World

NATO Backs Down, For Now

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 16, 1998 / 7:05 PM EDT / CBS

Just as the deadline for a Serb withdrawal from Kosovo was about to expire, NATO gave Slobodan Milosevic 10 more days to complete the job, reports CBS News National Security Correspondent David Martin.

"The council calls on President Milosevic to take urgent steps to ensure that full compliance is achieved in this time period," said NATO spokesman Jamie Shea.

However, armed with new room to maneuver, the Serb hard-liner isn't likely to be impressed by NATO's cajoling.

B-52s in England and warships in the Mediterranean remain ready to launch cruise missiles if Milosevic does not comply, but former NATO ambassador Robert Hunter says the meaning of the 10-day extension is clear.

"The allies are saying to Milosevic 'pretty please, get the work done and get out so we don't have to face up to our responsibility to use force,'" he said.

Scores of Serb tanks, armored vehicles and artillery pieces remain in the field in Kosovo.

Nevertheless, refugees are deciding it is safe enough to come down from the hills and return to their homes -- or what's left of them -- and U.S. officials insist conditions on the ground there are improving.

"We now have a significant change in the number of police that are operating in the countryside, marauding and terrorizing the people there," said State Department Spokesman James Rubin.

Milosevic is expected to take his time and do the absolute minimum that he can get away with. Ominously for ethnic Albanians, NATO's approach appears at this this point to be strikingly similar to Milosevic's.

Although the movement was not substantial enough to merit full compliance with NATO demands, the Serbs pulled more police and armor back from the front lines of Kosovo on Friday.

But cease-fires and agreements notwithstanding, there's still a dirty little war going on in the separitist province, reports CBS News Correspondent Allen Pizzey.

Only a few miles from where their colleagues are boarding busses bound for other parts of Serbia, three Serb police searched for what they claimed were Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas who shoot at them on a regular basis.

Checking nervously along the stone walls that mark ethnic Albanian farms, they tried to find the firing point.

"They were here last night," claimed one of the policemen. "You can see."

Serb police say they have no problem with the NATO agreement. However, they want to know what the 2,000-strong unarmed verification force will do to make the dangerous nights in Kosovo feel safer.

Ethnic Albanian farmers ask the same thing.

The Thaci family only comes to their farm durinthe day to do what work they can. They claim the police shoot here every night, so they're going to live in the hills until the verification force comes.

"I just hope they will protect my children," says Osman Thaci.