The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer

JIM LEHRER: Good evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. On the NewsHour tonight, day six of the bombing over Kosovo; we have a NewsMaker interview with NATO Commander General Wesley Clark; analysis by columnists Jim Hoagland, Trudy Rubin, and Fareed Zakaria; and a Terence Smith look at how the news of the conflict is getting out. We'll have the other news of this Monday at the end of the program tonight.

FOCUS - OPERATION ALLIED FORCE

JIM LEHRER: NATO carried out bombing missions against Yugoslav targets for a sixth day. Allied fighter jets and bombers began a second phase aimed at stopping Serb attacks on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Tom Bearden narrates our opening report.

TOM BEARDEN: NATO aircraft have a new set of targets, Serbian troops and vehicles in addition to the air defense sites they've been attacking for the last five days. Late today the Pentagon announced it's sending additional B-1B and B-52 bombers to the conflict as well. The alliance has now deployed the A-10 Wart Hog, a slow, low-flying aircraft more vulnerable to ground fire. Specifically designed to destroy tanks, the attack jet was highly successful in the Persian Gulf War.

KENNETH BACON, Pentagon Spokesman: We've started first with the infrastructure and the supply lines, and we will move as quickly as we can to actual forces. The problem is that although we are going to hit increasingly staging areas where we find them, as I tried to indicate, there aren't large concentrations of troops at this stage.

TOM BEARDEN: The change in strategy is a response to widespread reports that Serbian ground forces have dramatically stepped up the ethnic cleansing of the rebel Kosovo province.

DAVID WILBY, Royal Air Force: Major attacks last night took place at Dania Samania, where we struck a deployed combat group, the 243rd,which participated in ethnic cleansing and other deplorable activities in South Kosovo.

TOM BEARDEN: Serbian Radio described last night's bombing over the Kosovo capital Pristina as the heaviest so far in the air campaign that began last Wednesday. Yugoslav Television showed pictures of a fiercely burning police station, saying it had been hit by a NATO missile. Refugees are streaming out of the area by the tens of thousands into Albania, Macedonia, and Bosnia, saying Serbian paramilitary forces insist ethnic Albanian Kosovars either leave or die. NATO also said five ethnic Albanian leaders have been executed, including a member of the Kosovar delegation to the peace talks in France that failed earlier this month. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said accusations that the bombing campaign itself had accelerated the Serbian actions are untrue.

TONY BLAIR, Prime Minister, Great Britain: There have been 2,000 people killed since last summer in the Albanian part of Kosovo. So nobody should be in any doubt that this repression, this brutality has been going on for a long period of time.

TOM BEARDEN: Russia strongly opposes the bombardment of a fellow Slav state and decides the Serbs are pursuing a policy of genocide in Kosovo. President Boris Yeltsin ordered Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov and his foreign and defense ministers to travel to Belgrade tomorrow for talks with Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic. The Yugoslav deputy prime minister welcomed the Russian initiative.

VUK DRASKOVIC, Deputy Prime Minister, Yugoslavia: That's good news. I don't know the subject of the talks, probably to try to establish some diplomatic initiative to find a way to stop this tragedy, this aggression. As far as I'm concerned, I think we need, even under the bombs, peace and a peaceful settlement. But we cannot talk under the bombs, no negotiations under the bombs.

TOM BEARDEN: A Yugoslav news agency reported late today that NATO aircraft bombed the area around a Belgrade industrial suburb Monday night Belgrade time. The area has chemical plants and oil refinery, and military barracks.

JIM LEHRER: NATO officials said refugees are arriving at the Kosovo border with neighboring countries now at a rate of 4,000 an hour. They said it was causing a humanitarian catastrophe. NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana said the European Union would coordinate aid to the affected countries.

JIM LEHRER: We have two reports on the refugee crisis from Colin Baker and Mark Austin of Independent Television News.

MARK AUSTIN: It is an exodus of anguish, a pitiful procession by people who say they were forced from their homes at gun point in the dark of night. It is impossible to confirm what these people told us today, but they all told us the same story about the Serb paramilitaries operating in Kosovo.

MARK AUSTIN: What are they saying to you?

WOMAN: They say that we have - we must leave our house. You want NATO, you go to NATO. Here with Serbia, you never come back - you're never going to come back here.

MARK AUSTIN: And if you don't go, what would they do?

WOMAN: They kill - if you refuse.

MARK AUSTIN: Those without transport have walked for up to four days, a desperate trudge through the snow. Montenegro's officials here at the border fear a humanitarian catastrophe. Many of these people will have no homes to go back to.

SECOND WOMAN: They burn many, many house. It's terrible, terrible situation. Down in -- all Kosovo it's very terrible.

MARK AUSTIN: And so the nearest Montenegrin town to the border is quickly filling up with thousands of people with nowhere to go, putting strain on this tiny republic, part of Yugoslavia but more pro-western, and now bearing the burden of the increasing tragedy of Kosovo.

