The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, full coverage of the continuing war over Kosovo. We have a NewsMaker interview with National Security Advisor Samuel Berger; a Margaret Warner primer on the Balkans; an Elizabeth Brackett report on a Chicago angle; and a look at the bombing's political fallout by Mark Shields and Paul Gigot. We'll have the other news of this Friday at the end of the program tonight.

FOCUS - THIRD WAVE

JIM LEHRER: NATO launched a third wave of air strikes today against Yugoslav targets. It was the first mission to begin during daylight. Ships in the Adriatic Sea again fired cruise missiles; allied fighter jets took off from Italy; and bombers flew from Britain. Air raid sirens screamed over Belgrade. Local media said three suburban areas were hit. We have this report from Julian Manyon of Independent Television News, who has remained in Belgrade.

JULIAN MANYON, ITN: Targets all over Serbia have once again been attacked. This morning, flames and smoke were still billowing near the town of Kraljevo South of the capital. Last night, NATO aircraft was seen in the skies above the town. Their targets included a military air base and an important air force radar system. The town also has a military factory producing parts for tanks but it's not yet clear from the pictures shown by Serbian television whether that was hit. Other air strikes struck the neighboring Republic of Montenegro, which, along with Serbia, makes up what remains of Yugoslavia. In the Belgrade area, the pattern was repeated with another Cruise missile attack on the Air Force base 15 miles away, and this evening there are reports of a fresh bombing strike just outside the Serbian capital. In spite of the tension caused by air strikes just beyond the city limits, there's no signs so far that the NATO campaign is weakening resolve here in the Serbian capital. In fact, attitudes among ordinary people seem to be hardening, with many saying that Serbia should now stand firm against what they see as blackmail.

JIM LEHRER: NATO aircraft shot down two Yugoslav MiG fighters today. A NATO official said the MiGs were attacking allied ground forces in Bosnia. The State Department called it an act of desperation. In Kosovo, Serbian troops continued their campaign against ethnic Albanians; refugees told UN aid workers of continuing atrocities. Western journalists have been expelled from the Kosovo. But from the Kosovo-Macedonia border, we have this report by Colin Baker of Independent Television News.

COLIN BAKER: Serb soldiers on the border of Kosovo today barely two miles from NATO's tanks in Macedonia. There's no indication from what we saw that President Milosevic's army is preparing to leave. To the contrary. They spent all day consolidating their frontier positions. The border village of Sechista is virtually deserted; 400 ethnic Albanian houses empty, just the Serb forces there, digging themselves in deeper to defend against a possible offensive by NATO ground troops. This is about as close as we can get to the border, about 20, 30 meters behind me. Over to the left, just over the ridge here, about 100 meters away, there are Serb trenches, Serb positions. They seem to be quite well dug in according to the local people here. Beneath the pylon there's a machine gun post and the hills above this frontier are dotted with them and a few miles inside the border we saw Serb soldiers digging trenches and similar defensive positions. Local Albanians also told us they had been laying mine fields. Twice in three hours NATO aircraft too high and too fast to see flew over us into Serbia. They would have seen Serb tanks and armor on another ridge one mile inside the border. The Macedonian Army patrols the border here, but these are young, inexperienced novices compared to the combat soldiers across the divide. And they can only watch this evening as the last group of Albanians leave for the safety of Macedonia -- the cleansing of this village now complete.

JIM LEHRER: And in Macedonia, in the capital Skopje, police broke up anti-US and Western European demonstrations, arresting about 60 people. At the American Embassy, security was tightened. US soldiers put up barbed wire and manned machine guns. In New York, the UN Security Council voted 12-3 against a Russian-sponsored resolution to end the NATO offensive. President Clinton and Secretary of State Albright talked directly to the Yugoslav people today. Videotaped statements by the two were beamed via satellite by the Voice of America. Serbs with short wave radios, home satellite dishes or Internet access were able to hear the statements. Albright made her pitch in Serbo-Croatian. The President's speech was translated into Serbian and Russian. Here's an excerpt.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: I call on all Serbs and all people of goodwill to join with us in seeking an end to this needless and avoidable conflict. Instead, let us work together to restore Serbia to its rightful place as a great nation of Europe, included, not isolated, by the world community, respected by all nations for having the strength to build peace.

JIM LEHRER: Before today's bombings began, a NATO official briefed reporters in Brussels on the damage done thus far.

AIR COMMODORE DAVID WILBY, Royal Air Force: We have now struck over 50 targets, and our battle damage assessment is showing us that our attacks have been effective. I can now give you some results of our efforts, and please remember that this is a truly multinational allied effort with most NATO nations participating in either combat or supporting roles. We have conducted some 400 sorties. You will see from the map the rough aim points by the places where those targets lie. And in many cases, there may be several aim points associated with these important installations. This is the Novisad heliport and vehicle storage depot. You'll see very obvious signs of target damage. What I'd like to do now is just to dim the lights and give you a chance if the facilities work to show you what the crews are looking at from the cockpit. You can see there is the graticule that's on the target and there you can see where the explosion has occurred. This is an ammunition facility and you can tell by the voracity of the fire that's coming out that there has definitely been a fair amount of explosive in there. Last night, our attacks were carried out with no apparent fighter opposition, and although some surface-to-air missile systems were detected, only one possible launch was noted with no success. Perhaps that goes some way to demonstrate the effectiveness of our campaign against this highly sophisticated, integrated air defense system. In summary, our operations continue, and you can expect us to maintain a careful and systematic campaign to interdict, disrupt and to neutralize the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia's integrated air defense systems. We will achieve this with the minimum effort necessary, and with as little collateral damage to the civilian population and property as possible.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: And that brings us to tonight and to National Security Adviser Samuel Berger.

