areas for the rebel forces.

Major clashes were also reported in and around Drenica, where, Pentagon and NATO officials said, Yugoslav troops were continuing to expel Albanians from Kosovo.

As Yugoslav forces and rebel fighters battled, NATO warplanes seized on clear skies to launch 308 bombing runs overnight against command bunkers, anti-aircraft radars, radio relay stations and heavy weaponry, including at least five tanks, six armored personnel carriers, and 10 artillery pieces.

Yugoslav gunners launched more than 30 surface-to-air missiles and withering anti-aircraft fire, NATO officials said.

"The good weather that is helping our pilots to see their targets more easily is in turn helping them to detect our aircraft and guide their missiles visually," Maj. Gen. Walter Jertz, a NATO military spokesman in Brussels, said of the Yugoslav forces.

In recent weeks, Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's military commander, has stepped up attacks on electrical transmission stations, knocking out power throughout most of Serbia and shutting off the pumping stations that provide water to most Yugoslav citizens.

On Wednesday, the North Atlantic Council, NATO's political arm, authorized l Clark to broaden his bombing campaign to a variety of political and economic targets, including civilian telephone networks that link the military's computer systems. Within hours of the approval, allied fighter-bombers hit the first of several telephone networks on the target list, a senior Pentagon official said.

"Every day or every week he gains authority to strike a wider range of targets," Pentagon spokesman Kenneth H. Bacon said on Thursday, without disclosing details of NATO's expanded target list.

Striking civilian phone systems will play havoc with the Yugoslav military's computer networks and force commanders to speak on cellular phones, whose transmissions can be intercepted by eavesdropping satellites and Rivet Joint surveillance aircraft.

Maj. Gen. Charles Wald, a senior planner for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said that as of Wednesday, in the air war's first 64 days, U.S. warplanes had conducted 52 percent of the 6,950 bombing runs and 70 percent of the 20,300 reconnaissance, refueling and other support missions.