NEWSMAKER

JIM LEHRER: Now our NewsMaker interview with NATO's top commander, General Wesley Clark. I talked to him at his headquarters in Belgium shortly before noon Eastern Time.

JIM LEHRER: General Clark, welcome.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Thank you, Jim.

JIM LEHRER: First, sir, what can you tell us about the latest air strikes, the ones up today, the ones that are still underway?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, we are in phase two of the air campaign right now. We're hitting principally two sets of targets. We're continuing to work against some of the targets in phase one. And we are going against the targets on the ground inside Kosovo that are contributing to the MUP and VJ forces and the paramilitary forces that are conducting that repression. And, insofar as possible, we're trying to hit those forces.

JIM LEHRER: And these are - you're talking about - you're trying - you're going after ground forces of the Serb Army, is that correct?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: That's exactly right, and the Serb ministerial specialist police that are part of Milosevic's security apparatus.

JIM LEHRER: And up till now you had not been going after them, right, that's why this is called a second phase, up till now you had been going after air defense targets and that sort of thing?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: We did some limited early strikes against a few of the command and control nodes that were dual purpose, so to speak, that did both air defense and ground. But now, with the advent of phase two, we've shifted much more intensively into going after these forces on the ground inside Kosovo, and their support forces that are around Kosovo.

JIM LEHRER: And this has been brought about specifically by the actions they've taken against ethnic Albanian civilians?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, that's exactly right and by the fact that they haven't stopped these actions. And, as we said, this was a systemic - it was a systematic - excuse me - a systematic and progressive campaign that was going to attack and degrade and disrupt them. And it'll go on as long as we need it to go on. We're taking their armed forces structure apart, and that's what we're about right now.

JIM LEHRER: Is it correct to say, General, that their attacks on the ethnic Albanian civilians actually intensified once the air strikes began?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think it's more correct to say that their attacks on ethnic Albanian civilians were part of a long-developed plan to accomplish a number of possible purposes. And they began before the air strikes actually commenced, and they've continued to put reinforcements in, in an effort to try to accelerate the ethnic cleansing and the atrocities that are going on in there, so they can try to get away with it before the full weight of the NATO air strikes impact their ability to conduct their ethnic cleansing.

JIM LEHRER: Give us some examples, sir, of some of the atrocities that have been committed in the last three or four days.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, we're seeing the evidence of this now through open sources, and we're getting a few sensitive sources. We're talking about key Albanian leaders hunted out and executed murder style outside their homes, sometimes in the presence of their families. We're talking about civilians who are living in villages being surrounded by the VJ and MUP armed forces, being told they have to stay in their homes. Snipers are placed upon the rooftops to shoot people who try to get out. And then the hit squads come through, pick out the people they want to kill, everybody else is beaten up, robbed, kicked out of their homes, and the homes are burned. We've seen evidence, and we've got some imagery on numerous villages, in fact, that have been put to the torch by this ethnic cleansing process in Central and Western and Southwestern Kosovo. And then, of course, we're all seeing the plight that's in the television of these poor people that have been ejected across the border from their own home and thrown out. I think that exemplifies what's going on in there, but there's a -- we believe -- a wave of additional people trying to get out of that country in response to the terrorism that's being inflicted on them.

JIM LEHRER: Just for the record, when you say VJ and MUP forces, what are you speaking about?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I'm speaking about the military of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia - that's the regular armed forces - and then the MUP forces are the special police forces, the heavily-armed security troops.

JIM LEHRER: And these - the stories that you just told and others -- those are now confirmed. These are no longer scuttlebutt or rumor or whatever. You have concrete evidence that this sort of thing is happening, is that correct?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: I have many different sources of many different stories of this type. Whether any of these meet any judicial standard of evidence or not is for people other than ourselves to decide. But based on the previous pattern of Serb behavior in Bosnia and Croatia, and what we've seen previously here in Kosovo, there are too many of these stories, they're too widespread to be easily discredited. They have to be accepted. In fact, we know from people who have gotten out that it's chaos in many parts of Kosovo today.

JIM LEHRER: You do not believe that this is in retribution for the NATO air strikes?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Absolutely not. This is a part of his plan that he's trying to execute to get ahead of the impact of the NATO air strikes before we can degrade his ability to do it.

JIM LEHRER: Do you have any feeling of disappointment that you were unable to stop this before it got to this point? In other words, a lot of people have died since the air strikes began five days ago, and that was the number one goal, was it not, to stop the very thing that is now occurring?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, any human being would be disappointed and feel terrible that this is going on, and all of us certainly do, but I have to tell you that the objectives of the air campaign were to deter the onset of this humanitarian tragedy or, if it occurred, to degrade the forces and retard his ability to do it. Jim, we never thought that through air power we could stop these killings on the ground; it's not possible. You can't stop paramilitaries going house to house with supersonic aircraft flying overhead and dropping bombs; we all knew this. The person who has to stop this is President Milosevic. These people are under his command; they're operating on his instructions; and he has to be persuaded to turn it off.

