Tag: SFOR

Participation of non-NATO countries

Every NATO nation with armed forces was committing troops to SFOR. Iceland, lacking
own armed forces, provided medical support. All 18 non-NATO nations that participated in IFOR were also participating in SFOR:

December 20, 1996 - Transfer of authority from IFOR to SFOR.

December 24, 1996 - During a routine search of a weapon storage site of the ABIH's 377th Brigade in Jelah, numerous weapons and ammunition were confiscated. This confiscated material was in excess of authorized limits.

December 30, 1996 - SFOR currently consists of about 35,600 troop in the theater with 12,400 in MND-N, 9,800 in MND-SE, 7,900 in MND-SW and 3,000 in Croatia.

Operation Joint Guard

NATO operations in Bosnia from December 20, 1996 to June 19, 1998.

January 4, 2001 - SFOR increased its presence in the central village of Donja Bocinja following confrontations with local and foreign Mujahideen (Islamic fighters).

January 5, 2001 - The China Daily reported that five Chinese police officers were about to join UN peacekeeping operations in Bosnia. It was for the first time that China sent civilian peacekeepers beyond Asia.

Chinese police participated in a UN peacekeeping mission only once before, in the former Indonesian territory of East Timor. Military observers and engineers were dispatched on several occasions since 1989, including to Africa, Iraq and Cambodia. For the longest time, China was wary of peacekeeping missions, believing they can interfere in countries' domestic affairs.

January 9, 2001 - Former Bosnian Serb president (1996-1998) Biljana Plavsic surrendered herself to the United Nations crimes tribunal. She faced charges of genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the laws and customs of war, and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention. The indictment was kept secret. When Plavsic discovered she was indicted she started negotiations with the UN. NATO was notified of the indictment in April 2000.

January 11, 2001 - Biljana Plavsic pleaded innocent to genocide and other crimes against humanity. Plavsic was accused of being part of the Bosnian Serb wartime presidency that allegedly ordered the executions of thousands of Muslims and Croats in an ethnic cleansing campaign at the outset of the 1992-1995 conflict.

After pressure from the UN international war crimes tribunal Croatia's government decided to lock up personal tapes and transcripts of late President Franjo Tudjman's conversations with his aides and associates for the next 30 years.

January 14, 2001 - US senator Joseph Biden warned Bosnia that if moderate politicians would not join forces to strip the nationalists of power, Washington would lose interest in helping the war-torn country.

No party won an outright majority, but in November's elections all three nationalist parties did well.

January 25, 2001 - Bosnia announced it would send nine military observers — drawn from Bosnia's Muslim, Serb and Croat army components — to serve with the UN peacekeeping mission in Ethiopia and Eritrea. The one-year deployment was scheduled to commence in February.

February 7, 2001 - The Serb member of Bosnia's collective presidency backed away from threats to declare the US ambassador in Bosnia, Thomas Miller, persona non grata. The chairman of the tripartite presidency, Zivko Radisic, suggested that the presidency had considered the possibility of withdrawing the credentials of some Western ambassadors for overstepping their diplomatic mandates. Miller was accused of interference in the country's internal affairs by trying to influence parliament deputies to support a non-nationalist coalition and its candidate for prime minister. Later Radisic denied having discussed removing Miller's credentials.

February 8, 2001 - A high-level EU delegation with Oleg Milisic said Ana Lindh, foreign minister of Sweden, the union's foreign policy supremo Javier Solana and external relations commissioner Chris Paten had canceled a visit to the Balkan state and US energy giant Enron said it had put large potential investments on hold due to the power vacuum.

February 11, 2001 - Nearly 100,000 demonstrators protested against the investigation of Mirko Norac, a former general suspected of war atrocities, demanding early elections and a stop to Croatia's cooperation with a UN war crimes tribunal.

February 21, 2001 - Former Croatian Major General Mirko Norac, wanted on suspicion of war crimes, ended in police custody after a two-week search that sparked widespread anti-government protests. Norac was on the run since a Croatian court announced Feb. 8 that it was investigating his alleged role in the 1991 killing of Serb civilians in the city of Gospic.

A top official said that one of the three court's most wanted suspects — Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic — went underground after years of living publicly in Belgrade. The tribunal indicted Mladic in 1995 for crimes against humanity and genocide.

February 22, 2001 - Bosnia's parliament on ousted Muslim, Croat and Serb nationalists who had led the country since before the 1992-95 war. The new government was primarily elected by deputies of the multi-ethnic, reformist Alliance for Change. The new government comprised Bozo Matic, an ethnic Croat, as the first rotating chairman, and five ministers and their deputies.

February 23, 2001 - In its first trial dealing exclusively with sexual violence, the United Nations war crimes tribunal prosecuted and condemned three former Bosnian Serb soldiers on charges of sexual slavery. The verdict, read by Judge Florence Mumba of Zambia, also defined rape for the first time as a crime against humanity. The tribunal previously tried cases involving rape, but defined the rape as torture. After World War II only slave labor was prosecuted as slavery — the Japanese military's use of "comfort women" as sex slaves never came before an international tribunal.

Dragoljub Kunarac — a former commander of the Bosnian Serb army — was sentenced to 28 years imprisonment. Radomir Kovac — a former paramilitary commander — was sentenced to 20 years. Both men were accused of multiple rapes, torture and enslavement. Zoran Vukovic — a former paramilitary commander — was given 12 years for rape and torture.

February 24, 2001 - Russia welcomed on the election of Bosnia's first non-nationalist government in more than 10 years, saying it would help strengthen stability in the Balkans.

February 25, 2001 - Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Del Ponte criticized NATO-led peacekeeping forces for not doing enough to pursue accused war criminals in Bosnia. She told Welt am Sonntag that she was especially frustrated at the inability of SFOR to track down former Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadzic.

March 5, 2001 - The presidents of Yugoslavia and Republika Srpska — Bosnia's Serb Republic — signed an agreement permitting closer cooperation in such areas as the economy, the fight against crime, tourism and education.

Former army Major General Mirko Norac was formally charged in the 1991 killings of civilians in the central Croatian city of Gospic. Norac and four other former soldiers were indicted on charges that they ordered and took part in the killings of at least 24 civilians. They were the first Croats to be charged with war crimes committed against Serbs during the 1991 war. Croatia's military men are widely regarded as war heroes.

March 8, 2001 - Top peace official in Bosnia, Wolfgang Petritsch, dismissed the Croat member of Bosnia's three-man presidency, Ante Jelavic, and three other top Bosnian Croats after the Bosnian-Croat leader threatened to declare self-rule in Croat-controlled areas. He also barred him from any official or elected public office. Jelavic said he would push ahead with a bid for self-rule for Croats.

Diplomats and non-government experts said the HDZ party's move was more an act of desperation by an increasingly isolated old nationalist movement than a sign of strength.

March 9, 2001 - A Sarajevo public prosecutor indicted six men, including a Bosnian Croat army general in custody in Croatia, for the 1999 murder of Jozo Leutar, deputy interior minister of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation. Four of the indictees are in custody in Bosnia, one were still at large, while the prime suspect General Ivan Andabak is on trial in Croatia, accused of trying to smuggle 1,455 pounds of cocaine.

March 10, 2001 - Federation Interior Minister Mehmed Zilic, a Bosnian Muslim, said it was possible that some police units may attempt to secede from the federation police and form separate Croat units. He told a news conference "Estimates indicate that the security situation in some parts of the federation may get more complicated in future, with the attempts of some police structures to form separate forces within so-called Croat self-administration," referring to the threats by Croat nationalists that they would leave the federation they formed with Muslims and create instead their separate administration in Croat-controlled areas.

March 15, 2001 - The Bush administration began withdrawing 800 troops from the 4,400 US troops present in Bosnia. Some helicopters and other heavy equipment — amongst which 16 AH-64 Apache helicopters, heavy armor, and infantry fighting vehicles — were no longer deemed necessary. The next NATO review was scheduled for May 2001.

March 30, 2001 - Croat nationalists said almost 8,000 Croat soldiers had abandoned their posts in support of a call for self-rule made in protest at the exclusion of the rightist Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) party from the new government of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation. The government responded by sacking some of the generals who had led the mutiny and pledging to reform the contingents to make a united Muslim-Croat army.

March 31, 2001 - Croatian police arrested Bosnian Croat Miroslav Anic, indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal for atrocities committed in 1993 against Muslims during the war in neighboring Bosnia. His indictment was kept secret.

April 1, 2001 - Bosnia started using DNA testing after US companies donated state of the art equipment. Five years after the end of the Bosnian war thousands of unidentified bodies still lie in racks in the largest morgue in the world.

April 2, 2001 - Hundreds of survivors of a Serb massacre during the Bosnian war stormed the UN building in Sarajevo. The crowd heard that Muslim wartime commander of the Srebrenica enclave, Naser Oric, was about to be arrested for trial by the UN war crimes tribunal. Oric was a bodyguard of Slobodan Milosevic and was considered a hero by Bosnian Muslims for his defense of Srebrenica during the Serb siege. But Bosnia's Serbs said he was a war criminal, accusing him of killing dozens of Serb civilians before the siege of the town.

April 3, 2001 - Top police officials in Bosnia's Mostar region said they did not recognize the newly-elected government of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation and pledged support for a separate Croat administration. Some 8,000 Croat officers left the joint Croat-Muslim army. It was a separatist action by Croat nationalists who wanted to break away from the joint federation with Muslims and form a self-rule government. Newly-elected Croat presidency member Jozo Krizanovic removed two Bosnian Croat generals for refusing to recognize the authority of new federation defense minister, Mijo Anic.

Bosnia said that Slobodan Milosevic's acknowledgment that Yugoslavia was involved in Bosnia's 1992-5 war would remove a burden weighing down ties between the two countries.

