In the first day, NATO hit fifty-three targets, largely air defenses and radar sites. Though targets were hit throughout Yugoslavia across a mix of target types (for example, airfields, command and control sites, barracks, andheadquarters, particularly of the special police), the initial focus was almost exclusively an effort to neutralize the Yugoslav air defense system. Long-range cruise missiles were fired by the United States and Britain. Aircraft from the United States, the United Kingdom, France, Canada, and Spain conducted bombing, carrying out a succession of attack waves with almost exclusively precision-guided munitions (PGMs) against fixed and pre-selected targets. Of thirteen (out of nineteen) NATO nations that made aircraft available for the operation (Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the United States), eight put their planes in action on the first night. Operation Allied Force was initiated at 7 p.m. ![]() Wesley Clark, to initiate a "phased" air operation. On March 23, following final consultations with allies, Javier Solana directed NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), Gen. OSCE verifiers were withdrawn during the night of March 19-20, and Holbrooke flew to Belgrade on March 22 in a last-ditch effort to persuade Milosevic to back down and avoid a military confrontation. This second round was suspended on March 19 in the light of what NATO intelligence and OSCE observers saw as intensifying violence on the ground instigated by FRY security forces, and a build-up of FRY/Serbian forces in and around Kosovo. After the first round of talks was suspended on February 23, a second round was convened on March 15. Parties to talks at Rambouillet in France, in February 1999, attempted to build agreement to protect the rights of all sides. 3 This was followed by a second statement on January 30 that reaffirmed NATO's original demands, and delegated to Secretary General Javier Solana authority to commence air strikes against targets on FRY territory. Following a massacre in the village of Racak on January 15, 1999, NATO increased its state of readiness, issuing a "solemn warning" to Milosevic and the Kosovo Albanian leadership on January 28. Yugoslavia also agreed to reduce the numbers of security forces personnel in Kosovo to pre-crisis levels.ĭespite initial stabilization, violence continued. Activation orders for air strikes were agreed on October 13 that same day Holbrooke reported to NATO that Slobodan Milosevic, the president of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY), had agreed to the deployment of an unarmed Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) verification mission to Kosovo and to the establishment of a NATO aerial verification mission. envoy Richard Holbrooke a mandate to secure agreement to the requirements of UNSCR 1199 in a mission to Belgrade. ![]() A Contact Group meeting in London on October 8 gave U.S. 2 The United Nations Security Council adopted resolution 1199 (UNSCR 1199) on September 23, highlighting the impending human catastrophe and demanding a cease-fire and the start of real political dialogue. By the fall, an estimated 250,000 Kosovo Albanians had been driven from their homes and some 50,000 were threatened by approaching winter weather. In June 1998, NATO Defense Ministers decided to charge NATO planners with the responsibility to produce a range of options, both ground and air, for military action should the diplomatic process fail to yield the desired results. Operation Allied Force began on Maafter more than a year of effort by the international community led by NATO to find a negotiated solution in Kosovo. Civilian Deaths in the NATO Air Campaign - The Crisis in Kosovo
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