JIM LEHRER: Did you tell President Clinton and the other political leaders of NATO, look, if you - what you just said - there is no way we can stop that kind of thing with a bombing campaign alone?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: That's been said many times, and everybody understands that.

JIM LEHRER: As you know, General, there are major new discussions going on here in the United States about, wait a minute, maybe if we really want to stop it, we're going to have to introduce ground forces as a matter not of policy but as a matter of fact -- if you do want to stop it, is that going to have to be necessary?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think it's a matter of some discussion because if you look at the way ground forces operate, it takes a certain time to get them there. And what he's doing is he's working very, very fast. He's trying to present the world with a fait accompli - he being President Milosevic - is trying to present the world with a fait accompli. His goal is to change the demographics of Kosovo - one way or the other - and he's doing it, and he's doing it pretty quickly, so I don't think that at the time this began or today that we have right now an easily available option; it's not either we'll use air or ground. I think we have to look at the reality. And the reality of it is this thing is moving very, very fast.

JIM LEHRER: Faster than you anticipated?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: No. I expected it to move very fast. We knew as we watched the Serbs move through the Rambouillet process - we saw the build-up of Serb forces down there; we saw the increase of the specialist police, the MUP, down there; we saw them putting the plans in place; we saw them starting their operations, even while the discussions were underway at Rambouillet. We saw them taking advantage of the week's pause in there to intensify their operations. It wasn't accidental. It wasn't in response to provocations from the UCHIKA, the UCK. It was part of a long-term plan. They've always believed that the real solution to this was a military solution, and so we watched it as it gathered momentum; it wasn't surprising.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. And you back in '94 and '95, when you were part of the negotiating team, you spent a lot of time with Milosevic personally. What did you personally believe it would take to get him to give in, in other words, to do what NATO wanted? Did you think that this - that bombing can and would accomplish that?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I think there are a lot of different estimates that have been made, and, of course, you never know what it's going to take to make a person like Milosevic decide to change his mind. He's always been a very tough bargainer. He always says he'll never agree to something. And, yet, we found him in certain cases in Bosnia able to agree to things. He allowed the unification of Sarajevo as part of the Federation, rather than trying to keep a Serb part of it. He agreed to the arbitration of Brcko. So he made a lot of accommodations when his personal interests and his survival weren't at stake. In this case we knew that he would be much more tenacious, but we still don't know what the answer is to what's going to change his mind. He's trying to present us with a fait accompli. We have really two courses of action that we're operating on right now militarily. One the one hand, we're trying to do everything we can to degrade the speed at which that anti-humanitarian juggernaut is moving across Kosovo and generating refugees and human tragedies. And on the other hand, we're taking out things that I think he does value, which is his armed forces and his ministerial police and the installations that provide the protection and prestige to Yugoslavia.

JIM LEHRER: This new phase that really started, I guess, today, it is aimed, is it more intense than you had originally planned on this particular second phase, in other words, of going after all the Serb forces in Kosovo? I mean, have you stepped it up because of what has happened in the last few days?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, we're very responsive; we're very adaptable; and we're doing our very best to cope with this situation, but I just -- I want to repeat two things, Jim, that have been said a lot here: Number one, these operations entail a certain degree of risk. We've seen that already. And so there's no risk-free military operations for our forces or for the people on the ground. And secondly, we never thought that air power could actually halt and prevent these activities on the ground. We knew that we could have an impact on it, we might deter it, we might degrade it, we might slow it down, disrupt it, and we'll make him pay a price for doing it, but ultimately, he's the man who has to order it to halt.

JIM LEHRER: So any American who's watching this who thinks that air strikes alone are going to stop this carnage, they're just wrong, they've just gotten the wrong idea.

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: That's right. I think we've been very clear in saying that all along.

JIM LEHRER: Yes. Now, General, there's a report today from a Russian official that says 1,000 - at least 1,000 Serb civilians have been killed in the air strikes. Can you add or subtract anything from that statement?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I can't. But I think you have to evaluate it based on the source. And knowing what the targets are that we've struck, the care with which we planned those targets, being able to account for almost every bomb that's dropped, I think that's a figure that's greatly exaggerated.

JIM LEHRER: And do you have any feel for how much damage the air strikes have inflicted on the total, the total picture of Milosevic and his forces at this point?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, we've done a considerable amount of harm to his infrastructure, we have been able to operate through his air defense envelope and do what we wanted to do. But this is a campaign that's a long way from being over militarily. We knew this wasn't going to be a three- or four-day, one or two bomb affair. This is a very, very serious, tough military operation, and to be effective, it's going to have to be a sustained military operation.

JIM LEHRER: So you didn't expect, you personally did not expect Milosevic to cave in after four or five days, and anybody who did, they weren't on the same wave length with you, is that correct?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, one can - one never knows for sure exactly what someone like President Milosevic is going to do. And so, of course, we would have liked to have him change his mind before the air raids ever struck. Maybe he didn't believe we were serious, or maybe he just believed he would ride it out, and we'd like to say that one more day and he may change his mind; that may happen. I don't know. But I'm not in the business now in this position of trying to predict his response to any specific act. We're in the business of trying to run a very serious and professional air campaign that's directed at some very concrete objectives, and we're trying to change reality on the ground.

