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00:04One month into NATO's war against Serbia and Slobodan Milosevic was not following the expected script.
00:11You saw Belgrade in flames and Milosevic wasn't even talking to us.
00:19NATO's leaders met in Washington. They were deeply worried.
00:23The world's most powerful military alliance could end up losing a war.
00:27This was about success or a potential failure.
00:32And this was a mission that was do or die for NATO.
00:37Would ground forces be needed to fight their way into Kosovo?
00:41That was a question nobody wanted to answer.
00:45The president says to me, Joe, I can't get a plan.
00:51I said, at least do it secretly at the Pentagon.
00:54Get it underway. Have something that is really you could pull off the shelf.
01:02So they would bomb and bomb again until the Serbs backed down.
01:09And hope against hope that such a war would solve the age-old problems of the Balkans.
01:14Don't forget to join us.
01:16You will tell us.
01:18You will tell us what you want to do.
01:19We will kill you once again.
01:19All theses now don't forget.
01:37And have a plan.
01:37We have a plan to do that.
01:37You will tell us what we will do.
01:37We will kill you once again.
01:43You will tell us what we'll call you once again.
01:43We will tell you, of course, you will take the years.
01:49By late April, Kosovo was a terrible and empty place.
01:56A Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla shot this film
02:00of a land where villages burned
02:02and where those who stayed did so at the mercy of vengeful Serbs.
02:09I saw a large number of civilians, mainly women and children,
02:13leaning against a wall.
02:16A soldier was standing in front of them with his machine gun.
02:25He lifted his gun and started firing at them.
02:30The women and children started falling.
02:35When he'd finished his business,
02:37he simply turned around and walked away.
02:41They were left lying there on the grass.
02:48And those who died were the very people NATO had gone to war to protect.
02:56As refugees continued to plod towards the border,
03:00it was clear that Milosevic fancied his chances of holding out
03:03until public opinion in the West swung against an apparently fruitless war.
03:13that bomb hit Serbia's state television station.
03:14On April the 23rd, a stealth bomber took off from Italy.
03:19The politicians at the NATO summit had ratcheted up the air wall.
03:23The days of messing around with purely military targets were over.
03:32That bomb hit Serbia's state television station.
03:38One man's news is another man's lying propaganda.
03:44Whatever your job, if NATO decided you were on Milosevic's side,
03:48you were a legitimate target.
03:50You want to crush the enemy with overwhelming force.
03:54Quite frankly, extraordinary violence.
03:57The speed of it, the lethality of it, the weight of it,
04:02has to make an incredible impression on the adversary
04:05to such a degree that he is stunned and shocked.
04:09And his people are immediately asking,
04:11why in the world are we doing this?
04:16We knew that Milosevic used the TV
04:19as an instrument of command and control.
04:21And he used it to control the population,
04:23to keep inflamed the passions of ethnic cleansing and so forth.
04:2816 Yugoslavs were killed.
04:30Journalists, technicians and a make-up lady.
04:33NATO was unrepentant.
04:36If Milosevic wanted to stop, he knew how to get in touch with us.
04:42The Russians, traditional friends of Serbia,
04:45were getting in touch with Milosevic.
04:48Boris Yeltsin had asked Victor Chernomirdin,
04:51a former prime minister, to visit Belgrade.
04:53The Russian people backed Serbia,
04:56but the Kremlin desperately wanted the war to end.
04:59Milosevic didn't seem keen to oblige.
05:04He seemed absolutely calm and confident.
05:09He was sure he was right.
05:11Sure that he would win, and NATO would not win.
05:19In Washington, NATO leaders were coming
05:21towards the end of their summit.
05:23It had been a hard and worrying session.
05:27Suddenly, a call came through for President Clinton.
05:29Boris Yeltsin was on the line.
05:32President Clinton stepped out
05:34in order to talk to President Yeltsin.
05:36And it was an extremely intense conversation.
05:40And President Yeltsin wanted one thing above all others,
05:44and that was to get the bombing stopped.
05:47Next thing, Chernomirdin was coming down the steps in Washington.
05:51The Russians' message, this was bad.
05:54In fact, unbelievably bad.
05:58I had to convince the West we were heading for World War III
06:01if we didn't stop this conflict.
06:03I had to sound the alarm
06:05and convey this worry to the leaders of Europe and America.
06:11Chernomirdin's challenge was to work with the Americans
06:14and put pressure on the Serbs
06:15while still appearing to oppose the NATO action.
06:19Mr. Chernomirdin, away, please, away.
06:22It represented an attempt to see if,
06:25despite our disagreement over the need for the bombing campaign,
06:29we could agree on the terms
06:30by which the bombing campaign could come to an end.
06:34Good idea.