April 5, 2001 - Challenging their Muslim-Croat government and trying to create their own separate Croat ministate in Bosnia, ethnic Croat nationalists took control of an army barrack in the town of Busovaca -- 35 miles west of Sarajevo -- and another in the town of Vitez.

April 6, 2001 - Bosnian Croat extremists took several international officials hostage and took one of them outside and threatened him with execution. The orchestrated riots broke out after international officials moved into several branches of Herzegovacka Banka, the financial lifeline of the Croat separatist campaign. Some six vehicles belonging to international officials or peacekeepers were set on fire, in some cases while local police, sympathizing with the separatists, stood by. Later, masked police, backed by SFOR troops, seized control of the bank.

SFOR also stepped up their presence at a military barracks in Kiseljak north west of Sarajevo.

Bosnia's international administrator, Wolfgang Petritsch, appointed a new bank manager for the Hercegovacka Banka and said he would not back down in the face of threats. A Croat hard-liner, Ivan Bender, called the raid on the bank a "provocation" by the international community.

May 2, 2001 - UN prosecutors said they believed a special team dedicated to tracking down suspected war criminals should be created to speed up the arrest of the suspects still at large in Bosnia.

May 7, 2001 - Thousands of rioting Bosnian Serb nationalists trapped top Western diplomats, including the head of the UN mission to Bosnia — Jacques Klein — in a building in Banja Luka. Muslims applauded when Klein arrived, but his arrival prompted an outburst of anger from gathered Serbs. According to a British photographer it was clear early that something was going to happen and that NATO allowed the situation to spin out of control. Hours later, Bosnian Serb police evacuated the nearly 300 people trapped in the building.

May 10, 2001 - Russia announced plans to withdraw a further 150 peacekeepers from Bosnia starting on July 1, 2001, scaling down its contingent to 900 troops. Some 1,600 Russian troops were initially deployed in Bosnia in 1996. About 3,000 Russian troops also form part of KFOR.

May 16, 2001 - The Bosnian government and commanders of some 7,000 mutinous Croat troops reached a compromise agreement on the return of all Croat soldiers to their duties in order to avoid bloodshed.

An explosion in Vitez — about 20 miles west of Sarajevo — destroyed the office of one of the parties belonging to the ruling pro-Western alliance, the Social Democratic Party. Another explosion destroyed he offices of the New Croat Initiative, or NHI, in Novi Travnik, about 35 miles west of Sarajevo.

May 21, 2001 - The Bosnian government expressed concerns by reports US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld pushed to withdraw some 500 American troops from the roughly 3,600 present in Bosnia as part of SFOR. The decision marked also the latest chapter in a dispute over peacekeeping that continued to divide the Bush administration in the US.

May 27, 2001 - NATO approved a plan to reduce its peacekeeping force in Bosnia from 21,000 to 18,000. NATO reviews troop deployments in the Balkans every six months. NATO considered but rejected plans for a "deterrent force." That option would involve slashing the NATO peacekeeping force to 12,000 while maintaining the ability to rush more troops to Bosnia if trouble would break out.

June 4, 2001 - Nine Serbs went on trial on charges of genocide during the Serb rebellion. Only two of the nine defendants — members of Serb paramilitary units — appeared in court to plead innocent. The other seven were tried in absentia in Osijek — some 190 miles east of Zagreb. The men were accused of killing an unspecified number of civilians while purging Croats from areas they claimed for the Serb minority.

June 10, 2001 - Bosnian Muslim officials found up to 15 bodies in a pit after an anonymous tip. The bodies were believed to be victims of the Foca prison camp — close to the border with Yugoslavia — during the Bosnian civil war.

June 22, 2001 - The chairman of Bosnia's reformist central government, Bozidar Matic, resigned after parliament failed to adopt a new election law.

July 4, 2001 - Bosnian Serb prime minister Mladen Ivanic said the arrest of top fugitive war crimes suspects Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic was looming as the Bosnian Serb parliament prepared to pass a law on the subject. The UN believed the two suspects were in the republic.

July 7, 2001 - In an emergency meeting the Croatian cabinet gave the green light for any citizen indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal to be arrested and extradited. Four social liberal ministers in the 23-member cabinet offered their resignations in protest.

The UN war crimes tribunal disclosed it indicted two Croat citizens for wartime atrocities against Serbs. The suspects were retired General Ante Gotovina — a commander during the 1995 offensive — and Rahim Ademi — a general of Kosovo-Albanian origin.

July 8, 2001 - Forensic experts recovered more than 100 sacks of human remains from several mass graves near the village of Glogova, a few miles west of Srebrenica. The victims are believed to be Muslims from Srebrenica — the exact number of bodies could not be determined. In Srebrenica, up tp 8,000 Muslim men and boys were executed by Bosnian Serb forces. So far forensic experts have found more than 4,000 of the victims.

Croatia's government plunged into crisis over a decision to arrest and hand over two Croatians named in two sealed indictments to the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.

July 10, 2001 - The foreign minister of Bosnia, Zlatko Lagumdzija, pledged an all-out effort to apprehend wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his senior military officer, Ratko Mladic. The two were indicted by the UN for genocide in 1995. Lagumdzija admitted the police in Bosnia "are not doing enough". Judges at the war-crimes tribunal made it easier to convict suspects of genocide, saying their actions did not necessarily have to be part of a master plan or campaign to eliminate an entire community.

July 13, 2001 - NATO Secretary-General George Robertson said that Bosnia risked international isolation and a "return to chaos" if it did not work harder to overcome ethnic divisions.

A Zagreb court issued a warrant for the arrest of an officer sought by the UN war crimes tribunal for atrocities against Serbs. Another suspect planned to surrender directly to the court in The Hague.

July 14, 2001 - A Czech SFOR soldier died from injuries he suffered while destroying ammunition collected from local people. He was seriously injured a day earlier when a hand grenade exploded.

August 20, 2001 - Bosnian Serb officials said Monday they were building a war-crimes case against Alija Izetbegovic that could send the former Bosnian president and Muslim leader to the U.N. tribunal for trial.

Izetbegovic, who led Bosnia through the 1992-1995 war, suggested this weekend that he was ready to appear before the tribunal in The Hague (news - web sites), Netherlands, if summoned.

Participation Of Non-NATO Countries

Every NATO nation with armed forces is committing troops to SFOR.

Command Structure

COMSFOR is Lieutenant General Michael L. Dodson (US Army) since September 2000. He reports to the NATO Supreme Commander Allied Forces Europe (SACEUR). SFOR Deputy Commander (DCOMSFOR) is Major General Roger DuBurg (French Army) since June 2000. SFOR Deputy Commander of Operations (DCOMOPS) is Major General P C C Trousdell Philip since March 2000.

Various Component Commanders report to COMSFOR :

COMSFOR is based in Sarajevo. Reporting to him are three Division commanders:

January 1, 2000 - Experts feared the collapse of Bosnia-Herzegovina's economy as foreign aid was expected to be cut in half by the end of the new year.Billions of dollars were already invested after the 1995 Dayton accords. According to the government's statistics office, unemployment in the Muslim and Croat part of the country was standing at about 70 percent.

January 4, 2000 - In Croatia's parliamentary elections, a center-left opposition coalition — led by ex-communist and former dissident Drazen Budisa — headed toward victory, indicating the end of Tudjman's party's nine-year grip on power, that started in 1991 when Croatia became independent. The turnout — some 76 percent — was a near record.

Presidential elections were scheduled for January 24. The moderate Foreign Minister Mate Granic was also considered one of the favorites.

January 5, 2000 - At Eagle Base, Tuzla, a US Army soldier died of a gunshot wound.

January 10, 2000 - In Croatia, Foreign Minister Mate Granic was given 23.8 percent of the vote from 450 respondents; Drazen Budisa — leader of the Social Liberal Party — 22.7 percent.

January 12, 2000 - The UN Security Council demanded that the three presidents of Bosnia would fully implement the "New York Declaration" that was reached on November 15, 1999, on cooperation and implementation of the Dayton peace process. Mistrust among the groups, who fought a 31/2-year war, has kept over a million refugees from returning to their prewar homes. Two weeks after the agreement, Zivko Radisic stated the declaration was an "expression of the will", not a binding commitment, an interpretation that was obviously not shared with the UN.

January 14, 2000 - The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia found five Bosnian Croats guilty of the murders of 116 Muslim men, women and children near the central Bosnian village of Ahmici in April 1993, during the Bosnian war. The former commander of the unit was sentenced to 25 years for organizing the murders. The others were sentenced to 15, 10, 8, and 6 years imprisonment. A sixth suspect was set free.

January 25, 2000 - NATO peacekeepers arrested suspected war criminal Mitar Vasiljevic in Visegrad.

January 26, 2000 - After nearly four years of hearings, appeals and cross-appeals, the UN tribunal sentenced the Bosnian Serb Dusko Tadic to 20 years imprisonment. He was arrested February 13, 1994, by German police in Munich.

February 8, 2000 - Stipe Mesic, a former close aide to the late President Franjo Tudjman who pledged to distance Croatia from its authoritarian past was elected as the second president. He emphasized that Croatia was to become a genuinely democratic society.

February 18, 2000 - Stipe Mesic took his presidential oath.

February 20, 2000 - The Serb Socialist Party quit the ruling coalition in the Serb half of Bosnia, weakening pro-Western Premier Milorad Dodik's support in parliament. Bosnian members of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's party, announced their departure after Dodik fired two party officials.

February 21, 2000 - Forensic experts collected the remains of what they believe were seven victims from Srebrenica — the Muslim enclave overrun by Bosnian Serb forces in July 1995. More than 7,000 Muslims, most of them men, were missing afterward, and most are believed to have been massacred. Some 2,000 bodies have been found so far.