JIM LEHRER: You spoke of risk, General Clark. Now, you go into the second phase. Now that does involve NATO planes flying lower than they have been flying up till now, correct?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, I'm not going to make any commitments on anything like that, or discuss any operational principles. I've seen a lot of speculation in the press about this, Jim. But, you know, we're going to take the risks that are appropriate and prudent to accomplish the mission; we're going to weigh these factors off on a day by day and hour by hour basis, and we're going to do what's right, and that's about all I can say about things like how low we're going to fly.

JIM LEHRER: Sure. Generally, before we go, General, are you satisfied with this campaign up till now? Has it gone just about the way you had planned it, or thought it would go; is it a little worse, a little better? Can you give us some feel, as somebody who knows a lot more about this than a lot of the other people involved?

GEN. WESLEY CLARK: Well, first of all, let me tell you that it's gone right on schedule. This is exactly what all of us anticipated. And let me just tell you how proud I am of the men and women who are serving under me in NATO and in the US forces over here. They're doing an absolutely fantastic job. There's a lot of very brave, very hard working, very competent, dedicated men and women out there. And my heart goes out to those airmen who are out there every night in harm's way. They're doing a fantastic job and all of America and NATO should be proud of the airmen of this alliance for what they're doing; they're doing great.

JIM LEHRER: Okay. General Clark, thank you very much.

FOCUS - WHAT NOW?

JIM LEHRER: Some analysis now of what General Clark said and other developments in the story and to Margaret Warner.

MARGARET WARNER: And joining us are three foreign affairs columnists: Jim Hoagland of the "Washington Post;" Trudy Rubin of the "Philadelphia Inquirer;" and Fareed Zakaria, managing editor of "Foreign Affairs" and a contributing editor of "Newsweek."

Jim Hoagland, you just heard General Clark say, This is exact -- it's gone right on schedule, this military operation -- this is exactly what all of us anticipated. Does it look that way to you?

JIM HOAGLAND: Well, I found General Clark a little less persuasive on that point than on some of the other things he said. It's hard for me to imagine that we really expected to have the kind of humanitarian catastrophe that seems to be occurring and that General Clark himself reported this occurring in Kosovo at this point. There seems to have been an appalling lack of preparations for a very predictable set of events that we are now facing. But having said that, I think it's important to underline that he's right in the sense that we now have to see this through. The administration has launched, along with the NATO allies, an air campaign that may yet work. They're applying limited power for relatively limited goals. They're trying to take away the ammunition, the gasoline, the communications that Milosevic's forces needs to continue their campaign, their offensive. And it's possible that that can be done within the space of a week or two, as the General suggested. I think it's very important that we stay the course, that we not try to declare a false victory too soon, that the missing element in much of the policy has been a certain moral responsibility that we have now undertaken to the people of Kosovo.

MARGARET WARNER: Fareed Zakaria, how does this operation look to you so far? What's your assessment?

FAREED ZAKARIA: Well, Margaret, militarily it seems to me that NATO is doing a superb job. The American military in particular is doing the kind of first-rate job we have all come to expect. But politically, clearly, things are spiraling somewhat. You now have a mass exodus out of Kosovo into three areas: Macedonia, Albanian, Montenegro -- and permanently destabilized the politics of these three areas. Now, the one thing we know about refugees in the Balkans is they tend not to go home; despite all the guarantees of the Dayton Peace Accords, very few refugees have gone home from Bosnia. So what's likely to happen here is a permanent political instability in the region in addition to permanent humanitarian crises, because these refugee camps, after all, will become endemic to the area. So it seems to me very unlikely that any of this had been predicted. Politically, as I say, the spiral is probably not over yet because the instability will tend to spread.

MARGARET WARNER: Trudy Rubin, does it look that way to you, that already this operation is almost generating the kind of instability that the President said we're going into this to try to prevent?

TRUDY RUBIN: Yes, it actually does look like that to me. What surprises me is that given the troop buildup even before this air war began, it surprises me that this was not anticipated. And what I worry about is that Milosevic basically has a hold on the situation. Another couple of weeks and at the rate refugees are flowing out, I think the anticipation is that in 40 days you might have no more Kosovars. So he's in a position, he could just call a halt. And he could say, well, we have to negotiate over this humanitarian crisis and offer to partition Kosovo, but I think that by holding the refugee card he is in a very commanding position.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, Jim Hoagland, yet, we heard General Clark also say essentially that Milosevic is trying to create a fait accompli on the ground and that he's doing it very, very fast. What can NATO do about that problem?

JIM HOAGLAND: Well, I think clearly NATO has to now shift into a much more active bombing, strafing of Serb troops on the ground. From General Clark's comments and from the other briefings today, I draw the sense that we are still hitting the infrastructure of the troops, rather than the troops themselves.