06:36But Milosevic wouldn't deal with a NATO leader.
06:38Was there anyone else
06:40who could carry Washington's message to him?
06:42So I came up with the idea
06:44that an ideal person was President Atisari of Finland.
06:51Ah, yes.
06:52Someone from Finland, trusted by Russia, friend to the West.
06:57Mr. Talbot called me in the afternoon.
07:00He said that, Mr. President,
07:03if you say no to what I'm going to suggest to you,
07:07this telephone conversation never took place.
07:10Now that's how diplomats earn their pay.
07:13Not that any of them felt optimistic about the mission.
07:17I said, I'm prepared to help.
07:19Nevertheless, I would not be betting my own money
07:22on the success of this mission.
07:24And I had a feeling that Strobe Talbot shared my view.
07:29I don't think he would have put his money on the table either.
07:34This was what NATO really had on the table.
07:37Bombers.
07:41May the 7th was going to be the big night.
07:44The planes were going after 35 targets in downtown Belgrade.
07:48It was what the generals had been wanting from the start.
07:53NATO understands the clock is ticking.
07:58We had downtown Belgrade lined up for two or three or four nights
08:02of really striking the heart of the targets.
08:06B-2 bombers flew 15 hours from the United States
08:10to join forces based in Europe.
08:12Since none of us knew what Milosevic's threshold for pain would be,
08:17it meant doing as much damage to the assets he valued
08:21as rapidly as possible.
08:25Everyone who understands air power
08:27really was enthusiastic about the attacks of this night
08:31because it was going to take the war to Milosevic's heart.
08:39Belgrade.
08:41The gloves were off.
08:47The bombers had high-tech guidance systems,
08:50but there was still a danger of mistakes
08:52or of that wonderful euphemism, collateral damage.
08:56This was a high-risk strike as far as we were concerned.
08:58A lot of airplanes going in there, conventional,
09:00plus, plus stealth capability,
09:02and we were going after a very important target set.
09:07Indeed, the targets were selected specifically
09:09to hurt Milosevic and his friends.
09:12This was the night that would change the war.
09:15It was a great night.
09:16May the 7th was a great night,
09:18and I expected to get a thumbs-up.
09:20Hey, we really did a good job.
09:22You know, the Serbs are ready to come to the table.
09:27Not such a good job, actually.
09:30One of the targets on that great night
09:33was supposed to be the logistics headquarters
09:35for the Yugoslav army.
09:37It wasn't that at all.
09:38Something had gone hopelessly wrong,
09:41and it was all on TV.
09:44Those people with water and such.
09:48Well, it was around midnight, as I recall.
09:50We were doing a media watch-up in my study,
09:52where we always worked at night during the air campaign,
09:55and on CNN there was a report
09:58that the Chinese embassy had been struck.
09:59And I thought, oh, this can't be.
10:02Not this night.
10:03Not the night that was going to be such a success.
10:06And then General Clark called me direct and said,
10:09Mike, you've hit the Chinese embassy.
10:11And I said, boss, I can't imagine
10:14how we could have hit the Chinese embassy
10:16unless we just threw a bomb incredibly long or short.
10:20Let me do my homework and I'll get back to you.
10:23Finally, about 5 o'clock, got another call that said, whoops.
10:26Looks like an embassy's been moved.
10:28We've hit an annex of a new embassy
10:30or a new embassy or something is down here.
10:33And we went back to the target photograph,
10:35and you could see that we'd struck
10:38what was pictured on CNN as a Chinese embassy.
10:43Bombs from a B-2 had killed three Chinese journalists.
10:47The strike seemed so extraordinary
10:49that conspiracy theorists insisted
10:52it must have been deliberate.
10:53This was not targeting that we had done.
10:56This was a target that was passed down to us
10:58as a good, solid target.
11:00And we clearly were stunned.
11:02In fact, the CIA had selected the target.
11:06An agency analyst had made a map-reading error.
11:09The computer programs meant to spot
11:11and rectify such mistakes had failed to do their job.
11:15They hadn't been updated,
11:16even though the embassy moved to new quarters in 1996.
11:20The Chinese embassy was, in some measure,
11:24a function of the incredible effort of target development.
11:29We were so fixed on trying to generate new targets
11:32that some of the review of targets in development
11:36was not accomplished because those people
11:39that would have done that were pressed into service,
11:41developing targets rather than reviewing targets.
11:46Tell that to the crowds
11:48who trust the US embassy in Beijing.
11:55The NATO Secretary General was horrified.
11:58It had a very bad effect.
12:00It was a tremendous mistake.
12:02Psychologically, the momentum was lost for about a week.
12:10So once again, Milosevic was sitting pretty.
12:13The bombing hadn't budged him an inch.
