Kosovo Crisis

By MARK THOMPSON AND DOUGLAS WALLER/WASHINGTON

The White House has been revving up the rhetoric to unnerve Yugoslav strongman SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC, letting it be known that NATO could issue orders for air strikes as early as this week if his security forces don't halt their rampage in the rebellious province of Kosovo. The weapons are ready: 44 Air Force F-16 fighter-bombers are on a runway in northern Italy, and deployed in the Mediterranean is the aircraft carrier U.S.S. Dwight D. Eisenhower, plus eight warships and subs packed with Tomahawk cruise missiles. But Milosevic has played cat and mouse with the West for many years. He's halted his offensive in much of Kosovo, perhaps, say U.S. officials, because he believes he has wiped out enough of the Albanian guerrilla network for this year and his army doesn't want to keep fighting when the snows fall. If Milosevic scales back his attack, it will be harder for the White House to keep NATO allies on board for military action. Even senior Pentagon officials wonder privately what air strikes would accomplish now. "Winter would've stopped them anyway," an Army officer says of the Yugoslav forces. "All we can do is speed up that process by a couple of weeks, after months of doing nothing."

--By Mark Thompson and Douglas Waller/Washington