MARGARET WARNER: Like barracks or headquarters in the field in Kosovo, but not actually going after brigades going along the road?

JIM HOAGLAND: That's right. Because obviously there's increased risk, and we want to be very careful and protect the lives of our pilots as best we can, but at the same time, I think the kind of disaster that's occurring on the ground calls for NATO to accelerate quite rapidly the use of the A-10, the use of other weapons systems that can hurt directly the troops that are committing the massacres. The second thing to note I think from what General Clark and others said, air power alone cannot do it. We need then to move to a very active diplomatic campaign. We have to try to reengage Milosevic in a diplomatic negotiation and maneuver. I think the fact that Prime Minister Primakov of Russia is going to Yugoslavia tomorrow may prevent -- or may present an opportunity to do just that. I wouldn't dismiss that at all. I think it's important to note, as well, the European Union countries that are in NATO and are supporting us have held together very well. Public opinion is running at 60 percent in favor in Britain, France of all places, and in Germany. We have some cards to play.

MARGARET WARNER: Fareed Zakaria, do you agree with Jim Hoagland that really NATO needs a two-faced approach both intensifying further the military operation and also trying to reengage diplomatically at this stage?

FAREED ZAKARIA: Well, truly, I think that very soonif this continues, NATO faces a very difficult decision, which is to really decide whether or not the fate of Kosovo is in the national interest of the NATO countries and in particular for the United States in its national interest. If it is, then we must decide what our political objective is, which would have to be an independent or essentially independent Kosovo, and we would have to take all means necessary to make that happen, which would probably mean an intensified military campaign, arming the Kosovars, setting up base camps in Macedonia and Albanian, probably, in effect, fighting a contra war against Serbia to free this province and give it independence.

MARGARET WARNER: So you're talking about everything short of actual US ground forces in Kosovo, but everything else militarily?

FAREED ZAKARIA: I think we might even have to use US ground forces but more in the role of training and providing logistics and supply. I think that's the decision in some ways that NATO has hoped it will not have to make by going the air power route. I don't think it will work, and I think it will have to ask itself, is it the mission of NATO to create an independent Kosovo? And is that in its national interest? If it decides it is, then it has to do everything possible.

MARGARET WARNER: Trudy Rubin, do you agree that that's going to be, if we stay on the military for a moment now, that that's going to be the choice facing NATO and the United States fairly soon?

TRUDY RUBIN: I think that it's very hard to get away from the ground troops question because air power clearly cannot protect the Kosovars. And when we were in Bosnia and used air power, the Croats and the Bosnian Muslims were fighting on the ground, and they were the ground troops. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be any preparation being made for the use of ground troops, which makes me very leery about even advocating that.

MARGARET WARNER: Well, that's right. We heard General Clark say essentially to Jim that it would take a long time to get that prepared.

TRUDY RUBIN: Yes. Now, I'm not a military expert, but some people have told me there are things that could be done in the shorter term. For example, there are 10,000 troops in Macedonia who were supposed to go in as peacekeepers. You could airlift in heavy equipment for them. They could be joined by airborne troops being dropped into Kosovo if the aim was to carve out a small area that would be a safe zone. But on the other hands, that doesn't seem to make much sense because the area near the Macedonian border has already been cleansed. And so if you had a safe zone there, how could people get there? So it's very hard to see what the military strategy would be if you were going to use ground troops. And yet, if you don't, I think what you're going to be confronted with is a cleansed Bosnia, in which case your options are either to call it victory and go home, which is a debacle for NATO right before its anniversary, or to get very intensely into diplomatic negotiations, which means basically you have to go to Milosevic or use Primakov, the Russians whom we've dissed. And you have to go to Milosevic when he can then say, "All right. I'll pull back my troops," because he's already cleansed most of Bosnia. And then -- I mean - sorry -- most of Kosovo - and then - Freudian slip -- both cases -- and then he can bargain for the return of some refugees or humanitarian assistance. So I think we're in a terrible situation.

MARGARET WARNER: All right. Jim Hoagland, you raised this negotiation possibility and Primakov. What are really your expectations? One, are you essentially agreeing with General Clark that it's going to take Milosevic to order this to stop? And, if so, should the United States be in a position of offering something essentially in return, of dialing back its definition of victory in some manner?

JIM HOAGLAND: Well, I think the deal that, in fact, is on the table that was reached at Rambouillet and offered to Milosevic is not a bad deal for Milosevic.

MARGARET WARNER: But he doesn't see it that way.

JIM HOAGLAND: That he should take it; he doesn't see it that way now. Another week might enable him to see it a little more clearly. And I think the fact that Primakov is going there just as the IMF has announced an almost agreement, which is a good place to be -- they've almost agreed to provide another $4.8 billion to Russia -- he's got to know and it should be made very clear to him that his performance in Belgrade on Tuesday will determine whether or not Russia is going to get that aid. The United States can block that aid in the IMF if we want to. And if he, the Russians, do not produce a strong push on Milosevic at this point, I'm not sure that aid should be forthcoming. I think again we do have cards to play. We have diplomatic, economic, and military cards still to play. The biggest single tactical error we have made and are continuing to make is to rule out the use of ground troops, to tell Milosevic that he does not have to fear that. We should stop doing that.