12:15NATO seemed to have just two choices,
12:17defeat or a muddy, bloody war on the ground.
12:20This was about a NATO success or a potential failure.
12:26And this was a mission that was do or die for NATO.
12:31There they were,
12:32with the one decision President Clinton didn't want to take.
12:36He and everyone else knew it couldn't be put off much longer.
12:40NATO's political leaders were worried men.
12:42The merest mention of a ground war,
12:45with the prospect of hundreds killed or wounded,
12:48would be deeply unpopular and could split the alliance.
12:52Worse, the soldiers had told the politicians the blunt truth.
12:56If NATO was going to invade
12:58before winter made conditions impossible,
13:01troops had to start leaving for Kosovo within a few weeks.
13:07The squeeze was on.
13:09There were already 26,000 troops on the ground
13:13to help the refugees and to stop Serbs crossing the border.
13:19If the bombing or diplomacy didn't sort things out,
13:23those troops might have to turn into an invasion force.
13:26Some hope.
13:27I think we had about 15 tanks and eight artillery guns.
13:34That's it.
13:35That's no invasion force whatsoever.
13:39NATO planners got to work.
13:41But they still had one arm tied behind their back.
13:45No detailed plans, please.
13:48Just find out what we'll actually need
13:50not to get beaten in those mountains.
13:54Around 200,000 men.
13:57Within Kosovo, there's 40,000 Serb forces,
14:01275,000, 300,000 personnel across the former Republic of Yugoslavia.
14:08And so it's pretty serious business.
14:13Clark lobbied anyone who could help get the decision in front of the president.
14:18It was clear that the sooner a decision was made
14:20to begin preparing forces for this,
14:23the earlier a ground attack could be launched,
14:26and that it would be better to launch it in July than in August,
14:30and better in August than September,
14:32and that by October,
14:33we'd be dealing with some weather that might favour the enemy.
14:36And so the sooner the better.
14:39Clinton knew that the man beside him,
14:42Defence Secretary William Cohen,
14:44was dead set against a ground war.
14:46He wasn't alone.
14:47The president confided to an ally on Capitol Hill.
14:50The president said something to me I don't think is a...
14:54You don't talk about conversation with the president,
14:56but this is...
14:57I think people need to know this.
15:00He said to me...
15:01He said,
15:02Joe, I can't get a plan.
15:07I said, at least do it secretly at the Pentagon.
15:10Get it underway.
15:11Have something that is really...
15:12You could pull off the shelf if you need it.
15:15We can not lose under any circumstance,
15:18which he agreed with completely.
15:20And he said to me,
15:22If I do that,
15:24I'm afraid it will be leaked that there's a plan.
15:26And there are at least two of our allies who will pull out.
15:30And Joe, what will happen then?
15:32What will happen up in the hill?
15:34What will happen?
15:36What happened, as usual,
15:38was more planes, more bombs.
15:42On May the 12th,
15:43another massive offensive was launched,
15:45this time against Serb ground forces in Kosovo.
15:49One couldn't know exactly what the threshold was
15:53at which Milosevic would give up.
15:55There was, however,
15:56a clear relationship between attacking his forces on the ground
16:00and being able to run him out of Kosovo.
16:05One devastating weapon was the cluster bomb,
16:08which opened in mid-air and sprayed the ground with explosives.
16:17A week earlier,
16:1814 people had been killed in the Serb town of Niš
16:22when American cluster bombs aimed at an airfield landed in the streets.
16:27Fearing a technical fault rather than pilot error was to blame,
16:31the Americans stopped using the weapons until the final week of the war.
16:38But the RAF used a different type of cluster bomb
16:41and continued to carry them.
16:43If I found a target that I felt that cluster munitions
16:46was the best weapon to attack that a target,
16:49then I would choose those British Harriers with cluster munitions,
16:53bring them into the target area and conduct the attack.
16:59And so, British cluster bombs were now used against Serb military positions.
17:11No civilian casualties from these British cluster bombs were reported,
17:16but there wasn't much military damage either from the new offensive.
17:20Our assessment was that it was not having a tremendous effect
17:25in terms of destroying targets,
17:28in terms of blowing up specific pieces of equipment.
17:33But it was having an effect of forcing the Serbs to keep their heads down.
17:38But not everyone had the luxury of hiding from the barrage.
17:42The new offensive soon led to another tragedy.
17:49Starving in the hills to which the Serbs had driven them,
17:52the villagers of Carisha wanted to negotiate a safe passage to the border.
17:58Their head man went down to talk to the Serb commander.
18:03He said, you have my word of honour,
18:05we won't harm a hair on your heads.
18:08You'll get to the border just as you are now.
18:12The commander told the villagers to wait overnight in a police compound.
