Mission Improbable

Jaroslav Pap--ap
A BRIEF MEETING: Before the promised release, Jackson with Gonzalez, Stone and Ramirez at a session cut short by an air-raid warning

Belgrade is not a nice place to visit. Not now. Even when the skies are clear, the city wakes to a deep haze. Last week, the most ferocious in five weeks of allied attacks, the smoke issued from a bombed-out police station, from army headquarters and from the interior ministry. A television tower outside of town was toppled. Underground pipes were destroyed, leaving parts of the Serbian capital without water. Residents cower through the night, unable to sleep where errant missiles slam into homes and not-so-errant ones hit residential neighborhoods surrounding official targets. No visitor can ignore the damage--or avoid hearing the explosions and the alarms. On the second day of his visit, the Rev. Jesse Jackson quickly observed that the bombing was "intense."

Jackson, however, was once again in the wrong place at the right time. In 1983 he went to Damascus to win the release of Navy Lieutenant Robert Goodman, whose plane had been shot down by Syrian gunners as he flew over war-torn Lebanon. In 1990 Jackson helped bring home hundreds of people held hostage in Iraq. Each of those times Washington had told him to butt out; it told him the same thing last week as he prepared to negotiate the release of three U.S. soldiers held captive by the Serbs for more than a month. But after much public prayer, a meeting with the prisoners and some very loud "Nos" from no less than Slobodan Milosevic, Jackson brought a dramatic turn to a war that seemed entirely given over to the terrifying monotony of missiles and bombs. On Saturday, Belgrade announced it had decided to release the pows. In exchange for what? Give them, implored Jackson, "a night of peace from bombs."

There are far more calculations involved than that, of course. The released soldiers were expected to head for Germany not only for medical treatment and a reunion with heartsick families but also for a meeting with Bill Clinton, who will be in Europe this week. And so when he shakes the hands of Staff Sergeant Andrew Ramirez, 24, Staff Sergeant Christopher Stone, 25, and Specialist Steven Gonzales, 21, the President will have the Butcher of the Balkans to thank for the timing of the photo op.

"This really is a sideshow," a U.S. Army colonel insisted. "We need to keep our eyes on the ball." Which is to say the air war. But U.S. officials are concerned that Milosevic's decision to release the prisoners is, in effect, an appeal over the heads of military and political leaders directly to the citizenry of the NATO nations. Can a man capable of such a humanitarian act really be a latter-day Hitler, as the alliance insists? And what of the letter that Jackson will be carrying from Milosevic to Clinton? Its contents may yet complicate an already cloudy diplomatic swirl. Once again, Pentagon officers said, Milosevic has trumped NATO and wrested the initiative away from the alliance just as the weather is clearing and bombing sorties are reaching a campaign high of some 300 a day. They doubt the release would temper the campaign, but one official stressed that such decisions "are far above my pay grade."

Indeed, despite Jackson's mission and quieter diplomatic peace overtures by the Russians, there was no letup in NATO's air war. Last week the Pentagon announced that 10 additional B-52 heavy bombers would join several others launching attacks against Yugoslavia. The additional bombers will add 500-lb. iron bombs for attacks on troop concentrations, as well as precision-guided, Israeli-made missiles that carry 1,000-lb. warheads. Meanwhile, about 12 hours before word of the release reached Washington, Clinton imposed a U.S. trade embargo on the Yugoslav republic of Serbia, intent on choking off the supply of oil to Milosevic's military. The European Union's ban on oil shipments to Yugoslavia went into effect on Saturday. Said White House spokesman David Leavy: "The United States will continue to tighten the screws until our objectives are met." As for Belgrade's decision on the prisoners, Leavy said, "This does not affect the air campaign" and should do nothing to change the world's opinion of Milosevic, who, according to reports last week from refugees, has only increased the level of brutality in his ethnic cleansing of Kosovo. (Milosevic last week blamed paramilitary forces for the "bad things" in Kosovo.)

On Friday, Washington had summarily dismissed a Milosevic feeler. In an interview with United Press International, the Yugoslav President, while insisting he would "never surrender" to allied demands for a NATO-led peacekeeping force in Kosovo, set forth terms for ending the conflict, including his willingness to accept lightly armed U.N. monitors. But he would not abide a military peacekeeping force made up of his country's attackers, even if holding out means more air strikes. "One day [of bombing] is too much," Milosevic said. "But what choice do we have if NATO insists on occupying Yugoslavia? To that we will never surrender ... We Serbs are as one on this life-and-death issue of national honor and sovereignty."