MARGARET WARNER: Fareed Zakaria, what do you think -- first of all, of course we don't know what the US Government has told Primakov before his mission tomorrow, but do you think we should - the United States and NATO should still be insisting on an end to the slaughter or the massacre or the driving of these refugees and also Milosevic being willing to essentially accept the frame work of this Rambouillet agreement, which includes of course NATO troops on the ground? In other words, should we stick to that?

FAREED ZAKARIA: I think in all honesty if that is the goal, it is very unlikely that Primakov will be the agent or the broker who makes this happen. Primakov is not in there as NATO's representative. Primakov is essentially there to try to cut a deal quite different from the one NATO proposed. Remember, this is the regime that brutally suppressed the secessionist movement in Chechnya. The Russians do not have any incentive to try to provide quasi independence or hyper autonomy or independence for the Kosovars. So they will probably try to present a different deal, one that re-negotiates the issue of NATO ground troops, probably gives less autonomy than Rambouillet did, things like that. NATO will have to decide whether or not to take that on the basis, as I said, of whether or not it really wants to go through with the alternative, which will be a deepening, deepening involvement in this conflict. I think, in a way, if Primakov comes up with something that is a reasonable starting point, it is something that NATO should consider very seriously because I don't think that actually most of the countries in NATO have thought through the level of commitment they would have to make and the political instability that supporting a independent Kosovo means.

MARGARET WARNER: Trudy Rubin, we don't have a lot of time left; but what's your view on whether NATO should be open to something like that?

TRUDY RUBIN: I agree with Fareed, but I think there are certain things that would have to be part of that deal. For one thing, I think what would be extremely destabilizing if you have refugees forced to stay in Macedonia where there's a large Albanian minority already and in Montenegro, which Milosevic wants to destabilize, and in Albania, which is poor and on the ropes. So if there were any kind of a deal that could be concocted, I think you would have to have a provision for refugees to go home. In addition, I don't see any chance of getting Rambouillet now, so I think that it' going to have to be a deal that's less salable to the Kosovars, and then America is going to have to be in a position of pressuring them. But frankly, I think at this point a diplomatic deal is better than the alternative because I don't think there's the political will for ground troops, although I think it should have been considered before we started the air war.

MARGARET WARNER: Okay. Well, thank you all three very much.

FOCUS - MEDIA WAR

JIM LEHRER: And now to that separate battle over information in Yugoslavia. Media Correspondent Terence Smith has that story.

TERENCE SMITH: Over the last several months, the Government of Slobodan Milosevic has cracked down hard on the independent Yugoslav media, fining some papers, closing others, and imposing rigid censorship. But technology in the form of the Internet has come to the rescue of some of the most fiercely independent organizations. Radio B92, which has been a thorn in the side of the Milosevic government for years, had its Belgrade transmitter turned off last week, but it has continued to file live reports daily over the worldwide web, including some in English.

SPOKESMAN: Belgrade's day-long state-of- bomb alert finally ended at 7:40 PM. The city had been put on alert at 10:20 this morning. No strikes were reported in the Belgrade area during the day.

TERENCE SMITH: Last week, B92 covered its own shutdown by the government and the detainment of its feisty editor in Chief, Veran Matic.

SPOKESMAN: B92 was taken off the air at 2:50 this morning. Veran Matic, the station's editor in chief, was taken away by police, and arriving at the station, he was held for more than eight hours without questioning.

TERENCE SMITH: After his release, B92 broadcast video of the editor's news conference via the Internet. B92 is not the only Yugoslav news organization on the web. The independent Beta Daily News was reporting that air strikes were continuing today. The "Kosovar Press," a paper run by the Kosovo Liberation Army, is also getting its word out on the web. Today it reported on what it said was a major massacre and followed up with a list of victims' names. And the Yugoslav government has its own web site in which it describes what it calls the media war against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. At a news conference in Washington last week, Ann Cooper, director of the Committee to Protect Journalists, spoke of the struggles of the Yugoslavian independent press.

ANN COOPER: Now, I want to emphasize that's what's happening to the foreign correspondents there covering the conflict right now is what the independent Serb media has been living through for years now, and yet somehow they have survived, and they've survived because of their courage.

TERENCE SMITH: Besides courage, ingenuity has helped as well. Radio B-92 pioneered the Internet outlet in 1996. During anti-government street demonstrations, the radio was forced off the air, but continued broadcasting with a loudspeaker outside its Belgrade offices.

SPOKESMAN: Hello.