18:20We walked straight into the jaws of the wolf.
18:27He said, come and join some other friends of yours here in the compound.
18:32I said, I dare not go in there because you have your forces there
18:35and NATO will target us.
18:38Well, he said, so you'll get to see what it feels like.
18:47That night, May the 13th,
18:49four F-16 bombers took off from Italy.
18:53Their target, Carisha.
18:59This is the video taken from the bombsite of one of those planes.
19:11I was under the tractor when the bomb hit.
19:15The sky went up in flames.
19:21The tractor was shaking above me.
19:26I stood up and I could hear screams.
19:29Children, women, old men crying,
19:32help, help, help, help.
19:41I didn't know what was happening.
19:43I saw my mother.
19:45I recognised her, but she was on fire.
19:48I didn't know what to do.
19:50I wanted to throw myself into the flames,
19:52but a friend stopped me.
20:01Children, old men, women.
20:05We collected pieces of legs, people without heads.
20:09I'd never seen anything like it.
20:12There were about 80 bodies.
20:18Once again, NATO had to confront a reality of modern war.
20:24A tragedy in the morning will be on TV news that night.
20:31How much more of this could anyone stand?
20:43More than any other leader,
20:45Tony Blair had made the case that the war in Kosovo was a moral imperative.
20:50Maybe so, but even good wars have victims,
20:53and now Blair was walking among them.
20:56We will do whatever we can to make sure that these people,
21:00innocent people,
21:02who have been driven from their homes at the point of a gun,
21:05are allowed back into their towns and their villages.
21:11NATO's blunders had started to hurt Blair at home,
21:14and he now faced the prospect that the war might drag on to the winter.
21:19I thought it was possible, yes.
21:21And I was aware of the fact that I really tied,
21:27well, tied a lot into it.
21:34British newspapers, inspired by Downing Street,
21:37began to say that Blair was frustrated
21:39by Clinton's dithering over ground troops.
21:42And Blair did indeed think that they now had to plan for a ground war.
21:47I was giving interviews, and people would say,
21:49well, what about ground troops?
21:50Now, there are three things you can do.
21:52You can say, we're definitely going to do it.
21:53You can say, we're definitely not going to do it.
21:55Or you can say, it's an option, and it's on the table.
22:03On the morning of May the 18th,
22:05Clinton woke up to an article in the New York Times.
22:08He could spot a leak at 50 paces, and he was furious.
22:14In one of those famous Clintonite explosions of rage,
22:18the president berated Blair for breaking ranks.
22:21The official line now, a sensible exchange of views between pals.
22:26The president was saying to Prime Minister Blair,
22:28and, you know, of course, they're very good friends,
22:31and they can talk in an animated way.
22:35It doesn't do anybody any good to have a debate among ourselves.
22:39Let's talk among ourselves privately and publicly.
22:43Let's have a unified face.
22:46After Clinton's initial outburst,
22:49the two men did indeed discuss what to do.
22:52Blair's message to Clinton,
22:53they had to focus not on public opinion, but on winning.
22:57Milosevic had to know
23:00that we were prepared to do whatever it took to win,
23:02and we had to be prepared to do whatever it took to win.
23:07I mean, as I used to say throughout to people,
23:10what's the bottom line here?
23:11And the bottom line for me was, we can't lose this.
23:18The very next day, the top brass in the Pentagon
23:21met to hear the case for a ground war from the NATO commander.
23:25I told them about an option that would drive the Serbs out of Kosovo.
23:29The reaction was, looks like it's going to be difficult.
23:32Yep. Going to be difficult.
23:33Looks like it's going to take a lot of Americans.
23:35Yep. Going to take a lot of Americans.
23:37Looks like it might be hard to do.
23:39Going to be hard to do.
23:40Looks like we're going to have to make a decision pretty soon.
23:42Yep.
23:43Just about what I expected.
23:46It didn't encourage me that this was going to be an easy thing to do
23:49to use land forces,
23:51particularly in the timing that it would take to build them up.
23:54And then you would have to do it in a coalition effort.
23:57It couldn't just be a U.S. effort.
23:58And pulling all that together would be very, very difficult.
24:01And bloody?
24:08I think so.
24:10He got absolutely no, I say again, no, go ahead, insofar as, yes, we're now going to
24:18start moving people and providing you what you're asking for.
24:25Plain enough?
24:27Back in the White House, Clinton called his top foreign policy advisers together.
24:31Whatever some of them may have thought about a ground war, there was no doubt about the
24:35message from the Pentagon.
24:37I argued to the president it was going to be a very hard sell, if not impossible, to
24:42persuade the American people that we were going to put up 150,000 or 200,000 American
24:46troops to go in on the ground.
