The New York Times

February 7, 2000

Rights Group Says NATO Killed 500 Civilians in Kosovo War

By ELIZABETH BECKER

WASHINGTON, Feb. 6 -- The NATO air campaign in Kosovo led to the deaths of 500 civilians in 90 separate attacks, more incidents than the Pentagon has acknowledged but a much lower toll than Yugoslavia said, according to a human rights study issued today that documents each incident and lists the names of the victims.

The study, by Human Rights Watch, rejected any notion that NATO committed war crimes. But it did argue that in waging a war to stop Serbs from killing or driving out Kosovo Albanians -- 90 percent of the prewar population of the ethnic Serbian province -- NATO officials themselves violated the Geneva Convention both in the selection of targets and the use of cluster bombs.

After a six-month investigation, including three weeks interviewing witnesses in Kosovo, the Human Rights Watch team determined that one-third of the number of lethal episodes and half the casualties could have been avoided if NATO nation forces had strictly followed the rules.

"We're not saying there is any equivalency with the Serbs," remarked Bill Arkin, the author of the report, "but we are saying that NATO made a fetish about minimizing civilian casualties but the process was deficient."

In examining Serbian and NATO actions, the report emphasized an attack on May 21 by NATO forces that hit Dubrava Prison. The government of Yugoslavia, of which Serbia is the larger of two remaining republics, said 95 civilians died in blasts from NATO missiles. Mr. Arkin and his colleague, Bogdan Ivanisevic, found that 19 of the prisoners were killed in the NATO attack while the others were all executed by prison guards afterward.

Senior Pentagon officials said they were relieved that so few civilians died in a bombing campaign that lasted 78 days and included 38,000 sorties. The Yugoslav government had contended that NATO bombing killed 5,000 civilians.

The new study said Secretary of Defense William S. Cohen and other top officials are wrong in concluding that civilians were killed in no more than 20 to 30 NATO bombings.

"One disturbing aspect of the matter of civilian deaths is how starkly the number of incidents and deaths contrast with official U.S. and Yugoslav statements," the report said, citing Gen. Wesley K. Clark, the NATO supreme commander, as well as Mr. Cohen as testifying that only 20 to 30 incidents had led to such deaths.

Ever since the Vietnam War, when counting bodies of Vietnamese on or near the battlefield became a way to avoid admitting strategic failures, the Pentagon has been loath to count the civilians or the enemy combatants who died during a conflict with United States forces.

The Pentagon has undertaken an extensive investigation of the Kosovo campaign for a report to be presented by Mr. Cohen to Congress this week. It will review the goals set for the campaign and measure how they were achieved, but it does not include a death toll for enemy soldiers or for civilians.

In that report, officials say, Mr. Cohen will maintain that NATO forces took utmost care in selecting targets and that the targets selected were legitimate ones.

The Human Rights Watch report also says that NATO erred by dropping cluster bombs in urban areas, by bombing bridges during daylight hours when civilians were most likely to be crossing them (unlike in the Persian Gulf war, the report says), by hitting targets like a Belgrade television station, and by striking convoys without knowing with certainty that they were made up of Serbian military forces.