Milutin writes:
> Martin wrote:
> >negotiated with him at Dayton and earlier.  By the way, the
> >documentary reminded me that NATO did use air attacks for 15 days in
> >the Bosnian war when the Serbs, under direction from Milosevic,
> >surrounded Srebernica, which was a UN safe haven at the time, shelled
> >it, and then went in and ethnically cleansed it.
>
> Wait, back-up.  No strikes happened after Srebernica capture, it did happen
> after another market place bombing(who's to blame, ask the UN).  It was
> blamed on the Serbs though and NATO struck.  Still the Serbs didn't agree to
> anything, but the recently well-armed Muslims and Croats made major
> advancements on the ground, ethnical cleansed thousands of Serbs from those
> regions and then, only then, did the Serb military agree to sign a peace
> agreement.

Sorry.  I agree.  I was in a hurry when I wrote, and I meant to
describe what the documentary was saying.  I agree that it was mainly
because of the Croat thrust on the ground that the Serbs agreed to
negotiate, but I think the air attacks also contributed to that Serb
decision.  But because of the juxtaposition of the air attacks and the
Croat thrust (ie a non-NATO ground force), the US and NATO came away
from that event assigning too much importance to the value of their
air strikes, and that error probably made them think they could use
air strikes again and "achieve" the same result.  But in this case
there was no ground force applying the real pressure.  Maybe they
expected the KLA would be that force, but I doubt it.

martin

Martin Smith                    Email: [log in to unmask]
P.O. Box 1034 Bekkajordet       Tel. : +47 330 35700
N-3194 HORTEN, Norway           Fax. : +47 330 35701