24:47Decision time for Clinton?
24:50Well, not quite.
24:51Time to find out how much longer he could wait.
24:54Berger called the general.
24:56I said to General Clark, tell me what your honest-to-goodness deadline is.
25:03That's all I wanted to know.
25:04Tell me what you really need an answer.
25:08I told him that here's only about another 10 or 15 days in which to make a decision to
25:13move ahead with this.
25:15But it wasn't just NATO that was running out of time.
25:19So was Milosevic.
25:21Serb solidarity was starting to crack.
25:26That same week, in Krusebac, on the Serb border with Kosovo, someone shot this home video.
25:32It was the sort of place Milosevic could normally count on for support.
25:37But the town could now count the cost of the war in dead bodies coming home.
25:43Women protested, mothers, sisters, wives.
25:49We heard that some coffins came in our town.
25:52We didn't know the exact number of casualties in Kosovo.
25:56And we just wanted to do something to stop the bombing and to stop that killing.
26:08The bombing had been going on for two months.
26:12No amount of defiant walkabouts by Milosevic could disguise the scars of war from his people.
26:29The diplomatic track might now have a chance.
26:32Viktor Czernomirdin went to Belgrade to see if there was any deal that would end the war.
26:37Milosevic had his bottom line.
26:39He'd buy a peace monitored by outsiders, but he wouldn't withdraw Serb forces from Kosovo.
26:46As for allowing NATO forces there, forget it.
26:50For Milosevic, this was a crucial point.
26:52He didn't want to appear in the eyes of his people as having surrendered.
26:57On this issue, we were walking on a life age.
27:03The pace now quickened.
27:06On May the 20th, Czernomirdin was back in Russia.
27:09Waiting at Stalin's old dacha outside Moscow was his American counterpart, Strobe Talbot.
27:16The talks were long and tough, and they went late into the night.
27:21And fairly early on, I made the point that there was a missing party to these talks.
27:27I called the man in the empty chair.
27:30And I actually got up at one point and brought an empty chair from the corner of the room
27:34and put it down at a corner of the table.
27:36That was Milosevic.
27:38Czernomirdin's job was to speak for that empty chair.
27:42It didn't take a genius to see the huge gap between what Milosevic would accept and NATO's demands.
27:48The key issue was the withdrawal of the Serb armed forces,
27:53the Serb special police and the Serb paramilitaries in Kosovo.
27:58We felt that all, every single one of the characters in those three categories had to get out of Kosovo.
28:09The talks ended.
28:12Czernomirdin knew Talbot's terms were ones that Milosevic would laugh at.
28:18I told them, imagine Milosevic is sitting here and you suggest to him he capitulates.
28:25He wouldn't do it.
28:27He knew he could pick up the phone and call any European leader or the American president
28:31and say, I accept these terms, just stop the bombing.
28:37He hadn't done it and he wasn't going to.
28:44Even with half the population gone, there was no respite from the horror of war.
28:50Serb forces had driven Albanians from four villages in the Drenica Valley.
28:55It was an old man. He said, I can't go on.
29:04The policeman said, sit down and rest.
29:08And he walked up to him and shot him in the head.
29:14About 200 men from the villages were held overnight in this mosque in Chiraz and beaten up.
29:25He broke my skull here.
29:27I could put my finger through the hole.
29:31I was covered in blood.
29:34They loaded us into trucks and we were made to sing, Kosovo is Serbia.
29:40Then, in the shadow of Kosovo's industrial pride, the giant ferro-nickel works,
29:45half of the men, about a hundred, were taken out of the convoy.
29:52I saw it with my own eyes.
29:54They lined them up, each one opposite a policeman, about four or five meters from him.
30:00As they shot them, they would fall into a pit.
30:04No one survived.
30:05They threw grenades in to kill the wounded.
30:15My own son died there.
30:20But the Albanians weren't the only ones suffering.
30:26The bombing continued with mounting ferocity.
30:31We don't yet know how many Serbs died.
30:34We do know that in the wreckage, they had their own tales of tragedy.
30:42I started screaming, my Biljana is nowhere to be found.
30:49I said to my wife, Biljana is missing.
30:54The most difficult thing was,
30:59I must have walked over her six or seven times.
31:07His daughter was dead, and so were two young neighbours.
31:18On May the 26th, another 20,000 troops were ordered in.
31:23It didn't matter if they would ever fight a ground war.
31:26In the diplomatic offensive, the key thing was, it looked as if they might.
31:31We thought it would be a fatal mistake to signal to Milosevic that all he had to do was hold
31:37out long enough
31:38that the Alliance would not be willing or able to go the next step, which is to say from an
31:43air war to a ground war.
31:44If Milosevic had ever been able to reliably make that calculation, I think the game would have been lost.