TERENCE SMITH: During the 1996 shutdown, B92 devised a system whereby it sent audio files to the BBC, which downloaded the files and rebroadcast them back into Yugoslavia. This actually increased B92's reach, because the western broadcaster had stronger transmitters. Today B92 is using an Internet provider in Amsterdam that sends its site to other mirror sites around the globe and to the BBC World Service, which is retransmitting it via satellite back to Yugoslavia. And for the last two days, an Austrian national radio station has been broadcasting B92's reports over the air to Belgrade, the Balkans, and beyond.

TERENCE SMITH: Now for more on the situation confronting the independent media in Yugoslavia, we turn to one Serbian journalist and two Americans who are keeping a close watch. Vesna Radivojevic is an independent Serbian journalist. She is senior political editor for "Glas Yavnoste," a Belgrade newspaper that is still publishing daily. Paul McCarthy handles the Balkans program for the National Endowment for democracy. The Endowment has often provide support for the independent media in Yugoslavia, including Radio B92. And Marilyn Greene is a journalist, an executive director of the World Press Freedom Committee. Welcome to you all. Vesna, let me begin with you by asking you what you have heard from your colleagues about the situation the media is operating under in Belgrade.

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: Well, the only thing I know about the situation in Belgrade can reach through E-mail and very rarely through the telephone and colleagues assure me that things are going normally as if something can be normal under the bombs there. And they are, all the independent media are the under strong censorship. And they have to underwent -- they have to put the articles there that are written in the Ministry of Information and when they approve that articles, only then they can print it. So you can imagine what is going on down in Serbia. So far as far as I know, the people in Kosovo are in much greater danger because their lives are really in risk.

TERENCE SMITH: Can you give me, Vesna, an example of the sort of censorship? I gather that you're actually supposed to label references to Americans or to NATO.

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: Yes. When you are writing about NATO, you have to say that they are aggressors, that they are doing crime to Serbian people, and when you are talking about ethics, it's only the aggression against the Serbian nation.

TERENCE SMITH: And the Americans?

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: The Americans is Neo Nazi Americans.

TERENCE SMITH: Neo Nazis?

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: Yes.

TERENCE SMITH: Marilyn Greene, when you listen to this, what's your sense of the situation as far as the flow of information in Yugoslavia?

MARILYN GREENE: Well, it's pretty clear that the journalists in Kosovo and the rest of Serbia have been given a choice, a rather unpleasant choice, to either print and publish and do as they're told, or to be put out of business or worse. We've now seen the beginning of physical attacks, murders on journalists. It's a terrible dilemma, and they're having to make that choice.

TERENCE SMITH: Paul McCarthy, we've referred to Radio B92, and the setup piece, I spoke a few minutes ago with the head of Radio Free Europe in Prague. And he advises me that as of Friday, and since Friday, he doesn't think B92 is independent anymore. He think it's Serbian-control based on the content of their reporting. He feels they've been intimidated to such a degree that you could no longer call it independent. Is that your sense, as well?

PAUL McCARTHY: Well, I mean to underline what Marilyn has just said, these journalists are faced with a choice basically, either they broadcast particular types of news and information, or they're going to be forced off the air. If I could just underline a point, this has been going on for quite some time now. There was a passage of a draconian media law by the Yugoslav Government back in October 1998, which basically said that any news outlet which is spreading "fear and defeatism or lies against the Serbian state" would be forced off the air. And so journalists have been confronting this question for quite some time. Excuse me. B92 has changed the way it is reporting the news for the time being. It has dropped references to foreign news organizations, news coming out of that. And it is not reporting on much on the situation in Kosovo.

TERENCE SMITH: And, Marilyn Greene, what would be the significance of that if, in fact, they have pulled in their horns?

MARILYN GREENE: Well, if I may first add one thing, under this law, which has been executed more and more ferociously in recent months, there are exorbitant fines imposed on media in the country. It's another form of warfare on independent journalism. It's just putting them out of business. The fines that have been levied against the newspapers in Pristina are up in the millions now. And this has been a very effective tool of the government.

TERENCE SMITH: Fines that the papers can't afford.

MARILYN GREENE: They can't even begin to afford them.

TERENCE SMITH: Vesna, let me ask you this. I know I should explain that you were here in the United States on what was to be a relatively brief visit last week. Are you concerned now about going back?

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: I planned to get back to Yugoslavia a week ago -- actually by the end of this week. And now I don't know when shall I come back to my country so of course I'm very concerned.

TERENCE SMITH: Are you concerned about your physical safety and well-being there?

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: I'm a little bit ashamed to speak about my, you know, safety because I am pretty safe here in the states because my colleagues in Yugoslavia is the one who is in real danger.

TERENCE SMITH: If the Radio B92 has been intimidated to the point that it has essentially sanitized all its reporting, what would be the significance of that in terms of the flow of information there?

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: I'm not sure that I quite understand you, but you are actually asking me the importance of B92 for the Belgrade public?

TERENCE SMITH: Yes.

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: B92 are always and were always the most important source of information for the most people in Belgrade. And we were, you know, they are active for more than nine years. And we have lots of crisis. And the B92 was always the, you know, primarily our source of information.

