NATO shrugs off Yeltsin’s threat

“We will see it through and we will win,” Naumann said in an interview to BBC, adding, “He (Milosevic) should know that we have a capability to grind his forces into pieces.”

French planes swooped down on Serb targets and US and British naval crafts launched cruise missiles at vital Serb installations despite a warning from Russia.

Russian Premier Yevgeny Primakov today said NATO bombings were only “complicating” the search for a peaceful solution in Kosovo.

However, the US continued to downplay threats of a Russian intervention in the Balkan conflict saying Washingtonhas been assured by Moscow that it “has no intention of military involvement in Kosovo.”

“We have been assured at the highest levels of government that Russia has no intention of military involvement in Kosovo,” White House deputy press secretary Barry Toiv told the Washington Times. Russian parliamentary speaker Gennady Seleznyov had said yesterday that while President Boris Yeltsin had not already ordered missile targeting of NATO countries, such a move was possible if the Kosovo crisis worsened.

Primakov had a telephonic conversation with his Italian counterpart Massimo d’Alema. “In a long conversation on the phone, Primakov reiterated a strongly negative assessment of NATO’s acts that only complicated a search for political solution to Kosovo’s crisis and caused a deterioration of the humanitarian situation in the Balkans,” Itar Tass quoted Primakov’s press secretary Tatiana Aristarkhova as saying.

NATO strike aircraft meanwhile swept in over Belgrade again today as the western alliancebrushed aside a warning from Russia and carried its air war against Yugoslavia into its 17th night.

Serbian television showed hundreds of Belgrade residents assembled for another night to discourage air strikes on a city bridge. The Belgrade-based news agency Beta said Serbian TV’s Kosovo transmitter at Golec near Pristina was knocked off the air by a NATO attack yesterday evening.

A bipartisan group of US congressmen who attended NATO briefings on the Yugoslavia conflict said Americans should be prepared to face months of conflict, acknowledge the risk of casualties and have plans ready if alliance forces had to fight on the ground.

President Bill Clinton, speaking on the White House south lawn, vowed that NATO will “persist and prevail.” British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook, however, declared yesterday that Milosevic was “looking for a way out” and likely to make a new cease-fire offer this weekend.