February 22, 2000 - Four Socialist Party members from the ruling coalition in the Serb half of Bosnia handed in their resignations, but pro-Western premier Dodik refused to accept them. The Socialists were upset because Dodik fired two party officials.

March 4, 2000 - Croat General Tihomir Blaski was sentenced to 45 years of imprisonment by the international tribunal. He was found guilty of ordering an "ethnic cleansing" campaign against Muslim villages in central Bosnia. Members of Croatia's newly elected, pro-Western government criticized the verdict.

March 9, 2000 - Bosnian Serb prime minister Milorad Dodik and Croatian foreign minister Tonino Picula told US secretary of state Albright they would submit legislation to their parliaments within three months to enable refugees to return to areas under the control of rival ethnic groups. As a sign of good will, both sides agreed to let 4,000 Bosnian Croat and Croatian Serb refugees return home before the three-month deadline.

March 13, 2000 - In The Hague, the trial opened of the highest-ranking Serb to go before a tribunal on genocide charges. Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic was charged with the July 1995 slaughter of at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica.

March 15, 2000 - US Ambassador Thomas Miller and a half dozen other western diplomats visiting Bosnia, made pledges of support for refugees. Their visit was an effort to assess progress in returning refugees.

March 21, 2000 - After delaying more than two years, Croatia handed over a prominent Bosnian Croat war crimes suspect to the UN tribunal to face charges for atrocities allegedly committed against Muslims during the Bosnian war. Mladen Naletilic was indicted on 17 counts of war crimes for his alleged role as commander of a gang of convicts who terrorized Muslims in southwestern Bosnia in 1993 and 1994 in a campaign to drive non-Croats from the area. The extradition was seen as a test case of the new government's commitment.

March 24, 2000 - In an effort to improve relations since the change of Croatian leadership, Croatia and Bosnia agreed to get trains rolling again across their border. The UN said there was still powerful resistance from nationalists determined to preserve ethnic divisions.

March 28, 2000 -
An advisor to Alija Izetbegovic — the Muslim representative of Bosnia's joint presidency — said tens of thousands of Bosnian refugees could return home this year if the international community would cut through bureaucracy and supply them with homebuilding materials. Assistant Secretary-General Hedi Annabi said progress on implementing the 1995 accord has been slow and met powerful resistance from nationalists determined to preserve ethnic divisions.

March 30, 2000 - International donors promised $2.4 billion to revitalize Bosnia's economy. Some 35 projects will be financed, including the repair and construction of roads, bridges, power-grids and water supply networks. In return for the international help, Albania, Bosnia, Bulgaria, Croatia, Macedonia and Romania have committed to democracy and economic changes to attract private investment.

April 1, 2000 - The Vice President of Bosnia's Serb republic — Mirko Sarovic — said wartime Bosnian Serb Radovan Karadzic had no longer any influence on the Serb Democratic Party (SDP), set up by Karadzic in 1990. Political analysts were sceptic. Karadzic was indicted twice by the UN's International Criminal Tribunal for former Yugoslavia (ICTY) for war crimes during the 1992-1995 Bosnian conflict, including the siege of Sarajevo and the massacre of Muslim men in Srebrenica.

Croatia's president Stipe Mesic said another war in the Balkans would be possible, unless the West takes steps to stop Milosevic.

April 3, 2000 - French troops detained Momcilo Krajisnik, president of the Bosnian Serb Assembly between October 1991 and November 1995 and aid to former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic. He was transferred to the war crimes tribunal in the Netherlands. It was the highest-ranking suspect arrested so far. NATO Secretary-General Robertson said he was "accused of genocide, crimes against humanity, violations of the laws and customs of war and grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, including murder, willful killing, extermination, complicity in genocide, deportation and inhumane acts". His indictment had not been made public. (See ICTY press release.)

Krajisnik signed the Dayton deal but afterward advocated Serb secession from Bosnia.

April 5, 2000 - The wife of war crimes suspect and former Bosnian Serb president Radovan Karadzic appeared at a rally of the hard-line Serb party -– an effort said to boost its chances of a comeback in the municipal elections.

The UN court ordered the release of war crimes suspects Miroslav Tadic and Simo Zaric because they had been awaiting their trial for two years. However, the order was frozen by chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte. The suspects were accused of crimes against humanity in an "ethnic cleansing" campaign in the town of Bosanski Samac in early part of the 1992-95 Bosnian war. With nearly 40 suspects awaiting a trial, the court was struggling with a backlog of cases.

April 7, 2000 - The Croatian new government sent a clear signal to the world that it is serious in its attempt to weed out corruption. A university lecturer was accused of taking bribes and a city clerk was arrested for collecting fees while posing as the head of the construction permit issuing office. But also widely known figures as former tourism minister Ivan Herak was arrested for embezzling $1.5 million in government funds and Stipe Gabric, the mayor of Metkovic, were arrested. Former deputy transport minister Zvonimir Vedris was also arrested; he allegedly pocketed $2.5 million from funds while an adviser for development projects that existed only on paper.

April 8, 2000 - Around 2.5 million eligible voters in Bosnia chose between one of seven coalitions, 68 parties and 18 independent candidates in almost 150 municipalities across the country. The votes were the second municipal elections since the end of the war.

Srebrenica could not take part since previous election results were never implemented after local Serbs refused to accept them. Voting in Srebrenica was scheduled for October.

April 9, 2000 - The Croatian government gave experts from the international war crimes tribunal permission to examine an alleged mass grave near Gospic — 60 miles southwest of the capital Zagreb. Late president Tudjman refused cooperation.

April 10, 2000 - Early figures showed the Serb Democratic Party — once headed by war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic — was winning the most votes in the Serb half of Bosnia. The Croats voted also largely for nationalists who led them during the 1992-95 war. Western officials considered the grip of three nationalist parties as the main obstacle to progress in Bosnia.

April 11, 2000 - Three children died in a minefield on the outskirts of Sarajevo.

April 20, 2000 - Radovan Karadzic — fugitive wartime leader of Bosnia's Serbs — is roaming between several Serb-held towns in eastern Bosnia to avoid arrest, according to the Slobodna Bosna weekly. Karadzic — indicted twice by the UN tribunal — is said to be surrounded by 80 bodyguards.

April 22, 2000 - SFOR troops arrested Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect Dragan Nikolic in the US sector of Bosnia-Herzegovina. He was immediately sent to the tribunal in the Netherlands. Nikolic was the former commander of the Susica prison camp for Bosnian Muslims near Vlasenica. He was indicted by the tribunal in November 1994 and was the first suspect ever indicted by the UN court. (See May 6, 2000.)

April 25, 2000 - NATO's departing commander Clark warned Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic against "tightening the noose" on Montenegro.

April 28, 2000 - The Muslim Commission for Missing Persons has exhumed 83 bodies — believed to be Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica killed by Serb soldiers in July 1995 — from several mass graves in eastern Bosnia.

The wreck of a USAF F-16C that was shot down over Bosnia by a Bosnian Serb anti-aircraft missile on June 2, 1995, was recovered during mine clearing operations near the town of Drvar — some 100 miles northwest of Sarajevo. USAF Captain Scott O'Grady was rescued by a US combat rescue team six days later.

May 6, 2000 - In Bosnia, the remains of four members of a Bosnian family were exhumed as part of the war crimes trial of three Muslim policemen charged with killing them. The policemen are on trial before the cantonal court in Mostar. They were originally charged with murder, but after permission of the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague the charges were changed to those of war crimes killings.

Witnesses stated that war crimes suspect Dragan Nikolic — arrested April 22, 2000 — was not arrested in the US sector in Bosnia, but rather in Serbia, Yugoslavia. NATO and UN tribunal officials always denied penetrating Yugoslavia's borders to catch fugitive war crimes suspects but the reported clandestine operation could reflect an aggressive new stance, as officials vowed war criminals will find no safe refuge. The matter alarmed many war crimes suspects in Yugoslavia — Serbia refused to hand over any war crimes suspect.

Apparently, it was not the first time. In September 1998, war crimes suspect Stevan Todorovic always insisted he was abducted from Zlatibor Mountain in central Serbia by a secret commando group and taken by boat across the Drina River into Bosnia.

May 13, 2000 - The United States suspended assistance for the Bosnian Croat military because of its failure to speed up integration into a joint Muslim-Croat army. Under the $400 million US military aid program, the federation received weapons, other military equipment and training from the US and Islamic countries. The program was suspended by the US in 1998 and 1999 over the slow pace in the unification of the Muslim-Croat military but was renewed in August 1999.

Forty-three people were killed when a bus carrying Muslim pilgrims plunged into a river near the town of Kakanj — some 30 miles northwest of Sarajevo.

May 18, 2000 - The International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP) said it would help set up a DNA lab to speed up identification of thousands of missing since the 1995 massacre of Muslim men in Srebrenica — the first large-scale DNA testing ever. Some 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men are believed to have been slaughtered in July 1995 by separatist Bosnian Serb forces.

May 25, 2000 - The former Yugoslav republic of Croatia joined the NATO Partnership for Peace program in a step toward bringing the country into the European mainstream. The program arranges for joint exercises, preparation of peacekeeping missions and holds regular political meetings.

May 31, 2000 - The Bosnian Serb commission for missing persons began searching for bodies of Serbs who were allegedly killed and thrown into a hillside crevice above Sarajevo by Bosnian Muslims during the 1992-95 war. The commission had begun preliminary work to determine whether ground disturbances that had been observed at the site were a result of seismic or human activity.

June 8, 2000 - Former Bosnian Serb paramilitary commander Ljubisa Savic was shot dead in Bijeljina. Attackers fired at his car and then took off.

Forty bodies were exhumed from several mass graves in Bosnian Serb-controlled territory — near the Serb-held town of Foca, some 22 miles southeast of Sarajevo. The bodies were believed to be Bosnian Muslims killed by Serb soldiers in the beginning of the Bosnian 1992-95 war.