31:54In truth, the ground war was far from imminent.
31:57Still, Chernomirden took Talbot's message back to Belgrade.
32:02I told Mr. Chernomirden, there should be no misunderstanding.
32:06We as an Alliance were going to do what was necessary to end this thing on our terms. Whatever.
32:14Yet another audience with the President.
32:17Same cameraman, same shots, same entourage as a week before.
32:22But this time, Milosevic had lost a bit of his bance.
32:28We spent hours, about eight or nine hours, in non-stop discussions around the table.
32:34These were really tense conversations.
32:38Milosevic stood up, ripped up the papers, threw them aside, went out, then came back again.
32:44It wasn't easy.
32:49But there was a chink of light there, and back in Moscow, Boris Yeltsin judged an endgame was now possible.
32:57It wasn't easy.
32:58Yeltsin needed American dollars.
33:01America needed Milosevic to give way.
33:07Yeltsin really took it personally.
33:09He sensed that we were on the brink of breaking our relationship with the West.
33:15The diplomat's next meeting was in Germany.
33:18At issue, could Chernomirden and the Finnish envoy take an ultimatum to Belgrade,
33:23before the war got even more intense.
33:27The issue of ground troops was looming out there.
33:31At some point it would become inescapable.
33:34Time was running out for this diplomacy.
33:36We had come to the point that either you said that you don't accept or you accept.
33:42They were tough negotiations.
33:44Mr Chernomirden and I agreed early on that the biggest disagreement between us came down to a three-letter word.
33:51It happens to be three letters both in Russian and English, and that is the word ALL, A-L-L.
33:57All meant all Serb forces out of Kosovo.
34:00At this stage in the game, NATO wasn't going to blink first.
34:06They tried to persuade me that Milosevic had to give up everything and agree to everything.
34:14I said to them, well, if that's the case, you work with Milosevic.
34:19When we turned in at 4am, I didn't know what was going to happen.
34:23There was no point going to Belgrade unless the Russians were on board.
34:28Next morning, I remember they were in a very bad spirit.
34:32They thought it all breaks up because they couldn't agree on a common platform.
34:38My message from the chancellor to Marty Artesari was,
34:42you don't leave this place before you have a common solution.
34:47But Chernomirden had come to the end of the road.
34:49There was nothing more he could do to help Milosevic.
34:53The Russians brought in a laptop computer, which they set up there on the table,
34:58and we were actually drafting language there at the table.
35:03And just before the end, the Russians put into their own draft text
35:09of the agreement to take to Belgrade the word ALL.
35:15Yes, we had it. We could go.
35:19To Belgrade together.
35:22Talbot would wait in Germany.
35:25Marty Artesari and Victor Chernomirden set off.
35:29After nine weeks of bombing, had NATO finally broken Milosevic's will?
35:42One proposal.
35:44This is a historic day for Yugoslavia.
35:48This is a historic day for Yugoslavia.
35:50Mr. Chernomirden and I are coming with a peace plan.
35:54We had Mr. Milosevic and his colleagues waiting for us, and I said,
35:58hello, good day.
36:01But a good day for whom?
36:03Milosevic was running out of options.
36:07We went straight to the negotiating table.
36:11And I went through the document.
36:14It was like selling a pair of shoes that are two numbers too small.
36:21The sticking point was the demand that all Serb forces should leave Kosovo.
36:27Knowing that NATO was desperate, Milosevic tried to start yet another negotiation.
36:32He was asking, could he make proposals for the improvement of the document?
36:36I said, this was the best we could offer.
36:41Milosevic had hoped to play the Russians off against NATO.
36:44But the more questions he asked, the less daylight there seemed to be between them.
36:49So he tried some Balkan bonhomie.
36:51In the end, when all questions were answered, he suggested that we have a meal together.
36:58I said, thank you very much.
36:59But I felt that it would be more useful if he could talk to his own colleagues about the plan,
37:07so that we would get results.
37:12Milosevic then asked Chernomirdin to stay behind,
37:15to see if Russia was really falling into line with NATO.
37:19Was there no way in which the Serbs could keep their own forces in Kosovo
37:24to protect their own people?
37:30He was concerned and worried.
37:34He was concerned the document would not be fulfilled.
37:40He was worried he'd be deceived.
37:42He was afraid Kosovo would be occupied.
37:46All the Albanians would come back.
37:49The Liberation Army would return.
37:52Some Serbs would be killed and the others forced to leave.
37:59He was afraid of all these things.
38:05For Milosevic, the doors were closing.
38:09NATO solidarity hadn't crumbled.
38:12Russia hadn't come to his assistance.
38:15Even the hardest of his hard men saw there was no way out.