Mr. Berger, welcome.

SAMUEL BERGER: Good evening.

JIM LEHRER: And the third wave of attacks is now underway as we speak, correct?

SAMUEL BERGER: That's correct.

JIM LEHRER: And they began this morning with the first-time daylight raids and now they've been continued into the night?

SAMUEL BERGER: The raids are continuing as we speak.

JIM LEHRER: And are they similar to the first two? Are they aimed at air defense -- the air defense systems in Serbia, the same kind of targets?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, as you can imagine, Jim, I'm not going to talk a great deal bout targets and operational details. Essentially, we are targeting not only the air defense system and command and control system within Serbia and in Kosovo but also the Serbian security forces and the so-called MUP, the police forces of Serbia that have been the instruments of repression in Kosovo. Those are also prime targets.

JIM LEHRER: Now, the two MiG's that were shot down today over Bosnia, what can you tell us about what happened?

SAMUEL BERGER: I don't think we have a definitive assessment precisely of what caused the MiG's to head in that direction, whether it was hostile intent, whether they were scrambling in the face of fire on the ground. I suspect in the next day or so we'll have a clearer picture.

JIM LEHRER: But that's an escalation of the -- or an expansion of the conflict, is it not, if Serb airplanes are going to attack UN forces in Bosnia right next door?

SAMUEL BERGER: Clearly, if the intent was to attack American forces, that would be a serious development.

JIM LEHRER: But you don't know for a fact that that's the case.

SAMUEL BERGER: I don't think we know that for certain at this point.

JIM LEHRER: Were the pilots captured?

SAMUEL BERGER: I can't confirm that.

JIM LEHRER: There are reports that they were captured.

SAMUEL BERGER: I know.

JIM LEHRER: But that -- you don't know one way or another, is --

SAMUEL BERGER: I'm not going to confirm it one way or the other.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. Now , the general in NATO talked again about the sophisticated air defense system that the Serbs have. But they haven't used it yet, have they?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, they have sent their planes up, and many of them have been shot down, their MiG's. There has been some activity on the part of their air defense system. They have not fully engaged it. I think that, in part, is attributable to the success that the NATO forces have had in degrading their air defense system, but I think it's premature to draw any definitive conclusions until the next few days.

JIM LEHRER: Well, there has been a suggestion that one of the reasons -- we're talking about basically surface-to-air missiles that would be targeted all on NATO airplanes, and very few of those have been used, that's correct?

SAMUEL BERGER: That's correct.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Now, one of the suggestions is the reason they haven't been used is that they're waiting for an opportune time and then they're really going to let one wave of NATO planes have it. Is that -- does that add up to you?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, I think we have to be prepared for any contingency, but, of course, as the campaign proceeds, this integrated air system becomes less integrated and more degraded, so their capability each night is diminished. That does not mean that they still don't have capability. We have to fly on the assumption, of course, that they still have the capability of sending a SAM missile against us.

JIM LEHRER: There is no -- is there concrete evidence that it has been, in fact, been degraded, it has, in fact, been diminished?

SAMUEL BERGER: I think we heard, if not in that clip, during other parts of the briefing from NATO today the view that there has been effectiveness against the air defense system, but there continues to be work to be done.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. All right now, another one of the big goals of this bombing mission was to stop the Serb attacks on Kosovars, on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Now, those attacks are continuing, are they not?

SAMUEL BERGER: Yes. These attacks, of course, have been building for the last several weeks, as the Kosovars, as the Serbs assembled about 40,000 security forces in and around Kosovo. One of the reasons we felt such a sense of urgency of beginning this campaign is the conviction on the part of most of our analysts that they were on the verge of launching a massive offensive with these 40,000 security forces. They have continued to conduct military action. I don't think we had any expectation that that would stop after one or two nights. What we have to do here is conduct a sustained campaign and seek to convince Mr. Milosevic that the overall cost to him of continuing to make war is not worth the price that he's paying and the price goes up every night.

JIM LEHRER: But the bombing campaign is not specifically directed at those 40,000 Serbian troops, correct?

SAMUEL BERGER: The bombing campaign will be -- is directed at a wide range of targets in Serbia and military targets at Kosovo, including Serb army and Serb police capabilities and forces in the region.

JIM LEHRER: There was a report, for instance, today -- several reports of new massacres of Kosovo civilians, or Albanian ethnic civilians -- one of them -- twenty Albanian teachers in Kosovo, the ethnic Albanian teachers, were pulled out of their school and shot to death in front of their students. Can you confirm that, or is that just --

SAMUEL BERGER: I cannot confirm the specific report, Jim, but there are a range of these reports, and I think that they are in their cumulative impact sufficient to believe that there are atrocities that continue to be committed against the Kosovars. The effect this has had is, I think, to reinforce the determination of NATO to proceed with the campaign. There was a meeting of the North Atlantic Council this afternoon, and there was a, I think, a great deal of outrage at those reports and a consensus that the campaign needs to be continued.