June 14, 2000 - The Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe said there was insufficient progress in implementing the Dayton Agreement. They called for the arrest and prosecution of those indicted for war crimes, crimes against humanity and genocide, including Bosnian Serb extremist leader Radovan Karadzic, his military sidekick Ratko Mladic and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, the mastermind of the conflict. Former Supreme Allied Commander Europe, US Army General Clark, said that the risks of apprehending individuals had been overestimated.

June 15, 2000 - A bomb explosion destroyed the car of the Bosnian Serb education minister, Nenad Suzic, in Banja Luka. Five other vehicles were damaged, but casualties were reported.

June 16, 2000 - Bosnian Serb police arrested five people suspected in a car-bomb attack that critically wounded a journalist in October 1999. The journalist wrote articles alleging Serb soldiers committed atrocities against Muslims during the Bosnian war. Two businessmen received similar threatening letters to the one the journalist received, leading the police to the suspects.

June 21, 2000 - The UN Security Council voted to keep the NATO-led peacekeeping force and the UN mission in Bosnia for another year. Russia abstained to protest Yugoslavia's exclusion from a 46-nation meeting on Bosnia. China voted in favor, but disapproved the isolation of Yugoslavia.

The council approved the resolution by a vote of 14-0 stating that "the situation in the region continues to constitute a threat to international peace and security." The council also supported the 3,400-strong UN mission in Bosnia, which helps oversee some civilian components of the Dayton pact, including the return of refugees and the building of government institutions.

June 23, 2000 - Bosnia approved a new multiethnic government — six months after the previous government was declared illegal because it had two prime ministers. It took Bosnia's three-member presidency half a year to come up with a new candidate, Tusevljak, an obscure Serb economics professor. International officials hinted that if they become unsatisfied with the work of the new prime minister — a publicly unknown figure — he might be removed.

June 25, 2000 - In the Bosnian-Serb town of Prijedor British peacekeepers arrested Dusko Sikirica — a leading Serb war crimes suspect accused of massacring Muslim and Croat prisoners while he commanded the notorious Keraterm prison camp during the Bosnian war. He was indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague in July 1995 for crimes against humanity, war crimes and other offenses. The same day he was flown to Valkenburg military airfield in the Netherlands and transferred to the Scheveningen detention facility in The Hague.

June 26, 2000 - The US condemned measures taken by Bosnian federation authorities against the Bosnian newspaper Dnevni Avaz. Tax police raided the newspaper's premises several times and the tax authorities froze its bank accounts for several days.

June 30, 2000 - The president of Bosnia's Muslim-Croat federation, Ejup Ganic, appealed for $1 billion in aid or soft loans to help rebuild homes destroyed in the 1992-1995 war and let refugees return to their homes. He outlined a plan in which the international community — supported by the United States, the European Union, and World Bank — would draw up a loan scheme to be repaid over 20 or 30 years.

July 5, 2000 - War crimes investigators completed exhumations of mass graves in northwest Bosnia. They expected to issue new indictments in connection with the 1995 massacre at the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica — but UN prosecutors said they are dealing with delays in the forensic investigations.

July 7, 2000 - In a report by the General Accounting Office (US) it was said that widespread crime and corruption thwarted implementation of the Dayton peace accord. It was suggested the White House should consider suspending US aid until steps are taken. The report also expressed concern that most of some $407 million committed by international donors to provide general budget support to Bosnian governments were not controlled or audited.

July 10, 2000 - Secretary-General Kofi Annan said the United Nations' failure to help save thousands of Bosnian Muslims from a Serb mass murder will forever haunt the world body. Starting July 11, 1995, just a few months before the end of the 31/2-year war, Bosnian Serb forces overran the eastern town, which was designated a UN-protected zone. When the slaughter was finished, as many as 8,000 men and boys older than 14 were missing. The remains of some 2,500 have been exhumed.

July 11, 2000 - Bosnia's UN ambassador, Muhamed Sacirbey, implicated top international negotiator Carl Bildt in the failure to defend the UN "safe haven" of Srebrenica. At that time Sacirbey was Bosnia's foreign minster. He recalled that Bildt told him on July 11, 1995, there were no plans to defend or liberate Srebrenica or defend Zepa. Bildt reiterated that the Security Council was primarily to blame for not providing enough troops to defend the enclave in eastern Bosnia. "If the UN had been given an army on the ground by its member states, everything would have been different. But the UN was given words, and they didn't count for much in the brutality of the Bosnian war."

Srebrenica's inhabitants believed that the presence of 150 Dutch UN peacekeepers and the might of NATO airpower would ensure their safety. But NATO never responded to repeated Dutch requests for airstrikes, and the peacekeepers failed to prevent the Serb massacres.

July 20, 2000 - Bosnian police removed roadblocks near Bocinja set up by Muslim refugees. They were due to be evicted from Serb-owned houses.

July 21, 2000 - The Yugoslav war crimes tribunal upheld a landmark ruling that established rape as a war crime. It rejected an appeal by former Bosnian Croat commander Anto Furunzija convicted of watching as a subordinate tortured and raped a female prisoner. He received a 10-year sentence for the attack. The subordinate soldier was indicted but not captured.

The conviction set two international legal precedents: the tribunal admitted the testimony of the victim; and it expanded the definition of sexual assault to be more easily punishable as an act of torture.

July 28, 2000 - According to the Irish police missiles, machine guns and explosives that were seized in Croatia earlier were believed to have been destined for IRA guerrillas opposed to the Northern Ireland peace process. The arms were intercepted in the port city of Split.

July 29, 2000 - More than 5,000 Muslim refugees from eastern Bosnia demonstrated, demanding to be allowed to return to their homes. The 1995 Dayton Peace Agreement ordered the return of all refugees but implementation has been very slow.

August 3, 2000 - A United States military attache to Bosnia presented himself for the first time to the Serb, Croat and Muslim members of the Standing Committee for Military Matters (SCMM). By presenting the credentials to the body, the US supported the SCMM and tried to give it international significance.

Western countries that have spent billions of dollars to assist Bosnia's peace process were pressuring its leaders to begin a serious restructuring of the military, saying Bosnia could not afford to have two separate armies. Bosnian Serbs strongly opposed the unification of the two armies but they have agreed to give more powers to the SCMM and to make further cutbacks in the military.

August 5, 2000 - Former interior minister Alija Delimustafic and part-owner of a bank in which the US government lost $900,000 was arrested. In a report released last month, the US General Accounting Office said the US government had not recovered $900,000 in US embassy operating funds and loan payments which were deposited in the bank.

In Vares — 25 miles north of Sarajevo — UN police and SFOR peacekeepers raided a police station, seizing prohibited materials, including weapons, equipment and documents in a move to control activities of local authorities.

August 7, 2000 - The UN said it will train Bosnia's Muslim, Croat and Serb officers together as UN military observers to boost cooperation between the two ethnically divided armies. Jacques Klein, head of the UN mission in Bosnia said it was important to bring officers from the two armies to train and work together, because they can help later in the establishment of a future national defense structure.

August 15, 2000 - The Netherlands' UN ambassador, Peter van Walsum, that Bosnia's loss of $500 million in revenue to smugglers is so large that high-level government officials must be involved.

August 19, 2000 - Twenty-seven bodies were exhumed from a mass grave found earlier that week in the Serb-controlled part of Bosnia. Officials believed the remains were Bosnian Muslims from the eastern town of Visegrad, brought to the area by bus and executed by Serb soldiers at the beginning of the 1992-1995 war.

August 28, 2000 - Bob Dole, head of the International Commission for Missing Persons (ICMP), opened the Missing Persons Institute (MPI) for former Yugoslavia in Sarajevo which will help trace the fate of thousands of Bosnians missing since the 1992-95 war. ICMP estimated that between 20,000 and 30,000 Bosnian Muslims, Serbs and Croats are still unaccounted for. MPI's objectives were to intensify governments' efforts to release information on the whereabouts of the missing.

August 30, 2000 - A former Croat soldier who provided evidence on comrades suspected of murdering Serbs, was killed Monday in an explosion outside his home in Gospic, Croatia. The UN tribunal said that the apparent murder of a potential witness would have a chilling effect on people considering testifying against war criminals.

September 2, 2000 - Experts exhumed more than 70 bodies so far from a mass grave near the Serb-held village of Kalimanici — 20 miles east of the Bosnian capital, Sarajevo. The bodies are believed to be of Bosnian Muslims from the eastern town of Visegrad, brought here by bus and executed by Serb soldiers at the beginning of the 1992-1995 war.

September 6, 2000 - Croatian police arrested two Croat men suspected of belonging to a group that waged a 1993 killing spree in the village of Ahmici in central Bosnia during Bosnia's war. The two were not sought by the UN war crimes tribunal. In case it comes to a trial, it would be the first time Croatia tries it citizens for war crimes committed against Muslims in Bosnia.

September 7, 2000 - The parliament of Bosnia's Serb republic passed a no-confidence motion in the government of Western-backed Prime Minister Milorad Dodik. Dodik ousted nationalist hardliners from power in 1998. General elections were scheduled for November 11. The confidence motion was initiated by the hard-liners from the Serb Democratic Party.

September 8, 2000 - A war crimes suspect turned himself in to the Mostar police. He was a member of "The Mostar Five" — a group charged with committing war crimes against civilians and prisoners when fighting erupted between the Bosnian Muslims and Croats in 1993.

September 9, 2000 - Forensic experts in Bosnia found the remains of about 50 bodies at the Ivan Polje meadow where a local Serb said Muslims had been killed by Serb forces in 1992.

September 12, 2000 - The UN said that Bosnian Serb wartime leader and indicted war criminal Radovan Karadzic may be arrested before Bosnia's general elections in November. US president Clinton said in a statement that he wanted to see Karadzic arrested before his mandate expires in January 2001. A few days earlier, Karadzic was seen in a suburb of Sarajevo.

