The next day Milosevic and the Serbian parliament...
- Posted at 5:42 AM on Tuesday, March 9, 2010 by weipingqin396
The next day Milosevic and the Serbian parliament agreed to themPredictably, the next few days were full of tension and disputes over the details, but on the ninth NATO and Serbian military officials agreed to a prompt withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo and the deployment of an international security force with a unified NATO chain of commandThe next day Javier Solana instructed General Clark to suspend NATOs air operations, the UN Security Council passed a resolution welcoming the end of the war, and I announced to the American people that, after seventy-nine days, the bombing campaign was over, the Serb forces were withdrawing, and the one million men, women, and children driven from their land would be able to go homeIn an Oval Office address to the nation, I thanked our armed forces for their superb performance and the American people for their stand against ethnic cleansing and their generous support of the refugees, many of whom had come to America
Allied Commander Wes Clark had managed the campaign with skill and determination, and he and Javier Solana had done yeomans work in holding the alliance together and in never wavering in our steadfast commitment to victory on the bad days as well as the good onesSo had my entire national security teamEven though when the bombing wasnt over in a week we were constantly second-guessed, Bill Cohen and Hugh Shelton had remained convinced that the air campaign would work if we could hold the coalition mens cartier watches roadster together for two monthsAl Gore, Madeleine Albright, and Sandy Berger had all remained cool under fire in the nail-biting, roller-coaster weeks we had just been through togetherAl had played a critical role in keeping our relationship with Russia intact by staying in contact with Victor Chernomyrdin and making sure that we and the Russians had a common position when Chernomyrdin and Ahtisaari went to Serbia to try to persuade Milosevic to give up his futile resistance
On the eleventh, I took a congressional delegation to Whiteman Air Force Base in Missouri to say a special word of thanks to the crews and support personnel on B-2 stealth bombers, which flew all the way from Missouri to Serbia and back, nonstop, to perform the nighttime bombing operations for which the B-2 was especially well suitedIn all, 30,000 sorties were flown in the Kosovo campaignOnly two planes were lost, and their crews were recovered safely
After the raids succeeded, John Keegan, perhaps the foremost living historian of warfare, wrote a fascinating article in the British press about the Kosovo campaignHe admitted frankly that he had not believed the bombing would work and that he had been wrongHe said the reason such campaigns had failed in the past is that most bombs had missed their targetsThe weaponry used in Kosovo was more precise than that used in the first Gulf War; and though some bombs went astray in Kosovo and Serbia, far fewer civilians were killed than in IraqIm tiffany bracelet also still convinced that fewer civilians died than would have perished if we had put in ground troops, a bridge I would nevertheless have crossed rather than let Milosevic prevailThe success of the air campaign in Kosovo marked a new chapter in military history
There was one more tense moment before things settled downTwo days after hostilities officially ended, fifty vehicles carrying about two hundred Russian troops rushed into Kosovo from Bosnia and occupied the Pristina airport without advance agreement from NATO, four hours before the NATO troops authorized by the UN arrivedThe Russians asserted their intention to keep control of the airport
Wes Clark was lividI didnt blame him, but I knew we werent on the verge of World War IIIYeltsin was getting a lot of criticism at home for cooperating with us from ultra-nationalists whose sympathies lay with the SerbsI thought he was just throwing them a temporary boneSoon the British commander, Lieutenant General Michael Jackson, resolved the situation without incident, and on June 18, Secretary Cohen and the Russian defense minister reached an agreement under which Russian troops would join the UN-sanctioned NATO forces in KosovoOn June 20, the Yugoslav military completed its withdrawal, and just two weeks later the UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimated that more than 765,000 refugees had already returned to Kosovo
As we had learned from our experience in Bosnia, even after the conflict there would rolex submariners still be a great deal of work ahead in Kosovo: getting the refugees home safely; clearing the minefields; rebuilding homes; providing food, medicine, and shelter to the homeless; demilitarizing the Kosovo Liberation Army; creating a secure environment for both Kosovar Albanians and the minority Serb population; organizing a civilian administration; and restoring a functioning economyIt was a big job, most of which would be performed by our European allies, even as America had borne the lions share of responsibility for the air war
Despite the challenges ahead, I felt an enormous sense of relief and satisfactionSlobodan Milosevics bloody ten-year campaign to exploit ethnic and religious differences in order to impose his will on the former Yugoslavia was on its last legsThe burning of villages and killing of innocents was historyI knew it was just a matter of time before Milosevic was history, too
On the day we reached the agreement with Russia, Hillary and I were in Cologne, Germany, for the annual G-8 summitIt turned out to be one of the most important such meetings of my entire eight yearsIn addition to celebrating the successful end to the Kosovo conflict, we endorsed our finance ministers recommendations to modernize the international financial institutions and our national policies to meet the challenges of the global economy, and we announced a proposal, which I strongly supported, for a massive millennium debt-relief initiative for poor replica gucci handbags countries if they agreed to put all the savings into education, health care, or economic developmentThe initiative was consistent with a chorus of calls for debt relief from all over the world, led by Pope John Paul II and my friend Bono
After the summit we flew on to Slovenia to thank the Slovenians for supporting NATO in Kosovo and helping the refugees, then to Macedonia, where President Kiro Gligorov, despite his countrys own economic hardships and ethnic tensions, had taken in 300,000 refugeesAt the camp in Skopje, Hillary, Chelsea, and I got to visit with some of them and hear the horrible stories of what they had enduredWe also met members of the international security force who were stationed thereIt was my first chance to thank Wes Clark in person
Politics began to heat up in JuneAl Gore announced for President on the sixteenthHis likely opponent was Governor George WBush, the preferred candidate of both the Republican Partys right wing and its establishmentBush had already raised more money than Al and his primary opponent, former New Jersey senator Bill Bradley, combinedHillary was moving closer to getting into the Senate race in New YorkBy the time we left the White House she would have helped me in my political career for more than twenty-six yearsI was more than happy to support her for the next twenty-six
As we entered the political season, I was far more concerned about maintaining the momentum for action in Congress and in my own chanel cambon large tote bag governmen
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