38:22If we did not accept this proposal, the threat, the blackmail,
38:26was that the destruction would continue in Kosovo, Serbia and the whole of Yugoslavia.
38:35The whole economic structure would be destroyed.
38:38The complete road network, the electricity grid, everything would be destroyed.
38:43The whole system is lost.
38:46Morning. Back to the palace.
38:50Despite NATO's hard line, the plan would still leave Kosovo
38:53formally part of Yugoslavia and any peacekeepers would be sanctioned by the UN.
39:01When talks resumed, Milosevic had a statement to make.
39:04He said to me that President Ahtisari, the Yugoslav parliament has debated the matter
39:13and has accepted the peace plan you brought to Belgrade.
39:19And I was stunned because I never believed for a moment that
39:26one trip between us two would actually do the trick.
39:38I got a call from Czernimirdin himself right outside of Milosevic's office.
39:44He was calling on a cell phone and Mr. Czernimirdin said, I think we've done it.
39:52Talbot asked me straight away, has he really agreed?
39:56I said, yes, he's really agreed.
40:02I said, yes, he's really agreed.
40:03Two days later, generals from both sides met.
40:06Leading for NATO was British General Mike Jackson,
40:09who had to hammer out the terms of the Serb withdrawal.
40:14The men in uniform on the other side of the table must have had a different script.
40:24Their said that Serb forces could stay put.
40:27I was depressed.
40:29They wanted to keep forces in Kosovo and that just didn't run.
40:37After a day and a half of getting nowhere, the talks broke up.
40:41NATO therefore has no alternative but to continue and indeed intensify the air campaign.
40:52Just when they thought it was all over, the NATO bombers were back in the air.
40:57Ironically, they came as close as they had for two months to losing a pilot to enemy fire.
41:03A Serb missile locked onto a Dutch bomber as he delivered his payload.
41:10I didn't really initially notice because I was busy with the with the airplane.
41:14And then I noticed a flash from the ground.
41:17This is the actual cockpit recording of those desperate minutes.
41:21Missile launch.
41:22Staff flare.
41:24There needs left.
41:25Launch.
41:26The missile was guided on me and it was.
41:29It shifted towards me and so what I started to do is right hand spiral down.
41:33Outfit you.
41:34Outfit you.
41:36Well, I was busy defending for the first missile.
41:39Then the second missile got shot at me as well.
41:41Down seven.
41:41There needs left.
41:43Sam launch.
41:46And I saw the first missile explode just above me.
41:49I'm at 4,000 feet.
41:51Copy that. Keep the smash up. Head north. Head north.
41:54The second missile was a lot closer to me than the first missile so I didn't have a whole lot
41:59of time.
41:59Mac one three. Sam launch. Over to the side.
42:02So in like a minute and 20 I went from 18,000 feet to 3,000 feet and back up
42:06to 18,000 feet again.
42:08Passing 12,000 in this week. Triple A coming up.
42:11I think I had like an angel on my shoulder who saved me about five times.
42:16That was quite memorable.
42:21Two days of fresh bombing forced the Serbs back to the bargaining table.
42:27Any hope Milosevic may have had that Russia and China would come to his aid at the UN had disappeared.
42:34And this time the Serb generals were more amenable.
42:39Clearly some instructions have been given to them in that short period of time.
42:44And they came back with a very different demeanor and say right that's it we're going to sign.
42:49So here at last was the good news.
42:52I can confirm that General Majanovic and General Stefanovic have signed the agreement on behalf of the Federal Republic of
43:02Yugoslavia.
43:03And that I have signed on behalf of NATO.
43:07But then an armored Russian column appeared on the border.
43:11Sure under the plan some Russians would go to Kosovo all in good time.
43:15But this looked a bit weird.
43:18The trickiest piece of unfinished business was whether Russia would, as it wanted, indeed demanded, have its own sector, its
43:26very own piece of real estate with a Russian flag.
43:30The Russians had been on peacekeeping duty in Bosnia.
43:34We got a sniff that a Russian detachment had left Bosnia, crossed into Serbia, and the deduction was that this
43:43contingent was indeed heading towards Kosovo.
43:48It looked as if the Russians were trying to get to Pristina airport, just to lend a hand, or maybe
43:54to set up a bridgehead for Russian reinforcements.
43:59They ordered Mike Jackson to execute a plan to put four airborne companies by helicopter into Pristina airfield as soon
44:07as possible, so that when the Russians arrived they'd be properly greeted.
44:10There were only two nations who actually had the right forces and helicopters available to do that operation.
44:17One was Britain and one was France.
44:20So Jackson put together the four companies of airborne troops.
44:23He had just a few hours to airlift the men and secure the airport before the Russian friends arrived.
44:29I was in the field with the troops.