Croatia arrested a dozen people, including two army generals, in what appeared to be a major crackdown against those allegedly involved in wartime atrocities in Bosnia and Croatia. The arrests marked a leap forward in cooperation with the ICTY, whose requests were largely ignored under late President Franjo Tudjman.

September 13, 2000 - A Bosnian Croat charged with war crimes against Muslims in the town of Mostar in 1993 turned himself in to a regional court. Zoran Soldo was the second member of the so-called "Mostar Five" to give himself up.

September 19, 2000 - Jacques Paul Klein, head of the UN mission in Bosnia, that a Croatian army general and three Bosnian Croats arrested in police sweeps in Bosnia and Croatia last week are suspected in the assassination of Jozo Leutar, a Bosnian Croat deputy interior minister and an anti-corruption politician. Leutar was killed in a car bomb explosion in March 1999, an attack that the top Bosnian Croat leader first blamed on Muslims.

October 12, 2000 - Forensic experts said they exhumed the remains of 40 bodies from a mass grave in Slap — eastern Bosnia — believed to contain up to 150 bodies of Bosnian Muslims killed by Serb forces early in the country's 1992-95 war.

October 13, 2000 - Serbian war crimes suspect Janko Janjic detonated a hand grenade during an attempt of his arrest in Bosnia, killing himself and wounding four German SFOR soldiers. Janjic was one of four Bosnian Serb subcommanders indicted for the torture, rape and enslavement of women and girls in Foca in the summer of 1992. He was the third war crimes suspect to die while resisting arrest. It was the first time peacekeepers suffered casualties

October 14, 2000 - Alija Izetbegovic, who led Bosnian Muslims through Europe's bloodiest conflict since World War II, resigned from Bosnia's joint presidency. Izetbegovic was the last of the major national leaders who had presided over the wars that swept the former Yugoslavia after Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia declared independence starting in 1991. He turned his job over to his Serb colleague Zivko Radisic.

October 19, 2000 - Demonstrating for a third straight day, Bosnian Serb students in Brcko pelted US peacekeepers with eggs and stoned Muslim-owned businesses to press their demand that Bosnian Muslims leave the city.

October 20, 2000 - The UN war crimes tribunal issued its first subpoena to NATO. The alliance was ordered to disclose how it detained a Bosnian Serb war crimes suspect who said he was abducted illegally by mercenaries. US Army Chief of Staff General Eric Shinseki was summoned to provide evidence on the September 27, 1998, detention of Stevan Todorovic.

It was the first time the UN tribunal issued a binding order to NATO to hand over information. However, the three-judge chamber chaired by Patrick Robinson of Jamaica gave NATO the option of applying to have the order set aside "on the grounds that disclosure would prejudice national security interests."

In 1999, Todorovic submitted a motion contesting the legality of his detention, claiming he was snatched in Serbia by mercenaries who handed him over to SFOR troops at the Bosnian border.

October 22, 2000 - Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica visited Bosnia-Herzegovina, becoming the first Yugoslav leader to visit the country since it declared independence in 1991. In an attempt to ease tension between Belgrade and Sarajevo and establish diplomatic relations, Kostunica had lunch with all the Bosnian Serb leaders, except pro-Western Prime Minister Milorad Dodik.

October 25, 2000 - Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic — on trial for genocide — told the UN tribunal that he knew about mass executions by Serb forces in July 1995 at the Muslim enclave of Srebrenica, but did not investigate them. He said he feared his chief of staff, General Ratko Mladic, would harm him or his family if he took any action.

November 9, 2000 - A report issued by the Ministry of Human Rights and Refugees said that at least 100,000 Bosnians left the former Yugoslav republic since the end of the 1992-95 war in search of work and a more secure future. Counted were only Bosnians registered with the Geneva-based International Organization for Migration (IOM). The report said some 625,850 Bosnians were living as refugees scattered in 40 different countries worldwide. Inside the country, 857,000 people are internally displaced, unable or unwilling to return to their pre-war homes. Of these, 55.3 percent are in the Muslim-Croat federation and 44.7 percent in the Serb republic.

November 12, 2000 - In Bosnia's nation-wide elections the party founded by indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic claimed a strong lead over the Western-backed candidate to lead the Bosnian Serb part of the country.

November 15, 2000 - Richard Holbrooke said he wanted a merger of the Bosnian armies. "As long as you have three armies, NATO troops will always have to be there. That was the single greatest flaw in the Dayton peace agreement." Holbrooke said the Dayton agreement also failed to ensure that the central presidency of Bosnia had adequate staff. "It made the three-person presidency an empty shell," he said.

Haris Silajdzic, leader of a reformist party and a former prime minister in Bosnia, said some of the most important points of the agreement have never been implemented, such as the return of refugees to their homes and a revitalization of Bosnia's prewar multiethnic society.

November 15, 2000 - Western officials in Bosnia punished Serb and Croat nationalists for breaking the rules in weekend elections and warned them they could face further sanctions. The OSCE which ran the polls took away 10 seats in regional assemblies from the Croatian Democratic Union (HDZ) and half the seats won by the Serb Democratic Party (SDS) in the town of Srebrenica. The SDS, founded by Bosnian Serb wartime leader Radovan Karadzic, was reported to have attempted widespread fraud and intimidation of voters in Srebrenica.

With about 86 percent of the votes counted from Saturday's balloting, the hard-line Serb party founded by indicted war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic seems to have won the presidency in the Serb-run ministate and may end up controlling the Serb regional legislature.

November 23, 2000 - Mirko Sarovic, the candidate of the hard-line Bosnian Serb party founded by war crimes suspect Radovan Karadzic, won the presidency of the Bosnian Serb republic. The election results showed that many of the country's Serbs and Croats were still loyal to nationalist party leaders who led them into the ethnic war that tore Bosnia apart.

The trial of five Bosnian Croats — the so-called Mostar Five Group — charged with war crimes began in the southern town of Mostar. The group was charged with war crimes against Muslim civilians and prisoners of war committed during the Muslim-Croat conflict in 1993-1994 and for being responsible for the disappearance of 12 soldiers of the Muslim-led Bosnian army. The Hague-based UN tribunal which has the supreme authority to prosecute war crimes in former Yugoslavia gave the go-ahead for a local trial, the latest of several low-level war crimes cases tried by local courts in Bosnia.

November 25, 2000 - The first 100 Bosnian Muslim refugees returned to the eastern town of Foca. Most refugees were forced to leave this stronghold of Bosnian Serb nationalists eight years ago.

November 29, 2000 - The UN policing mission removed six officers in northern Bosnia because "they had overstepped their duties and behaved improperly". IPTF said on November 15 that Bosnian Serb police monitored by UN police officials had raided nightclubs in the town of Prijedor and rescued 33 women who had been forced into prostitution. After the raid, a nightclub owner accused one UN police officer of racketeering and blackmail.

November 30, 2000 - Three US Marines of the Marine Corps Explosive Ordnance Disposal Team were injured at US Camp Bedrock near the northern Bosnian town of Tuzla.

December 1, 2000 - Forensic experts were looking for up to 150 bodies of Muslim civilians, believed to have been killed by Serb forces in 1992, in a garbage pit at Novakusa in southern Bosnia. The victims were executed in the village of Sehovina and thrown into a pit at nearby Lipovaca. Exhumation work had started a year earlier after some remains were found.

December 4, 2000 - Forensic experts exhumed 16 bodies of people killed during the Bosnian war from a sand bank of the Drina River on the border with Serbia. The bodies were of Bosnian Muslims killed by Serb forces at the beginning of the 1992-95 war. Over 20,000 remain missing — of which 90 percent are Bosnian Muslims. More bodies were expected to be exhumed from the same site.

December 7, 2000 - At a garbage dump near Nevesinje — 41 miles south of Sarajevo — investigators believed at least 60 people were buried in another mass grave. The bodies were believed to be those of local Bosnian Muslims, killed by Serb forces at the beginning of the 1992-95 war.

December 11, 2000 - A Serbian court convicted nine Serbs of abducting former Bosnian Serb police officer Stevan Todorovic in September 1998 and smuggling him to neighboring Bosnia, where he was later arrested by NATO and delivered to the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague. They were sentenced to prison terms of up to 81/2 years. The prosecution asserted the defendants were paid US$22,700 for the abduction. The court concluded they acted on orders and were paid for by the NATO-led peace force in Bosnia.

Todorovic's arrest has become a test case for war crimes court. His challenge delayed his trial and strained the tribunal's relationship with NATO after the court subpoenaed a US and another alliance commander, ordering them to disclose details of Todorovic's detention.

December 13, 2000 - Stevan Todorovic admitted to war crimes. He also dropped complaints that he was arrested illegally. Under the plea bargain, prosecutors agreed to withdraw 26 counts including torture, sexual assaults and murder in exchange for Todorovic's guilty plea on a single count of persecution as a crime against humanity. He originally pleaded innocent in 1998.

In Croatia, public concern grew over the possibility that some prominent Croats were about to be indicted by the tribunal for the deaths of Serbs. Some media reports said that the tribunal prepared to charge Croatian generals for atrocities against Serbs in connection with the 1995 offensive in which Croatia recaptured areas seized by Serbs in 1991.

December 14, 2000 - Former French military chief Admiral Jacques Lanxade denied allegations that a French general who led UN peacekeepers during the Bosnian war had agreed to block air strikes against Bosnian Serbs, who later massacred thousands of Bosnian Muslims. About 30,000 Muslim refugees fled to the UN-declared "safe haven" of Srebrenica to seek protection from Dutch peacekeepers. But on July 11, 1995, the Serb army launched its assault with an overwhelming force and the Dutch UN troops could do little more than look on as the Serbs deported the Muslims. NATO never responded to repeated Dutch requests for airstrikes.