TERENCE SMITH: Paul McCarthy, what's the situation in Kosovo, itself? There was an execution of a major editor there of the Albanian newspaper.

PAUL McCARTHY: Yes. The situation is extremely dire. Beyond a crackdown on the media, the independent media is being actively exterminated. We can safely say that at this point. The editor in chief of the major Albanian language daily newspaper, "Kohad DeTore," Baton Haju was executed yesterday apparently by Serb forces after attending the funeral of a prominent Albanian human rights lawyer. So we are very, very concerned about this. "Kohad DeTore," the newspaper's offices have been burnt to the ground. And the publisher, Vaton Suroi, who was part of the Albanian delegation to Rambouillet and Paris, has gone into hiding.

TERENCE SMITH: Marilyn Greene, what -- if this is all, so and it does appear to be so, all these reports, what's the significance for the people of Yugoslavia for reaching their own decisions about Milosevic, about his course of action, about continued support for him?

MARILYN GREENE: The situation is very serious because the people inside Serbia are not getting the same information that even you and I are, and we know that standing here we feel outside the circle because we're not seeing it with our own eyes, but the people inside Serbia, believe it or not are getting less information than we on the outside are. The people in downtown Belgrade don't know for sure what some of the bombings are. They don't know where they're falling. They don't know what the target is. They don't know what the result is. And Pristina down in Kosovo, which is so much farther away, is almost like a different world. And many, many people in the rest of Serbia do not know the degree to which the Milosevic government is executing his policies and his people in that region. So it's very serious when they're not getting information on which to base civilian decisions.

TERENCE SMITH: Vesna, is that affecting public opinion in terms of support for Milosevic?

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: There is a growing support of Milosevic, and that's the thing that scares me most. We have a pretty important independent, you know, people, not people from -- not very much people from the opposition parties, but the independent journalists, independent intellectuals, the students. They are all now silenced by the echo of the NATO bombing.

TERENCE SMITH: And you see them actually rallying around President Milosevic?

VESNA RADIVOJEVIC: No. They are -- it's not -- it doesn't very much concern about President Milosevic. They are not thinking about him when they are, you know, writing against the NATO. That's because of feeling that they are not deserved what is happening now in Serbia - that they are tried to -- they were great riots -- 88 days during the end of 1996 and beginning of 1997. We tried to get rid of him. And we didn't have help from -- we don't feel that we had the help from western governments, and now we are punished for the crimes he made.

TERENCE SMITH: All right. Paul McCarthy, what other sources, if any, for legitimate information in Yugoslavia?

PAUL McCARTHY: Well, if you're lucky enough to have an Internet connection, a connection to the web, you're able to access any number of online newspapers. There's also satellite dishes, as well. Quite a few Yugoslav residents have satellite dishes, which are able to pick up foreign news broadcast. However, the majority of the population in Yugoslavia is confined to watching state television and state radio. And, therefore, they are very susceptible, as they have been for quite a number of years now, to government propaganda. If I might point out an anecdote, there was a rock concert over the weekend, which was attended, surprisingly. I was talking to someone in Belgrade, a pretty prominent journalist, and she was telling me that basically the people who attended the rock concert were the same people who demonstrated no so long ago, as Vesna said in 1996. You can't help thinking that some of the propaganda is beginning to have an effect, even on Belgrade's elite, the students and so forth.

TERENCE SMITH: Right. Okay. Thank you all very much.

JIM LEHRER: Information from inside Yugoslavia, including the B92 radio broadcast, can be found at the Online NewsHour.

NEWS SUMMARY

JIM LEHRER: And in the other news of this day, the Dow Jones Industrial Average finally closed above the 10,000 mark for the first time ever. It gained 185 points, to close at 10,007. The NASDAQ Index closed up 74 points, at 2493. The gains on Wall Street were driven in part by a possible oil merger. BP AMOCO and Atlantic Richfield - ARCO -- confirmed they were in merger talks. They already jointly operate the giant Prudhoe Bay oil field in Alaska. The Marine navigator involved in the Italian cable care tragedy pleaded guilty to obstruction and conspiracy charges. Captain Joseph Schweitzer was accused of destroying a videotape he shot before the accident that killed 20 people. Manslaughter charges against him were dropped earlier this month. A compute virus transmitted by E-mail continued to spread today. Hundreds of companies and more than 100,000 computers worldwide were affected. The virus has been called Melissa. It automatically reproduces itself and clogs up computer networks. Experts said a contaminated E-mail can masquerade when it comes in on the computer as an "important message" from a friend.

RECAP

JIM LEHRER: And to update our major story before we go, this was the sixth day of NATO air strikes against Yugoslavia. Allied fighters and bombers honed in on army and police targets in Kosovo. Refugees continued to stream into neighboring countries, fleeing Serbian ethnic cleansing. On the NewsHour tonight, Supreme Allied Commander General Wesley Clark said the campaign was a long way from being over. We'll see you online and again here tomorrow evening. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night.