44:31I had the UK commander spread his map out on the hood of a Land Rover and he pointed out
44:36where he was intending to move and they were ready to go.
44:41But it was dangerous stuff.
44:44One war had just ended, no one wanted to stumble into another.
44:49Clark's order to take the airport had been cleared with NATO headquarters in Brussels.
44:54But with British troops in the firing line, Jackson wanted to be sure London knew exactly what was happening.
45:01General Jackson rang me up saying that I think we have a real problem here.
45:05What did I think?
45:08And I thought about it and I said, well, I'm extremely nervous about that.
45:15So Guthrie passed the message up.
45:18From Downing Street, Blair talked with his senior ministers about the risk of a showdown with the Russians.
45:23People weren't sure.
45:24I mean, there was, you know, there was quite a lot of distrust at the time.
45:29People were grateful for the, very grateful for the part that Russia had played.
45:33But people were wondering what was going on and, you know, were obviously concerned.
45:37And anyway, we sorted it.
45:40Blair vetoed the use of British troops, leaving the airport to the Russians and leaving Clark high and dry.
45:47Our role was to make sure that it did not become escalated and that it could be defused and tucked
45:52down.
45:52And that's what happened.
45:55So a Russian column was first into Kosovo to the cheers of local Serbs.
46:00And in fact, it was just one of those jumpy moments that are soon forgotten.
46:05The Russians weren't exactly re-enacting D-Day.
46:09They arrived, some 150, 200 strong, without food or water to sustain them.
46:16And so the judgment was made at that time.
46:18We can handle that.
46:19It's not that important.
46:20Let's not raise it to a confrontational level with the Russians.
46:30In a swirl of dust and noise, NATO troops went in.
46:35They hadn't had to fight their way in, and the soldiers at least could be grateful for that.
46:45In a place that had been wracked by war, the troops now had to protect everyone.
46:50Serbs from Albanians, Albanians from Serbs.
46:55Down on the ground, homes were burning.
47:01Dotted all the way along the route was evidence of mass destruction.
47:05All the houses near the roads were burned and destroyed.
47:11What was left of the Albanian population came out of hiding to greet the troops.
47:20People were so glad to see us now.
47:23For so long, they slept with their clothes on, waiting for something to happen so they could flee.
47:28At night, they could sleep and they could rest.
47:30And it was amazing.
47:33Totally amazing experience that I'll never forget as long as I live.
47:37The Serb forces pulled out, defiant, but losers.
47:43And the Albanians on the street, who'd waited years for the chance, reminded them of that bleak truth.
47:53Peaceful coexistence, this was not.
47:58Victory is certainly far more agreeable than defeat, but doesn't necessarily provide any satisfactory answers.
48:05In this particular case, we still see a situation in Kosovo in which we have achieved a victory over Milosevic's
48:12forces.
48:13And yet, we can see also that the animosities, the ethnic hatreds, the people who would, as I've said in
48:23the past,
48:24would rather dig fresh graves than heal old wounds, still remain.
48:32In the coming days, over half the Serb population would leave Kosovo.
48:41It was a dismal end to a war that some hoped might reconcile two communities.
48:46But those who launched the war still have no doubt they were right.
48:52If we didn't act, then what?
48:55I mean, then he ethnically cleanses Kosovo.
49:01The whole region really is then totally destabilised.
49:08Europe and NATO are shown to be powerless.
49:11A terrible act of barbarity has taken place with nothing happening from the international community.
49:17There are some pretty heavy consequences of those things.
49:22Yes, but the only way to keep those specters at bay is for peacekeepers to stay there.
49:27How long they will remain, that's another question.
49:31You think it's over?
49:34Do you think it's over?
49:35You answer that one.
49:41I'm asking an answer.
49:43I'm asking for an answer.
49:44Do you really think it's over?
49:47Or do you think that we have, through the use of people on the ground,
49:59put into effect a peacekeeping apparatus
50:03that is holding age-old ethnic, cultural, religious hatreds in check?
50:13I mean, do you think that if we left tomorrow, it's all okay?
50:23The valleys of Kosovo are quiet now,
50:26though most weeks still see some sporadic violence.
50:30The wars left an uncertain legacy.
50:33It was a victory of sorts for NATO and the Albanians.
50:36But Milosevic still holds court in Belgrade, and forcing out the Serbs is no long-term solution.
50:43The Balkans and Kosovo remain unstable.
50:46You can call a war a moral crusade.
50:49It still won't tie up all the loose ends of history.
51:01And that was the last in the series.
51:04Tomorrow night, our series Escape from Coldits also concludes
51:07with the most audacious escape plan yet.
51:10That's at 9 o'clock.
51:34The Balkans and Kosovo
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