December 15, 2000 - Yugoslavia and Bosnia established diplomatic relations, almost nine years after Bosnia broke away from the old socialist Yugoslav federation in bloodshed.

December 16, 2000 - In Bosnia-Herzegovine a new president and parliament of the Bosnian-Serb part were sworn in.

July 9, 1999 - NATO's Supreme Commander said a summit on the stabilization and rebuilding of southeastern Europe will be held at the end of the month.

July 13, 1999 - American diplomat Jacques Paul Klein, a senior official in the international peacekeeping efforts in Bosnia, has been put in charge of the UN mission in the former Yugoslav republic. He replaced special representative Elisabeth Rehn.

NATO announced a plan to reduce the troops in Bosnia from 30,000 to 16,500. NATO's military committee recommended the major troop cut. US Defense Secretary said NATO did not to intend to rotate troops from Bosnia to Kosovo: "We should not see a reduction in the commitments to Bosnia in order to satisfy the mission to Kosovo."

For the third time in three weeks a Bosniak home in Banja Luka was attacked Saturday night with grenades and automatic weapons — no one was injured. In response, SFOR enhanced its presence in the Banja Luka area.

At the side of a road near the town of Sandali in MND Southwest, SFOR troops discovered 550 20 millimeter rounds, 10 mine fuses, two meters of detonation cord, two grenades, and 100 grams of explosives.

July 18, 1999 - Jacques Klein — UN special representative in Bosnia — said that Bosnia's future will be "problematic" unless both Croatia and Serbia become democratic. Klein noted that Milosevic retains strong control over the Serbian media and that opposition to him remains weak and divided.

July 20, 1999 - Carlos Westendorp said he "suspended from office" Sanski Most Mayor Mehmed Alagic. Bosnian media linked Alagic to abuse of office and corruption. Alagic denied the charges.

August 1, 1999 - The Daily Telegraph claimed that French peacekeepers in Bosnia were turning a blind eye to indicted war criminals living in the sector they control, according to diplomats, soldiers and aid workers. France believes it is too difficult to arrest Radovan Karadzic, who lives in eastern Bosnia, near Foca.

August 2, 1999 - Former Bosnian Serb military police commander Radomir Kovac was arrested by peacekeepers. He was wanted for the alleged systematic rape of Bosnian Muslim women in Foca, during the 1992-1995 war. He was on a list of eight war criminals. In January, another one was killed by French peacekeepers during his arrest.

August 3, 1999 - The UN Security Council selected Wolfgang Petritsch (Austria) as the international community's top civilian administrator in Bosnia. He replaced Carlos Westendorp (Spain).

August 9, 1999 - Under international pressure Croatia extradited Vinko Martinovic and handed him over to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague. He was indicted in December 1998, and charged with crimes against humanity, grave breaches of the Geneva Convention and violations of laws and customs of war. He was responsible for driving tens of thousands of Muslims from Mostar during the 3 1/2 year Bosnian war. Earlier, Croatia refused to surrender any of its people to the war crimes tribunal.

August 10, 1999 - Forensic experts finished exhuming about 250 bodies from a mass grave in Srebrenica. Over 7,000 Muslim men were missing, some 2,000 bodies were found so far.

August 14, 1999 - COMSFOR General Montgomery Meigs announced that the 30,000 strong SFOR peacekeeping force will be downsized next fall significantly. He said the all 38 contributing countries would like to remove SFOR since its enormous costs. Meigs said the elections scheduled for September might be a turning point in the peace process.

August 16, 1999 - The head of the US Agency for International Development, Brady Anderson, said progress in Bosnia must be made as quickly as possible, as "resources are not unlimited".

August 17, 1999 - International top officials of the anti-fraud unit of the Office of the High Representative accused Muslim, Croat, and Serbian officials of stealing more than $1 billion in public funds and international aid. Alija Izetbegovic — Bosnia's Muslim president — denied such reports. The Un said the investigations continued because of the corruption in Bosnia. The Times said international relief agencies downplayed the thefts, fearing to discourage international donors. In total, 15 authorities were dismissed by the High Representative, but many were still holding office. The report cited one incident in which 10 foreign embassies and international aid agencies lost more than $20 million that was deposited in a Bosnian bank. Only Switzerland acknowledged the loss.

August 18, 1999 - A forensic team from the crimes tribunal begun exhuming another mass grave in northeastern Bosnia. It was part of the efforts to collect evidence related to the 1995 Srebrenica massacre. Some 7,000 men were still missing, only 2,000 bodies were found so far.

In the village of Stup, a Bosnian worker removing land mines was killed when a mine exploded.

August 19, 1999 - Switzerland threatened to review its aid to Bosnia-Herzegovina. The international community poured $5.1 billion into Bosnia since the end of the 3½ year war 1995. Since the collapse of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Bank, some countries were unable to recover funds. Switzerland said $987,000, in aid money had been tied up and if the problem cannot be not resolved, Switzerland will reconsider its commitment to rebuilding Bosnia. While western countries were concerned with the corruption in Bosnia, Bosnian officials were concerned about damage to the country's reputation..

The international decision to take sole control of Brcko from Bosnian Serbs became final. On March 5, 1999, Roberts Owen decided to let Brcko be governed jointly by Serbs and the Muslim-Croat federation. Parties were given five months to come with counter proposals. The deadline expired. Brcko is a strategic point on the narrow corridor that links Serb parts in the west and east. The Muslim-Croat federation wanted access to the river and rail facilities.

August 24, 1999 - Twenty-three bodies have been exhumed from a mass grave near the Serb town of Zvornik — 45 miles northeast of Sarajevo. It was believed that the bodies were Bosnian Muslims from Srebrenica, killed in July 1995. According to survivors, there could be over 1,000 bodies in mass graves in the area.

In Vienna, Bosnian-Serb army chief Momir Talic was arrested. Talic was attended a Western-sponsored seminar on military issues at the National Defense Academy. United Nations war crimes prosecutors had issued a secret "sealed" indictment accusing him of brutal treatment of Muslims and Croats in the northwestern Prijedor region in 1992.

The Bosnian Serb Defense Ministry demanded Talic's immediate release but also called on soldiers and citizens to remain calm and refrain from action which could damage the peace process. Wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and his military commander Ratko Mladic — both indicted for genocide — still remain at large.

August 26, 1999 - The International Crimes Tribunal for former Yugoslavia issued an official complaint to the UN about Croatia. ICTY said the country refused to comply with its investigations and failed to give the court access to evidence or to extradite two indicted suspects. They ignored more than 100 requests to submit evidence. Yugoslavia is another country that triggered complaints from the tribunal. Croatia was faulted for refusing to hand over Mladen "Tuta" Naletilic — a paramilitary leader charged with leading a brutal ethnic cleansing drive against Muslems in southwestern Bosnia in 1993. The US warned Croatia for the consequences.

August 31, 1999 - Momir Talic — arrested Aug 24 — pleaded not guilty. Prosecutors alleged that Talic oversaw the murder, torture and expulsion of over 100,000 non-Serbs from the Krajina region of northwestern Bosnia, site of three notorious prison camps. If convicted he faces a maximum life prison sentence.

September 1, 1999 - US envoy Richard Holbrooke urged Bosnian officials to tackle the corruption. Switzerland threatened to review its aid program to Bosnia after international officials accused corrupt Muslim, Croat and Serb authorities of stealing over $1 billion in public funds and foreign aid.

September 2, 1999 - Croatia's president Franjo Tudjman agreed to extradite war crimes suspect Mladen Naletilic to the Netherlands. Naletilic commanded a paramilitary unit called that is accused of atrocities against Muslims during the Bosnian War. In December 1998, the UN tribunal indicted him on 17 counts of war crimes. The Washington Post reported it was widely believed that Naletilic's testimony would be damaging for senior government figures in Croatia.

In Mostar, Richard Holbroke said the Muslim-Croat Federation failed to implement all terms of the 1995 Dayton peace accord that ended the 3 1/2 year war. He blamed the Serbian Democratic Party and the Serbian Radical Party of being in direct violation with Dayton.

September 16, 1999 - Bosnia envoy Wolfgang Petritsch dismissed two employees who continued to sabotage the peace process.

One of the two dismissed was Bosnia-Croat Stipe Babic, minister of Justice. In Drvar, controlled by Bosnian-Croats since the war, Serbs won the 1997 municipal elections, but Croats prevented the installation of the council and set houses of Serbs on fire. The UN headquarters was also set on fire. Petritsch

The other person dismissed — at his own request — was the Bosnian-Croat mayor of Drvar, Mile Marleta. Not because of sabotaging the Dayton Agreement, but because it became impossible for him to proceed, after multiple threats by Croats.

September 22, 1999 - During a meeting of NATO ministers of Defense in Toronto, the wish was expressed to remove a third of NATOs troops from Bosnia-Herzegovina and to bring all troops in the Balkans under a single command. US minister Cohen said that total dependence on US military power in joint operations must come to a halt.

October 10, 1999 - The Bosnian Serb Assembly proposed to withdraw a lawsuit against Yugoslavia for aggression and genocide in connection with the 1992-95 ethnic war. The case was filed by the Sarajevo government six years ago in the World Court in The Hague.

October 14, 1999 - Four NATO soldiers were injured when an angry crowd threw stones at them while they were attempting to seize weapons in Mostar. Demonstrators were blocking intersections while carrying Croatian flags, driving cars and honking. The city is controlled by French and Spanish peacekeepers.

October 15, 1999 - In a crackdown on organized crime in Bosnia, SFOR raided four office buildings in the Croat controlled part of Mostar, seizing explosives, cash, computers and credit card-making equipment.

