 |
 |
 |
 |
||
By GEORGE JAHN Associated Press Writer
BELGRADE, Yugoslavia (AP) -- NATO jet fighters attacked Serbia's second-largest city today, destroying a bridge over the Danube River, while the Yugoslav state news agency said three captured U.S. soldiers would face a military court as early as Friday.
Deputy Prime Minister Vuk Draskovic, a relative moderate in the Yugoslav government, told The Associated Press the soldiers would be treated ``with the full respect of all international conventions concerning prisoners of war.''
Asked about Serb television footage showing at least one of the three with apparent bruises or scratches on the face, Draskovic said that was the result of one soldier ``trying to fight physically before being arrested.''
The soldiers, part of a NATO peacekeeping force, were patrolling a rugged region with no precise or defined border between Macedonia and Yugoslavia, Macedonian Interior Minister Pavle Trajanov said.
In Washington, the United States reacted with outrage on hearing the Tanjug news agency report of military proceedings.
Any trial ``would be in violation of international law,'' State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said today. ``Such a trial is obviously ridiculous.''
The Tanjug report said an authorized military court would conduct the trial of the three soldiers but it was unclear if the proceedings meant a full trial would begin immediately or simply that the military court proceedings would start.
There is no basis for the men being detained or to face ``some phony trial,'' Rubin said at a Washington news conference. ``The fact is it was illegal for them to be abducted.''
The Yugoslav army said the Americans were caught Wednesday in southern Yugoslavia. NATO, which initially insisted the soldiers were in Macedonia, later said their exact location at the time was uncertain.
The three grim-faced soldiers, dressed in camouflage, appeared on Serb television with what appeared to be cuts on their faces. One seemed to have a cotton patch on the back of his head.
``We've all seen their pictures. We don't like it,'' NATO supreme commander Gen. Wesley Clark said today in Brussels, Belgium. ``We don't like the way they're treated and we have a long memory about these kinds of things.''
The report showing the three soldiers was apparently aired from Kosovo's capital, Pristina, implying the captured men, based in Wuerzburg, Germany, were being held there.
The Pentagon identified the men as Staff Sgt. Andrew A. Ramirez, 24, of Los Angeles; Staff Sgt. Christopher J. Stone, 25, of Smiths Creek, Mich.; and Spec. Steven M. Gonzales, 24, of Huntsville, Texas.
Defense Secretary William Cohen described the soldiers not as POWs but as ``illegally detained.''
Many of those who live in the area where the men were captured are either ethnic Serbs or Macedonian nationalists angry at NATO military strikes on their neighbor and the presence of foreign troops on their soil.
NATO's aerial bombardment continued unabated in Yugoslavia, with missiles knocking out a major Danube River bridge in Novi Sad, Serbia's second-biggest city with a half-million people, Serbian media said. Military warehouses are at one end of the bridge.
Serbian state television showed the remnants of the destroyed bridge. It said the city's water system was heavily damaged.
The wreckage from the bridge clogged the waterway, blocking four Bulgarian ships from sailing home, shipowners in Bulgaria's main Danube port of Ruse told the official Bulgarian news agency BTA.
In other bombings, the government's Tanjug news agency said 10 missiles had struck around Pristina since Wednesday night. A bridge near Pristina sustained unspecified damage, the Serbian Media Center in Pristina said.
``The ring is closing around the Yugoslav forces,'' NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said today.
In Montenegro today, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic fired the army commander for Yugoslav republic and seven other top generals, apparently strengthening his position against any possible military coup by officers who are calling for a cease-fire. Montenegro has a pro-Western government.
The Yugoslav leader met today with Ibrahim Rugova, Kosovo's leading ethnic Albanian moderate politician, state television said. The two reportedly agreed on the need for a political solution to the crisis that led to NATO airstrikes, the report said.
Speaking at the daily briefing on Britain's role in the NATO air campaign, Cook said the bombing had caused fuel shortages for Serb forces in Kosovo.
Today, Russian President Boris Yeltsin called for a meeting of the foreign ministers of the G-7 leading industrialized nations and Russia on halting the NATO attacks. But because six of the seven G-7 nations were participating in the NATO operation, it appeared unlikely they would agree to such a meeting.
NATO has said it would refuse to suspend airstrikes during upcoming Easter celebrations.
``This would be a blank check for Milosevic to continue the killing,'' said German Gen. Klaus Naumann, chairman of NATO's military committee.
With hints from Western diplomats that NATO bombs and missiles could soon be raining down on the Yugoslav capital of Belgrade, NATO spokesman Jamie Shea repeated the alliance's insistence that Yugoslav security forces are bent on purging Kosovo of ethnic Albanians.
However, Yugoslav authorities claim the refugees are fleeing NATO attacks.
In a clear warning to remaining Kosovo Liberation Army rebels, the Yugoslav army ordered all Kosovo Albanians to surrender weapons or face ``rigorous and unmerciful measures,'' the private Beta news agency reported.
Kosovo, a southern province in main Yugoslav republic of Serbia, has been wracked by war that has left more than 2,000 people dead since Milosevic launched a campaign against separatist ethnic Albanian rebels in February 1998.
There were more reports today that ethnic Albanians from Pristina were being systematically rounded up and herded onto trains for deportation.
Three trains with ``many thousands'' of refugees arrived at the Macedonian border today and two more were reportedly on their way, said Judith Kumin, a spokeswoman for the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees.
``Serbs cynically told them it (the train trip) was a gift from the government -- a free ride to Macedonia in exchange for their houses and car,'' Kumin said.
Kris Janowski, spokesman for the U.N. refugee agency, said today that more than 156,000 ethnic Albanians had left in the past nine days.
|
|
|
|
||