JIM LEHRER: But wasn't the bombing campaign designed to specifically stop this very thing that is continuing?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, it can't stop individual actions. The bombing campaign was designed for really two purposes: one, either to convince Mr. Milosevic through the human impact of this that the path of peace makes more sense to him than the destruction that he's undergoing. That would be the optimum outcome, for him to choose to embrace -- to stop the fighting and embrace the peace agreement that we laid down in Rambouillet and the Kosovars have embraced -- but, failing that, to inflict sufficient damage on his military capability that he -- his ability to conduct these kinds of campaigns is severely diminished and his calculation in the future will have to include not only the fact that he has a greatly diminished military, that the playing field is different, but that he may have to face again NATO's bombing if he embarks upon his campaign. But you can't do -- we never expected that to happen after two nights of this.

JIM LEHRER: Well, there's been a lot of discussion, as you know, Mr. Berger, about what constitutes success, what constitutes the end of this, and one -- is it correct to say -- well, let's go through that, and you tell me -- but if, in fact, the bombing gets Milosevic to stop this -- these kinds of atrocities, alleged atrocities against civilians, in other words, he pulls back militarily but doesn't sign a peace deal, doesn't make -- doesn't sign the agreement that was made in France, is that enough to stop the bombing, alone?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, I think at this stage the answer is no. I think we've said here that there are two possible end states for Mr. Milosevic. One is peace -- stop the fighting, embrace a peace agreement along the lines of the Rambouillet agreement, in that framework. He can do that tomorrow. Barring that, we will continue the bombing until the NATO military people believe that we have inflicted serious damage on his military so that his ability to carry out these kinds of campaigns in the future is severely diminished.

JIM LEHRER: But he --

SAMUEL BERGER: Let me add one other dimension to this, Jim. I think one needs to compare the end state of this campaign, so to speak, which may not eliminate the possibility of a Serb sergeant or a Serb unit acting against a Kosovar village or vice versa, but will severely diminish his capability to do that. One needs to compare that to the end state of not having acted. The end state of not having acted would have unquestionably been a massive invasion of Kosovo by the Serbs, a massive killing of Kosovar civilians because --

JIM LEHRER: Even larger than what's going on, as we speak.

SAMUEL BERGER: Far larger than what's going on, because the techniques of the Serbs has been essentially to go in and burn the village, and chase away the guerrillas. That would have caused refugee flows of major proportions and created the kind of instability in the region that would have led to in all likelihood a larger conflict, so the end state of -- of acting here, even if he does not choose peace, which is to severely diminish his capacity to conduct war, has to be compared to the end state of not having acted which is chaos.

JIM LEHRER: So that's actually what I'm getting at here is that a decision could be made by NATO that -- that the first part of this mission has been accomplished. He hasn't agreed to any peace deal, but all of the things you just went through, the diminishment and inability militarily to do certain things has been accomplished. You all could just say that and that would be the end of the bombing.

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, we're not -- this is not dependent upon bombing him back to the peace table.

JIM LEHRER: Okay, all right.

SAMUEL BERGER: If - obviously peace would be a good outcome here. In the long term it would be a far preferable outcome, but if he digs in and decides that he's not going to -- to move in that direction, then we will reduce his capability to make war in a substantial way, and I have no question in my mind that Kosovo will be better for our having undertaken this action than had NATO walked away.

JIM LEHRER: Even without a peace agreement on the part of Milosevic?

SAMUEL BERGER: Correct.

JIM LEHRER: Have you heard word from Milosevic at all since this began two days ago?

SAMUEL BERGER: Not other than the televised -

JIM LEHRER: No official thing through channels or whatever?

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, there have been some diplomatic conversations with people in the Milosevic government, but as far as I know there's been no direct communication with Milosevic.

JIM LEHRER: No -- either through any kind of -- through the Russians, through any source, any indication, hey, let's talk, we -

SAMUEL BERGER: Well, I think, for example, the Ukrainian foreign minister, my understanding, is on his way to Belgrade, not exactly a place I'd choose to visit this week, but in any case, presumably to tell Mr. Milosevic to -- that the world here is quite united in demanding that he choose another course, and there have been others, the Russians and others, who have made this message very clear to Mr. Milosevic, but since Ambassador Holbrooke's meeting with Milosevic several days ago in which he showed no flexibility whatsoever, we've had no direct contact with him as far as I know.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. And as we speak, there have been no NATO casualties of any kind, correct?

SAMUEL BERGER: Not as of this point, but I -- I must say, as the President has repeatedly said when he's addressed this issue, this is a mission that has military risks, and I think the American people need to understand that. We've taken every precaution that we can to minimize those risks. We're prepared to react if he strikes out against us. But, so far, we've had no casualties.

JIM LEHRER: All right. Mr. Berger, thank you very much.

SAMUEL BERGER: Thank you, Jim.

FOCUS - ROUGH NEIGHBORHOOD

JIM LEHRER: A primer on the violent region around Kosovo called the Balkans, and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: NATO has gone to war in Europe over a land that most Americans know nothing about. The President admitted as much Tuesday in describing a briefing he had for members of Congress.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: One of the members who was there, a man from my part of the country, he said, "You know, Mr. President, I support your policy, but most of my folks couldn't find Kosovo on a map; they don't know where it is."