October 20, 1999 - The UN Tribunal in The Hague convicted Goran Jelisic on 31 counts of torture and murder in 1992, during the Bosnian war. It was the eighth conviction since the Tribunal was established in 1993 by the Security Council.

October 25, 1999 - SFOR troops detained Bosnian Serb war-crimes suspect Damir Dosen, indicted by the Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia for crimes committed from May 24 to August 30, 1992, while he was a shift commander at the Keraterm camp — near Preijedor. Detainees were killed, sexually assaulted, tortured, beaten and otherwise subjected to inhuman treatment. This was the first arrest since the arrival of the tribunal's new chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte, in September.

About 30,000 Bosnians chanting anti-government slogans streamed into Sarajevo, demanding job protection and aggressive action against corruption. The European Confederation of Trade Unions and even workers from the Bosnian Serb half of the country expressed their support.

October 27, 1999 - Jacques Klein — UN special representative to Bosnia — said failure to arrest Karadzic and other indicted war criminals sends the wrong message to Bosnian Serbs. Carla Del Ponte — the new chief prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal — said her top priority was the arrest and trial of Karadzic, former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic, and Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. Since the end of the war and the signing of the Dayton peace agreement in 1995, Bosnian Serb officials have refused to cooperate with the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, which most Serbs consider biased against them.

October 30, 1999 - An occurred near the bus station parking lot in Zvornik, about 25 miles east of Tuzla. No one was injured.

October 31, 1999 - An explosion occurred in front of the station of the UN international police force in Zvornik. No one was injured. NATO said it had both explosions under investigation.

November 3, 1999 - NATO announced its 30,000 troops in Bosnia would be reduced by one third by April 2000, as required by the North Atlantic Council.

November 6, 1999 - Bosnia’s ultra-nationalist Serb Radical Party (SRS) threatened to block local elections in April if it is not allowed to take part. The SRS was banned from elections after it refused to remove Nikola Poplassen, former Bosnian Serb president. He was dismissed by the international community.

November 11, 1999 - Apart from receiving a 20-year prison term for two murders and the torture and rape of dozens of non-Serbs in 1992, the UN imposed additional charges on Dusan Tadic. Total prison term was set to 25 years.

November 13, 1999 - Bosnian leaders and US diplomats recommended a commission to fight corruption and more aggressive NATO pursuit of war criminals. Since the war ended, the international community has pledged $5.1 billion for the reconstruction of Bosnia. But the Bosnian government has lost millions of dollars, much of it from failing to collect tax and customs revenues. It was also recommended that the NATO peacekeeping forces in Bosnia be more aggressive about finding and arresting war criminals.

Canada announced it would withdraw most of its 1,450 peacekeepers from Kosovo by summer of 2000 to relieve its "thinly stretched military". Canada said it would expand its presence slightly in the NATO-led force in nearby Bosnia but would reduce its overall Balkan presence from 2,800 at present to about 1,800. All but 100 Canadian troops were scheduled to leave Kosovo, while the Bosnian force was scheduled to grow to 1,700 or 1,800 from 1,350 now. NATO planned to reduce its overall presence in Bosnia to 20,000 from 30,000 by April 2000, while keeping the force in more volatile Kosovo at 50,000.

November 14, 1999 - Six people were killed and four injured by an anti-tank mine near Zagreb, Croatia.

In Bosnia-Herzegovina, the last of 360,000 anti-personnel mines were destroyed, as agreed earlier in the Ottawa Treaty. The Treaty required to dispose of the mines before March 2003, but NATO ordered the destruction ahead of schedule.

November 15, 1999 - Goods worth 2.7 million German marks ($1.4 million) were confiscated in a "Stop Smuggling" campaign in the Serb-held half of Bosnia.

November 16, 1999 - The three presidents of Bosnia agreed on a declaration proposed by US ambassador Richard Holbrooke to pick up the pace of the peace process, pledging to end ethnic strife and work more closely together. They agreed to establish a joint border patrol, support a single national passport, create a permanent executive staff for their joint presidency and make a commitment to fully fund state ministries. They also declared that their "highest priority" was the return of displaced people and refugees to their homes.

Germany announced it would reduce its number of troops in Bosnia by April 2000 from more than 2,300 to 2,000 as part of a process to reduce the NATO-led peacekeeping force. The reductions would mostly concern logistics.

November 18, 1999 - The Provisional Election Commission extended the voter registration deadline until November 30, 1999 for the municipal elections in BiH, scheduled for April 2000.

November 19, 1999 - Croatia's ruling party sought opposition support in pronouncing president Franjo Tudjman — hospitalized since November 1 — temporarily incapacitated. The opposition refused to back the motion until it received a detailed report on his health, but some members expressed concern that their president wouldn't recover in time to sign several key bills and call parliamentary elections, tentatively set for December 22.

His medical team has said little of his condition, which has fueled speculation that Tudjman had lost consciousness and was being kept alive by life-support machines.

November 24, 1999 - Bosnian Serb General Radislav Krstic — accused of conducting the slaughter of thousands of Muslim civilians in Srebrenica in 1995 pleaded innocent to two additional war crimes charges before a UN tribunal. In 1998 he was charged with genocide, extermination, murder and persecution.

November 25, 1999 - A day after parliament approved a constitutional amendment paving the way for transferring some powers, 77 year old president Franjo Tudjman was reported stable.

November 26, 1999 - The President of the Croatian Parliament, Vlatko Pavletic, who replaced President Franjo Tudjman, announced that the parliamentary elections in Croatia will be held on January 3, 2000.

November 27, 1999 - OHR reported: In an interview for Slobodna Bosna, BiH Presidency Member Zivko Radisic stated that the New York Declaration had been misinterpreted and denied speculation that they had agreed to common BiH passports (see November 16, 1999). Radisic added that nothing had been agreed with regard to passports, but only that they expressed readiness to raise the issue and seek solutions based on the experience of modern countries.

November 29, 1999 - The medical team of Croatian president Tudjman said that his health remained in a very grave state, and that intensive treatment was continuing. Vecernji list suggested his condition was "exceptionally serious, perhaps critical, which can last for only a few more days."

International officials administering Bosnia fired 22 local officials for obstructing implementation of the country's peace agreement and hindering the return of refugees. They were also banned from running in municipal elections next year.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, out of nearly 2 million refugees – almost half the country's population – only 600,000 have returned to their homes since the 1992-95 Bosnia war. Of those, only 100,000 have returned to areas where they represent an ethnic minority. Foreign donors are refusing to finance the reconstruction of areas run by officials who do not obey the Dayton peace agreement that ended the Bosnian war.

November 29, 1999 - The Serbian representative on the three-member Bosnian joint presidency, Zivko Radisic, distanced himself from the agreement he made with Muslim Alija Izetbegovic and Croat Ante Jelavic in New York, November 16. He called the declaration a statement of intent rather than a binding agreement. He also added the declaration was not signed — as first reported by Associated Press. One of the hot items is a multi-ethnic border police force.

Richard Holbrooke and Wolfgang Petritsch, however, considered the agreement binding. His spokeswoman accused the Serb-led Yugoslav government of pressuring Bosnian Serbs to abandon the agreement.

December 2, 1999 - The European Union abandoned its attempt to send the oil to opposition-led towns in Serbia. It EU said the government was deliberately delaying the shipments. The drivers of the 14 trucks were held at the border for nine days, their passports confiscated.

December 6, 1999 - The US Deputy Envoy for BiH, Robert Frowick, said regarding the border service — as discussed in New York earlier — that it absolutely necessary and that the declaration must be implemented. OHR reported that the US embassy issued a statement saying the presidency published the Declaration as a UN document, making it obligatory for all three sides. Signatures were not necessary, since the presidency filed the New York declaration with the UN Security Council as an official document.

December 8, 1999 - International officials announced that Bosnian policemen would be serving in UN police forces in crisis areas around the world. Each of the three entities was expected to contribute 30 police officers.

Montenegro started an investigation against a man suspected of war crimes in Bosnia. It could be Montenegro's first extradition to the UN War Crimes Tribunal in the Netherlands.

December 10, 1999 - President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia died at the age of 77. He led his country to independence from Yugoslavia but his nationalist policies also helped fuel the war in Bosnia. Presidential elections were scheduled within 60 days. Many western countries were hoping that democracy would stand a better chance.

December 11, 1999 - OHR stated that the 22 municipal officials dismissed by High Representative Wolfgang Petritsch on November 29 will be ignored.

December 13, 1999 - SFOR commander Lt Gen Ronald Adams announced he may order the demilitarization of the Brcko area if the Bosnian Serb authorities would refuse to demilitarize the area voluntarily. Earlier, Republika Srpska defense minister Manojlo Milovanovic said that RS could not make any agreement on demilitarization. The Bosnian Serb authorities respected the resolution, since they considered it in the interest of the Bosnian Serbs.

December 14, 1999 - ICTY sentenced the Bosnian-Serb Goran Jelisic to 40 years imprisonment — the harshest sentence so far. On October 19, 1999, he was found guilty of 31 out of the 32 counts contained in the indictment against him, 15 counts of crimes against humanity and 16 counts of violations of the laws or customs of war. During the Bosnian war, he was commander of the Luka prison camp in northern Bosnia in 1992.

In an attempt to cut smuggling, Bosnian customs seized 2.5 million cigarettes and 10,000 compact discs — valued at about $400,000 — that illegally entered the country. The operation was supported by the EU. The Washington Post said that the lost customs and tax revenues since 1996 amounted to over $1 billion.

In Croatia, the campaign for the January 3 parliamentary elections started. No date was set for presidential elections.

The defense ministers of Greece and Macedonia signed a military cooperation agreement. Greece presented Macedonia with ten armored personnel carriers and five utility vehicles. Macedonia participates in NATO's Partnership for Peace program. Germany and Bulgaria also assisted the country.

