[Prishtina-E] WorldNews.com article: "Clinton Was Close to Kosovo Invasion"

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The Associated Press (Fri 9 Jun 2000)
Clinton Was Close to Kosovo Invasion

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- President Clinton was just days away from approving 
a ground invasion of Yugoslavia during the Kosovo conflict last year, 
according to the White House national security adviser. 

In an interview published today in the Los Angeles Times, Samuel R. 
Berger described how close the nation and its allies came to deciding 
to fight their way into Kosovo. 

On June 2, 1999 -- 71 days after NATO's air war against Serbia began -- 
Berger said he began drafting a memo advising the president to prepare 
for a ground invasion. 

To be sure of winning in Kosovo, Berger wrote, the United States had to 
launch a massive ground invasion using 175,000 NATO troops, about 
100,000 of them from the United States. 

If the ground war was launched, Berger said, there would not have been 
a consensus among the alliance's 19 countries. 

However, the memo went to the Oval Office and Clinton was ready to 
approve it, Berger said. Before he could, unexpected news arrived from 
Belgrade: Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic had agreed to NATO's 
terms. The air war ended after 78 days. 

Clinton publicly ruled out the option of ground combat on the first day 
of the war, confident of achieving a low-casualty victory with 
selective air strikes. 

The bombing by NATO forces was aimed at forcing Milosevic to stop the 
"ethnic cleansing" of ethnic Albanians, who made up the majority of the 
population of Kosovo province. 

German Gen. Klaus Naumann has said the air campaign succeeded in 
halting the Serb crackdown on Kosovo Albanians and in reversing the 
flow of refugees out of the province, but it was a mistake for the 
alliance to rule out the option of a ground invasion. 

Berger's memo outlined three options: Arm the Kosovars and risk a war 
that would last for years; wait until spring and require NATO to supply 
and protect thousands of refugees inside Kosovo through the winter; or 
launch a major ground invasion. 

"It was a pretty depressing memo," he said. 
Copyright 2000 Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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