MARGARET WARNER: Kosovo is a 4,200-square-mile area about the size of Maryland on a mountainous peninsula in Southeastern Europe. It's the southernmost province of Serbia, the dominant republic in what is left of Yugoslavia. But Kosovo's ethnic and religious mix is very different from the rest of Serbia's. 90 percent of its roughly two million people are ethnic Albanians and mostly Muslims, like the people of the country of Albania immediately to the South. Ethnic Serbs, who are Orthodox Christians, make up only about 10 percent of the population. Both ethnic groups have legitimate historical claims to the land they share. Kosovo is one of the least developed parts of Yugoslavia, despite the mineral resources and fertile farmland of its mountains and valleys. Many of the people live in tiny villages, and eke out a living farming and raising livestock. Unemployment stands at 70 percent. Yet, this impoverished province is now demanding self-rule, at least, from the Serbian Government. In his televised address Wednesday night, the President tried to explain why the United States has been drawn into this conflict.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: Take a look at this map. Kosovo is a small place, but it sits on a major fault line between Europe, Asia and the Middle East, at the meeting place of Islam and both the Western and Orthodox branches of Christianity. To the South are our allies, Greece and Turkey; to the North, our new democratic allies in Central Europe. All around Kosovo there are other small countries struggling with their own economic and political challenges.

MARGARET WARNER: Kosovo's neighborhood is a volatile region known as the Balkans, the Turkish word for mountains. Geographically, the Balkans extend from the Danube River to the Mediterranean Sea, and between the Adriatic and Black Seas. Politically, it's been made up of an ever-shifting assortment of countries, sometimes independent, sometimes dominated by outside powers. Religious and ethnic wars have been so prevalent, the area's history so fractious, that the region has given rise to a verb -- to "Balkanize," says Compton's dictionary, means "to break up into small, mutually hostile political units." The most long-standing occupation of the Balkans was by the Turkish Ottoman Empire. In 1389, Muslim Turks invading from the South defeated the Orthodox Christian Serbs at a place in Kosovo called "Kossovo Polje," or "Field of Black Birds." The defeat gave birth to centuries of Serbian epic poetry, and helps explain the Serbs' continuing emotional ties to Kosovo. For the next 400 years, the Serbs chafed under Turkish domination. Serbia broke free of the Ottoman Empire in the late 1800's. But conflicts with the advancing Austro-Hungarian Empire from the North helped trigger World War I, when a Bosnian Serb assassinated Austro-Hungarian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo in 1914. The Second World War, when the axis powers occupied the Balkans, was even bloodier for the region. The different ethnic and religious groups chose up sides and perpetrated savage atrocities on one another. The end of the war brought nearly 40 years of peace under the iron-fisted rule of former communist resistance fighter Marshal Josip Broz Tito. He united the region into a single state, Yugoslavia, and granted growing autonomy to Kosovo. In the 1980's, with the death of Tito and the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, instability returned. And as Yugoslavia began to disintegrate, former communists, like Serbian strongman Slobodan Milosevic, began to whip up Serbian nationalism to hold onto power. In 1987, on the anniversary of the battle of "Kossovo Polje," Milosevic traveled to the site and vowed to a crowd of Serbs, "No one will dare beat you again." Milosevic tightened his grip on Kosovo, revoking its autonomy. The Albanian residents, who had grown to be the majority group, resisted, first peacefully, and then, beginning a year ago, with armed resistance.The Serbs responded with massive force. The past year of violence has caused an estimated 2,000 deaths and created a quarter million refugees, mostly Kosovo Albanians who have fled their homes. Now, once again, outside powers have been drawn into another Balkan war.

MARGARET WARNER: We turn now to two experts on this troubled region -- Charles Gati, formerly a professor at Union College and Columbia University, was a European specialist at the State Department in the early 90's, and is now a fellow at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies; and Chuck Sudetic covered the collapse of Yugoslavia for the "New York Times" from 1990 to '95; he is the author of "Blood and Vengeance: One Family's Story of the War in Bosnia." Chuck Sudetic, help us understand this, this region a little more. These people have been killing each other for centuries. Why is this region so unstable historically?

CHUCK SUDETIC: Historically, the region is unstable because it has a legacy of backwardness and we're in an area where the Serbian nationalist ambitions and the Albanian nationalist ambitions have crossed. These people, the Serbs and Albanians, have been at loggerheads over Kosovo for many, many years, but most dramatically in this century.

MARGARET WARNER: And how about the Balkans as a whole?

CHUCK SUDETIC: The Balkans as a whole is a very, very volatile area and has been this century largely as a result of the legacy of backwardness that was left by the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in the -- during the 19th and finally in the early 20th century. We have in that part of the world nationalist struggles, struggles between the nations that have not had a chance to work themselves out as they have had a chance to work themselves out let's say in Western Europe, with the conflict let's say in comparison between the Germans and the French or the Germans and the Czechs, let's say. These conflicts, these borders have pretty much worked themselves out. Down in the Balkans, however, there's a lot of unfinished work in the eyes of the people who live there.

MARGARET WARNER: What's your take on this, Charles Gati, in terms of why this region has been so unstable and continues to be?

CHARLES GATI: Well, previously mentioned was the Ottoman Empire, that in the 19th century was called the "Sick Man of Europe." I think one might say today that Yugoslavia or the Balkans in general is inhabited by the sick children of the sick man of Europe, which is to say a lot of unresolved problems stemming perhaps from two basic causes -- basic factors from the Ottoman Empire. One was that it was an unusually oppressive empire, even by the standards of empires, and that's saying something. The other one is that it was also a very weak empire internally so it compensated in many ways for its internal weakness by suppressing people for centuries so the Serbs, for example, lived under the Ottoman Empire, trying to assert their national identity for some 500 years and couldn't.

MARGARET WARNER: Chuck Sudetic, how important a factor do you think is something else the President mentioned in his address, that the Balkans really sit on this fault line between three major religions, the Catholicism West, the Orthodox - Eastern Orthodox Christianity, and Islam?

CHUCK SUDETIC: The distinctions between the peoples of the Balkans are drawn to a great extent because of religious legacy. The Albanians, many of them converted to Islam during the years of the Turkish rule -- the Serbs, Orthodox Christians; the Croats, Roman Catholics. That said, however, the real problem doesn't lie in religions. These are not sectarian wars that we have going on down there. What we have are conflicts that are based upon nationalist ambitions where nations are defined by the religious legacy of the people who belong to them. Roman Catholics became Croats, Orthodox, at least in terms of the Serbs in Bosnia and in Serbia and in Croatia, became Serbs, and the Muslims became the Muslim Slavs of Bosnia-Herzegovina that we know so well from the war in Bosnia and the Albanians were Albanians before they accepted Islam; and it just shows you that it's an ethnic conflict, not a religious one.

MARGARET WARNER: Do you agree, more ethnic tribal nationalistic than religious?

CHUCK SUDETIC: Absolutely.

CHARLES GATI: Yes, I would, but I would also say that -- that it's a historical conflict in the sense that countries or peoples who for centuries couldn't assert themselves in the 19th Century, when they began do so, they discovered or rediscovered their national identities with a vengeance, and since -- since the territories were not properly defined, there are overlapping territories.

MARGARET WARNER: And we should explain really the lines were drawn by the Western powers.

CHARLES GATI: In most cases that's so.

MARGARET WARNER: And didn't necessarily jibe with the ethnic borders.

CHARLES GATI: Can't, because these peoples have lived intermingled with each other. It's very difficult -- you move from one village to the next. You don't necessarily know who is there, or you talk to somebody, and you don't know what his or her background may be, what his mother -- where his mother comes from and so on, so it's a very complicated region, very difficult to understand from especially an American perspective where the lines are clearly, clearly drawn and understood.

MARGARET WARNER: Chuck Sudetic, Robert Kaplan, whom I'm sure you know who wrote "Balkan Ghost," he wrote in the Atlantic a few years ago that, he said that the illness in the Balkans, the principal illness, he said, was conflicting dreams of past glory, past imperial glory. Do you think that's true? I mean, why is the past so -- seemingly so important in this region?

CHUCK SUDETIC: The past is important in this region especially as we've seen in the last ten years because it gives fertile ground for leaders like Mr. Milosevic to whip up hysteria among his own people, cause great grief to minority Albanians within Serbia for his own political purposes. This is the crux issue. It's -- these -- these so-called ancient hatreds did not explode in and of themselves in Yugoslavia over the last ten years. What we've seen is manipulation of combinations of grievances by political leadership that wanted to maintain itself in power, and one of the exacerbating problems that we've had here is that in its entire history, that part of the world, Kosovo, has never known the rule of law, never known the rule of law. There was no way of working out conflicts in any kind of legal setting. The Albanians today still use the law of blood vengeance to sort out their differences. This is a law that Homer described eight centuries before Christ.

MARGARET WARNER: Describe it.

CHUCK SUDETIC: It's the law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. It's the law that makes it incumbent upon the male members of one family to draw blood from a family that has committed a grievance against it. If my brother-in-law was run over by an oxcart, it would be incumbent on the members of my family to go and kill a male member of the family the guy who was driving the oxcart.This is a very, very ancient way of sorting out and creating social order, and this is just goes to show, you know, the rule of law in this part of the world is an unknown commodity. After World War II, we saw the Serbians on the high horse, under the Serbian secret police, beating up on the Albanians. After 1974, the Albanian -- an Albanian Communist Mafia essentially took control of Kosovo and began repression against the Serbs and what we have today is a backlash against that.

MARGARET WARNER: Go back to this idea of the past being so powerful though, Charles Gati. I mean, what -- would you agree that it does have an unusual hold in this part of the world, people talk about something happening 600 years ago, it's still a major event?

CHARLES GATI: Well, the reason for that is -- is that they couldn't celebrate victory. They had to celebrate defeat, and today, for example, for Serbs, the anniversary of their defeat 600 years ago is a national holiday. It's a different kind of culture. You have to put -- in effect, go and think about this in a different wavelength. You go from AM to FM or some other ways to think about this. It's defeat celebrated as if it were a victory, and those who were defeated in Kosovo at that time is looked on as heroes, and it's a different way of thinking because there was nothing else to celebrate. It's very different from the kind of Western or particularly American culture that you and I are used to.

MARGARET WARNER: And wants to celebrate victory?

CHARLES GATI: Well, of course, of course.

MARGARET WARNER: Yes.

CHARLES GATI: Embarrassed by it, and then it goes even beyond that. It's morally superior to be defeated because you were defeated in the celebrated 1389 defeat, and -- but you're better than the Turks were and therefore you are morally superior, so it's another way of thinking and that's very difficult to break out of mentalities. I don't think it's Milosevic alone here. We're talking about the clash of cultures, and I'm not sure that if Milosevic were overthrown tomorrow his replacement would be significantly better. I'd like to hope so, but I'm not naturally sure.

MARGARET WARNER: So Chuck Sudetic, what do you think -- let me ask it a different way. There is this school of thought and we heard it in the debate about whether to get involved with Bosnia, same with Kosovo, that these people have been killing each other, it's tribal, nothing can be done, they are doomed to repeat this history, you know, as far as the eye can see. One, do you buy that, and if not, what would it take to -- to move beyond this?

CHUCK SUDETIC: I think now what it's going to take to move beyond this situation we're in now is severe pressure upon Mr. Milosevic personally, and this is only supplied now indirectly by the bombing, but severe pressure on him personally to come to the peace table. When he takes an inference from the situation around him that he will lose power if he does not make some kind of a deal on Kosovo, you will find Milosevic at the peace table very, very quickly. That said, however, and I think that until that time comes, it's going to be very difficult for an Albanian to stomach the idea of remaining within Serbia, which is one of the requirements in the peace plan that their people signed in Rambouillet or in Paris in the last month.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Let me just get Mr. Gati just briefly on sort of changing the character of this region.

CHARLES GATI: It will be very difficult, and perhaps I can illustrate the difficulties by one sentence, one observation -- and that observation is that in Serbo-Croatian, as in many of the other languages of the Balkans, the very word "compromise," which is what's needed here, is a dirty word. It's a dirty deal. It translates into a dirty deal. Now, in other languages, too, there is a problem with the word "compromise," but the way it is there, I think suggests the problems ahead.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Thank you both very much.

FOCUS - FAR FROM HOME

JIM LEHRER: And there are local American angles to the Kosovo bombing story. Elizabeth Brackett of WTTW reports on one of them from Chicago.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Over 1,500 angry Serbs and Serbian Americans gathered on Chicago's Daley Plaza this afternoon.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: Stop bombing innocent Serbian civilians and stop bombing them now!

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Anna Pavichevich is one of nearly 300,000 Serbs and Serbian Americans in the Chicago area, the largest number outside of Belgrade. Today, Pavichevich released some of the anger that has been building since Wednesday.

RON ALLEN, NBC News: There are reports of air raid sirens also in Pristina, the capital of Kosovo.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: She and two Serbian American friends stayed home to watch what they had hoped they would never see.

CORRESPONDENT: The attack has actually been underway for some time.

ANN PAVICHEVICH: I thought that after years and years of, you know, being decimated and in some cases even perjured, you know, by members of the media, even by my own government, that I would be able to handle this better.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: [on phone] Hi. I'd like to try to place a call to Belgrade Serbia.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: The afternoon was filled with fruitless attempts to call relatives and friends in Serbia and constant checks with other Serbs here.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: Hello.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: As well as angry reaction to what they were seeing and hearing.

FRIEND: What about the women and children there? They don't care.

PRESIDENT CLINTON: To deter President Milosevic from continuing and escalating his attacks on helpless civilians -

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: Has anybody said anything about the Kosovo Liberation terrorist army? We're acting like they are invisible about the civilians. What about the terrorists?

PRESIDENT CLINTON: This is not risk-free. It carries risks, and I ask for the prayers of all Americans for our men and women in uniform.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: And for the Serbian people that you're bombing -- ask for prayers for them.

[CHOIR SINGING]

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: That evening Anna Pavichevich and her family joined several hundred others at a Serbian Orthodox candlelight service. After a lengthy service in Serbian, the bishop spoke to his troubled flock in English.

METROPOLITAN CHRISTOPHER, Serbian Orthodox Bishop: As citizens of the United States of America, we raise our voices in protest.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: After the service, the bishop spoke out against what he sees as the demonizing of the Serbian people.

METROPOLITAN CHRISTOPHER: We're painted as though we're some sort of monsters, inhuman monsters and totally oblivious to what is happening, and this is simply not true.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Serbian Americans like Desko Nikitovic, who was part of the opposition to Milosevic until he left Serbia in 1991, say the bombing has rallied even Milosevic's opponents.

DESKO NIKITOVIC, Serbian Unity Congress: I oppose Milosevic. I would even say I hate Milosevic, and I would say that most of Serbs hate Milosevic, but this is -- this is the whole point now that we're putting in awkward situation that we all love Kosovo,there is no Serb that would let Kosovo go.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: There are far fewer Albanians than Serbs in the Chicago area, about ten thousand, maybe one or two thousand from Kosovo. They were more likely to be found anxiously following events this week in small groups in restaurants or their apartments, rather than at rallies or in services at churches or mosques.

SHABAN RAMAHNI: The bombing that's going on right now, it's not against Serbia; it's not against Serbian people. The bombing, it is -- the targets are Milosevic's military, machines, so Milosevic and his associates used the military machine for genocide and destruction of properties all over the Former Yugoslavia.