December 15, 1999 - A German judge convicted Bosnian-Serb Djurdard Kusljic for genocide and murder and sentenced him to life in prision. During the Bosnian war he was the police chief in the Bosnian town of Vrbanjci. In 1993 he entered Germany as a refugee, where he was arrested in 1998. He was prosecuted in Germany since the ICTY was not interested in in pursuing the case.

December 16, 1999 - A team of ICTY experts went to Banja Luka for talks with two Bosnian Serb army officers suspected of having been involved in Srebrenica. Serbian forces were accused of having killed at least 6,000 mainly Muslim males from Srebrenica in 1995.

December 18, 1999 - In Banja Luka, at least 20 NATO troops arrested the wartime commander of the Serbian Army, Stanislav Galic, who resisted his arrest. During the 1992-1995 war in Bosnia he was a colonel, later general, responsible for keeping Sarajevo under siege. The city suffered from ethnic intolerance. Before his arrest, Galic was an advisor for hardline Bosnian Serb president Nikola Poplasen. Poplasen was removed on March 5, 1999 by High Representative to Bosnia Carlos Westendorp for opposing the Dayton peace accords.

Galic was under a sealed (secret) indictment from the international tribunal in The Hague. After his arrest, war time leader Radovan Karadzic was left as the most important figures from the Bosnian Serb military command structure who remain at large. On August 24, 1999, Gen Talic was arrested, and on November 24, 1999, Gen. Krstic.

December 21, 1999 - Presidential elections for Croatia were set for January 24, 2000.

December 22, 1999 - UN secretary-general Kofi Annan said he backed the campaign in Bosnia to eliminate corruption. He supported plans to place an additional 300 international police monitors with local police — bringing the total to 500 in 205 locations — and use extensive audits to weed out corruption and crime. A UN report said UN missions in the Balkans lost $38 million in equipment between 1996 and 1997 from accidents and theft -– more than three times as much as all other UN peacekeeping operations combined.

December 24, 1999 - On December 23, suspected war criminal Zoran Vukovic was arrested by SFOR in Bosnia and handed over to the international tribunal on December 24. He and six others — of which two were in custody — were charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity (torture and rape) committed in 1992 and 1993 in Foca, when he was leading a paramilitary group.

The UN said prosecutors were aware Vukovic used multiple aliases and made believe they were going after someone else by filing a separate secret indictment under his true name.

December 28, 1999 - US troops in Bosnia increased security after terrorist threats were made worldwide against the United States.

OSCE officials in charge of elections in Bosnia decided to remove up to 15 SDA candidates from the ruling Muslim party's candidate list because of fraud in the voter registration process for municipal elections. The OSCE found that 3,500 fraudulent voter registration applications for Bosnians no longer living in the United States were submitted through the Bosnian Consulate in New York.

December 29, 1999 - Bosnian Serb Gen. Stanislav Galic — arrested December 18, 1999 by NATO troops — pleaded innocent.

January 1, 1999 - Serb leaders warned Thursday they would use "all means" necessary to stamp out rebellion in Kosovo. Serbia's extreme nationalist vice premier Vojislav Seselj warned that the government was prepared to stand up against threats by NATO to intervene militarily in the Kosovo conflict if fighting erupts on a major scale. "Warnings of Javier Solana remind me of one-time threats by Adolf Hitler," he told reporters.

Ibrahim Rugova, moderate leader of ethnic Albanians, said that there could be no peace in the disputed province without the deployment of NATO peacekeeping troops.

January 2, 1999 - Kosovo has been relatively quiet since four straight days of fighting erupted on December 24, 1998, near the northern town of Podujevo. France has taken over the presidency of the six-nation Contact Group.

January 4, 1999 - The UN war crimes tribunal approved the prosecution of Fikret Abdic — a former Muslim warlord from the Bosnian war. In 1997, the Muslim part of the Bosnian government accused Abdic of genocide and war crimes and delivered evidence to the UN war crimes tribunal. Under the 1995 Dayton peace accord, Bosnian authorities may not make war crimes arrests unless they first submit evidence to the international tribunal and get approval to proceed.

January 5, 1999 - A tem of international monitors visited a site in southern Kosovo that could be a grave with 11 bodies of ethnic Albanians.

A Serb security guard was killed Wednesday in Grabovac outside Pristina when Albanian rebels armed with automatic weapons attacked the province's main power plant.

A handgrenade was tossed at a Serbian cafe in Pristina. In return, angry Serbs then attacked nearby Albanian cafes with rocks. Three Albanians were killed.

The Serbs accused Docters Without Borders of supplying arms to ethnic Albanian rebels. The international humanitarian group denied the allegations.

January 6, 1999 - General Clark told reporters that the Serbian authorities "are violating their commitments to NATO" under the October agreement between Belgrade and the Atlantic alliance. He noted that the Serbs have broken their promises by deploying additional troops and giving heavy weapons to the paramilitary police. He further stated that he disagreed with Defense Minister Alain Richard, who recently blamed the Kosovo Liberation Army for the continuing crisis.

Christoffer Hill met with Ibrahim Rugova in Prishtina. He said the cease-fire is critical to getting a political settlement.

Rival Serbs and ethnic Albanians accused each other of ethnic violence in Pristina. Seven people were injured when an explosive was hurled at a Serb-run cafe.

Yugoslav Justice Minister Zoran Knezevic said Yugoslavia will not extradite three army officers suspected of war crimes by the UN. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman sparked a wave of anti-tribunal sentiment recently by claiming the court was poised to indict five Croat generals.

January 9, 1999 - Yugoslav army forces and the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army clashed in Kosovo. Tensions are high because of eight Yugoslav soldiers held by ethnic Albanian guerrillas. Two police were wounded in a fight near Podujevo, east of where the Yugoslav soldiers were abducted. The Albanian government agreed to ask the rebels to free the soldiers.

In retaliation for the abductions, government forces moved from Pristina northwest toward Kosovska Mitrovica and north toward Podujevo.

Three KLA rebels were shot dead by Serb police near the western town of Decani.

NATO troops shot to death a suspected Bosnian Serb war criminal near Foca. The suspect was accused of of raping and torturing at least five Muslim women. The suspect resisted arrest and drove his car directly at French soldiers. The troops defended themselves and opened fire, according to NATO. Foca is believed to harbor at least eight suspected war criminals. The top two suspects — former Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic, the general commanding Bosnian Serb troops during the war — remain at large.

January 10, 1999 - The IPTF station in Foca was surrounded by a crowd of approximately 100. IPTF monitors were assaulted, five of them being injured. The station was severely damaged and the UN equipment destroyed. The Republika Srpska minister of interior has agreed to establish an investigation.

January 12, 1999 - An aide to Kosovo's top ethnic Albanian leader was assassinated outside his home in Pristina. It was speculated that the assassination was linked to the rivalry between the moderate Rugova and the militant Kosovo Liberation Army.

Albanian rebels have agreed to release all eight Yugoslav soldiers they have been holding hostage. Yugoslav army tanks were stationed close to where they were held.

January 13, 1999 - The trial of Dario Kordic and Mario Cerkez was set to April 12, 1999 by the UN court. Both men turned themselves in to the tribunal in 1997. They have been charged with charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Kosovo rebels freed all eight Yugoslav army soldiers.

January 15, 1999 - A German soldier serving with the peacekeeping force died from a gunshot wound.

The Serbs assaulted the area around Stimlje — 15 miles south of Pristina. They shelled and fired automatic weapons on three villages. The Serb Media Center reported that at least 15 KLA fighters were killed in the village of Racak and nearby Petrovo. Serb forces claimed to be seeking out rebels who killed a policeman and attacked a patrol in the area a few days before.

Near Decani, a three-vehicle convoy of the international Kosovo monitoring mission has been attacked by unidentified gunmen. A British monitor was hit in his shoulder and his translator was hit and slightly injured. Serb police — accompanying the two — blamed snipers who fired from territory held by the KLA. The UK, the US, and France have strongly condemned the attack on the unarmed monitors.

January 16, 1999 - In Racak, southern Kosovo, the bodies of 45 ethnic Albanians were found shot from close range or mutilated. The bodies were discovered a day after Serb police forces backed by the army attacked the area. Afterwards they stated that they had killed "tens of terrorists" after coming under mortar and automatic weapons fire while trying to arrest guerrilla suspects for the murder of a policeman. International monitors confirmed at least 28 bodies. It was the highest death toll since the truce of October 12, 1998. The KLA said that of the victims, 8 were KLA members.

NATO has authorized its forces since October to hit Yugoslav military targets if Belgrade violates pledges to seek a peaceful solution to a conflict with ethnic Albanian separatists.

January 17, 1999 - Serbian police armored vehicles moved into Racak, driving international observers away from the scene of the massacre. The shooting continued for at least half an hour.

January 18, 1999 - American peace verifier William Walker was ordered out of the country within 48 hours. Walker criticized the Yugoslav government for the massacre near Racak.

Yugoslav border guards refused today to allow Louise Arbour — chief UN war crimes prosecutor — to enter the country from Macedonia to probe the massacre.

Albanian guerrillas fired a rocket at a Serb patrol near Kosovska Mitrovica, 25 miles northwest of Pristina, injuring five policemen.

President Milosevic refused to meet NATO commander Gen Wesley Clark and head of NATO's military committee Gen Klaus Naumann because he was "too busy".

In Geneva, the UN relief agency said about 3,500 civilians were fleeing the latest fighting in and around Racak.

January 20, 1999 - Fights broke out near Kosovska Mitrovica, 25 miles northwest of Pristina, between Serb forces and KLA rebels. Both sides ignored the NATO warnings to halt the fighting. Both sides accused each other of starting.

In Brussels NATO commander Gen Wesley Clark and German Gen Klaus Naumann made no progress during more than seven hours of talks with Milosevic. