NATO signaled its intention to reopen discussion over ground troops during its 50th-anniversary summit this weekend, with Washington spinning the move as a response to pressure from London and Paris. Right now, though, the ground-troops discussion is about the alliance raising its voice rather than reaching for a bigger stick. "It's a symbolic move because NATO needed to be seen as taking charge of the situation during the NATO summit," says TIME Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson. "The alliance remains unlikely to send in ground troops for the same reasons it hasn't until now. They're trying to send a message to Milosevic that everything is on the table, although that would have been more effective at the start of this campaign." NATO's immediate strategy is to target its bombs at political and economic installations close to Milosevic. Besides blowing up his house, NATO has this week destroyed his political headquarters and a TV network owned by an associate. Among the casualties: 123 episodes of "The Simpsons." Score that as "friendly fire."
Milosevic's House Hit; Bart Simpson a Casualty
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NATO fired a cruise missile into President Milosevic's backyard -- literally -- early Thursday, but that doesn't mean they were trying to kill the Serb leader. "That would be a bonus," says TIME Pentagon correspondent Mark Thompson. "NATO doesn't have the intelligence capability to know where he's sleeping, but if a missile happened to knock him off, there wouldn't be any tears in Washington." The missile destroyed one of Milosevic's two Belgrade mansions, but nobody was home at the time.