Nato Bombing

MOSCOW -- Days of incendiary anti-NATO and anti-American rhetoric gave way to an unsuccessful grenade attack on the U.S. Embassy here yesterday afternoon. Officials said they had no idea who was responsible, but several politicians tried later to moderate the harsh debate, warning that it was becoming self-destructive. "The kind of rhetoric I've been hearing from the Communist Party and their allies leads to this," said Grigory A. Yavlinsky, a liberal member of the State Duma, parliament's lower house.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- The five Serbian police officers who killed human rights lawyer Bajram Kelmendi and his two sons must think that NATO will lose its war with Yugoslavia and that justice will not come to Kosovo.The officers didn't bother to mask their faces when they abducted Kelmendi and his sons. And they left as witnesses two widows who saw straight into their eyes.Kelmendi, 62, was one of Kosovo's bravest human rights lawyers, and that is why the police here in the capital of the region came for him and his sons when it was time to take revenge for the NATO air raids.

WASHINGTON -- American warplanes shot down two Yugoslav MiG-29 fighters yesterday over Bosnia as the MiGs streaked toward some of the 30,000 NATO peacekeeping troops, including about 7,000 Americans, who are stationed there.The offensive into Bosnia was a sign that, far from yielding in the face of NATO airstrikes, a defiant President Slobodan Milosevic may be seeking to spread the war to other Balkan nations by targeting NATO troops outside Yugoslavia."It's certainly a serious event, certainly a serious challenge," said Kenneth Bacon, a Pentagon spokesman.

WASHINGTON -- As NATO unleashed a second wave of bombs over Yugoslavia yesterday, members of Congress from Maryland reiterated their on-the-record support for the strikes.But beneath the outward nods of approval that are common when U.S. troops are in combat, even some Democrats expressed doubt about whether President Clinton's stated objectives could be achieved through bombing alone.Rep. Benjamin L. Cardin, a Baltimore-area Democrat, voiced concern that the airstrikes might not prevent Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic from continuing his violent campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

NECESSARY as the bombing of Yugoslavia is, it is also tragic. There must be no misunderstanding.The enemy is not Yugoslavia or Serbia. The United States has no quarrel with Serbian nationality and pride. Serbs are a valiant and much-persecuted people who were the victims of genocide in the 1940s.The enemy is not even President Slovodan Milosevic's despotic regime. The enemy and the target is Mr. Milosevic's brutal policy of genocide against Albanian people living in Kosovo.None of the atrocities can be attributed to ethnic hatred, Balkan folkways, the legacy of centuries or similar myths perpetrated by the apologists for ethnic cleansing.

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia -- It's not NATO bombs that frighten Serbia's dwindling community of opposition politicians, free-thinking academics and independent journalists.It's the anticipated backlash from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and the assorted police, judges and street thugs who can make life difficult for dissidents in this Balkan capital.As Serbia braced for Western bombing yesterday, opponents of the Milosevic regime prepared for the worst."Every time the U.S. administration does something to Milosevic, he takes revenge on us," said Slavko Curuvija, a newspaper publisher who faces jail and heavy fines for running afoul of the country's draconian press laws.

PRISTINA, Yugoslavia -- The egg-seller is nervous. He prepares for NATO warplanes to resolve Kosovo's crisis. But he fears the consequences for this still-peaceful provincial capital."

WASHINGTON -- In political terms, the attacks on the Bosnian Serbs have given President Clinton a respite from criticism while exposing him to a far more serious risk in the future.The NATO bombing has silenced, at least temporarily, Republican critics of Clinton in Congress who have been demanding an end to the embargo on arms to the Bosnians. And it has muted the complaints from many quarters that the president has never had a coherent policy for dealing with the carnage in the former Yugoslavia.

The results of the bombings of Bosnian Serb positions around Gorazde last Sunday and Monday have confirmed the fears of those who have argued all along that such an action would worsen the situation in Bosnia.As a result of the bombing, United Nations relief operations in much of Bosnia have been stopped. Peace negotiations have been suspended. U.N. personnel, who were in fact not the target of the Bosnian Serb attack on Gorazde, are now indeed threatened as a result of the attack supposedly meant to protect them.