MERGIN LUMANI: I think they should pull away their troops, pull away their killing machines. They should let the outside media go in and what's going on. The latest I heard, they pulled every media that was from the West and the allies from NATO allies out.

DRITA GASHI: That's the only way to back them down, with force, because he's used to -- he's been using force in Kosovo for many years, so that's the only way to pull him down.

AL BERISHA: Milosevic would never back down, even in Bosnia. But once the United States and Western power, you know, took action, and he backed down and that's what's going to happy here in Kosovo. He's going to back down.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: What those around the table feared the most were retaliatory attacks by Serbian troops and police in Kosovo.

DRITA GASHI: I've been in contact with my grandparents today actually, this morning, and last night when America bombed, they were attacked by Serbian neighbors because they live around Serbian neighbors.

KUJTESA KASHTANJEVA: We talked to my aunt that was there and she was crying on the phone, and they are going in and taking young girls and men and who knows where they are or where they have gone or anything. You know, they said they would rather get killed by the NATO bombs than be killed by Serbs.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Kosovo Albanian American Ana Feratha tried to keep working at the Chicago spa she owns when the bombs began to fall on Wednesday. But the tension was too much, and she was soon greeting other Albanian friends at her nearby apartment. All in the room supported the bombing but admitted that it was hard to watch.

ANA FERATHA: You watch war in your living room, and of course I watched different stuff but it's nothing like when it touches you personally. It's very hard.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: For the children, watching brought nightmares.

VARIMYR NEVZADI: I've been having horrible dreams about it, about people dying there, about more bombing going on.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: It was clear that the Serbs and Albanians in Chicago were as far apart as those in the Former Yugoslavia.

JUSEF THAQI: I believe 90 percent of, maybe 100 percent of Albanians, they I think the only solution for them is just independence.

ANNA PAVICHEVICH: Ask a Serb what Kosovo means to them, that's what it means, that when they go, they kiss the ground and they bring back dirt to have with them.

ELIZABETH BRACKETT: Even in Chicago, the tensions between Serb and Albanian neighbors continue to mount.

FOCUS - POLITICAL WRAP

JIM LEHRER: Finally tonight, Shields and Gigot, and to Phil Ponce.

PHIL PONCE: Political analysis now of the Kosovo operation from Syndicated Columnist Mark Shields, and "Wall Street Journal" Columnist Paul Gigot.

Paul, this is now day three of the campaign over Yugoslavia. How do you assess the level of support for the campaign and for what the President is doinghere in -- here in the United States?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think -- I think it's thin, Phil, really do. I think the President made the case late; really only at the beginning of this week did you see a real serious case being made. He made it in consultation with Congress late, and he didn't do -- his people didn't do a very persuasive job on that. I mean, people are giving him the deference that's due a President, and he's had to make a difficult case. This is not something that is easy -- a case to make on national interest grounds. It's predominantly humanitarian, the impulse here, and I think the motive, and I think that that's a harder case to make, particularly to Republicans, and so he's -- he's flying here without -- without a net politically. If something does go wrong, I think -- I think the President is flying alone.

PHIL PONCE: Do you -- do you buy that, Mark, if something goes wrong, for example, earlier on this program National Security Advisor Samuel Berger strongly suggested this could be a long haul kind of a proposition. How -- how long will the American public hang in with the President? The polls right now indicate marginal support.

MARK SHIELDS: Support, not overwhelming support, and I think there's a couple of reasons. One, all wars as Arthur Schlesinger once said are popular for the first 30 days. The shelf life on this one may be shorter. I think that Paul makes a reasonable point that the argument came late. It was not a public debate. It was not over the Congress. It was not like Iraq was in '91 where there was a long extended public debate, and then once we moved and the decision was made, even though it had been a close decision, the country fell in behind. We don't have a sense -- and the President felt compelled on Wednesday night to even go to the map.

PHIL PONCE: That's when the President went on national television.

MARK SHIELDS: Went on national television to point out where places were. One of the interesting -- to me, one of the most interesting political aspects of this, Phil, is that Bill Clinton has been accused by myself included of not having taken a bold, risky political stance since 1993, with this tax increase bill, that his positions have always seemed to be pre-tested and maybe poll-driven. Well, this is one case where it certainly is not. I mean, the President said, Paul said he's flying alone. I think he could be. I think that what's also fascinating is to see the two parties, the Democrats lining up in a more interventionist mode behind the President of their own party -- the Republicans, who had been the internationalist party, especially from the period from Eisenhower through Nixon, Reagan and Bush, now reverting to what had been a little bit more of their more tentative and none interventionist -- if not isolationist.

PHIL PONCE: How about that, Paul, have the parties done a flip as far as when -- the impulse to deploy the military forces?

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I don't think there's coherence across either party on this one. But it is astonishing, let's face it. 47 Democrats voted against George Bush and the Gulf War, where oil, US economic security, real national interest issues were at stake.

PHIL PONCE: Where the connection was ostensibly stronger.

PAUL GIGOT: Well, I think so, the national interest argument was certainly stronger than -- than it is now and yet 42 Democrats this time give the President automatic support on what I think is a weaker -- is a weaker argument. The Republicans are a little more split. I think there are a lot of Republicans who haven't distinguished themselves this week in their response. They are basically ducking for cover or saying "I support the -- the troops, but I don't really like this mission." The strongest Republican, frankly, has been Dole, Bob Dole. He's got a coherent plan on -- on Kosovo, and on the Balkans, and he's backed up Bill Clinton all the way. A couple others, John McCain, Steve Forbes have both sounded sensible on this saying we support the bombing but we have doubts about the strategy that's -- that's being employed. So there's this tension in the Republican Party between the people who -- there is an isolationist trend in part, but there's also the old internationalist side. They just don't trust the President necessarily to carry it out.

PHIL PONCE: Mark, how would you assess overall the level of support in Congress of the President?

MARK SHIELDS: It's not deep. There's a -- there's a real question at any time, Phil, whether US support, either politically or publicly, will survive US casualties -- and mass civilian casualties on the other side. I think that was the case in every really post-Vietnam engagement in the United States.

PHIL PONCE: So are there people in Congress who are sort of waiting to see if something -- something horrible happens, pilots are captured and that sort of thing and then they would come out?

MARK SHIELDS: Sure. Whether they would come out or whether they would melt away and simply not be heard as vocal supporters of the President. I don't think there's any question that there's -- that Bill Clinton is -- is not -- is rolling the dice on this one. This is not a safe bet by any means. Let me pick up on one thing Paul said and that is the Republicans are really tempted here, and I -- I find it fascinating, because Bill Clinton is essentially rolled them on every domestic political issue, from education to Social Security to Medicare to health and he's got the edge. The Republicans have enjoyed a long historic advantage in national security and foreign policy. And now we seem to have the two parties, Bruce Hershenson, the Republican conservative from California, has a brilliant formulation and let me borrow it. He said the Republicans are a big, strong army and they want it to stay home and the Democrats seem to be for a small, lean army but they want it to go everywhere and that seems to be -- the Republicans, when they get this chance of using national security, walk right up to the edge and back off. I do agree with him that the one Republican who has emerged in this has been John McCain. I mean, John McCain is looked to. If -- if foreign policy and national security become central issues in the campaign of 1999 and 2000, then John McCain is the beneficiary.

PHIL PONCE: He is one of the few Republicans, yes, one of the few Republicans in the Republican leadership on the Hill who's had a military record.

MARK SHIELDS: That's right. He's an authentic American hero, and I think he is respected as a thoughtful, as well as responsible voice.

PAUL GIGOT: If you're going to make the case against the President's foreign policy leading up to 2000, I think there's an ample case to be made from China to the Balkans and a lot of different places, but it doesn't help you, I think, to be a Republican who says "I'm going to wash my hands of this. This is the President's foolishness. We shouldn't be involved at all." That sounds to me like you don't -- you aren't thinking seriously about the issue. If you're going to make an argument, you have to say, "Well, I think the executive ought to have some foreign policy leeway, but this is where I think the President is going wrong." That's what McCain is doing, that's what Bob Dole is doing. Some of the other Republicans are saying, "Hey, it's his ticket, you know, he's off for the ride. I'm not going to be there, I'm not on the takeoff or the landing." I think that doesn't help you make your case.

MARK SHIELDS: Who is taking that case?

PAUL GIGOT: I think John Kasich is taking that case; I think Dan Quayle is doing it, and then of course the real isolationists, Pat Buchanan and Gary Bauer, who wants us to, you know, be muscular foreign policy with China but, then, hey, we don't want to do anything in the Balkans.

PHIL PONCE: Real quickly in the time we have left, Mark, is there any indication -- this is the first crisis since the impeachment vote was taken -- any residual effect of the impeachment vote and all the questions that were raised then on the President's ability to act as commander in chief?

MARK SHIELDS: Oh, sure. I mean, the public gives Bill Clinton high marks on conducting foreign policy, just as they do on handling the economy, but there are doubts about Bill Clinton's candor, his openness, with the voters, and there's no question that the prism of impeachment, some on the Republican side, who might in the past have been expected to give the President the benefit of the doubt, this time are more than skeptical, are openly cynical.

PHIL PONCE: And that's where we've got to leave it. Gentlemen, thank you both very much.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: In the other news of this day Dr. Jack Kevorkian was found guilty of second-degree murder by a jury in Pontiac, Michigan. He was convicted of giving a lethal dose of drugs to a terminally ill man. The incident was videotaped and broadcast on national television. He'll be sentenced next month. In Washington, Treasury Secretary Rubin criticized a republican budget plan passed last night by both the House and Senate. The Clinton administration and Republicans remain at odds over taxes and on how to fix Social Security and Medicare. And overseas, 35 people were killed in a fire in a seven-mile tunnel connecting France and Italy. Most of the dead were trapped in their cars and other vehicles. The first fire broke out in a truck, and then spread. And to update our major story before we go, a third wave of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia began in daylight and was continuing into the night. There were no immediate reports of casualties. But there was word of more atrocities by Serbs against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. On the NewsHour tonight, National Security Adviser Berger said NATO officials were outraged, and agreed the aerial assault must continue, and he said the targets included Serbian army and police positions, along with air defenses. We'll see you online, and again here Monday evening. Have a nice weekend. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.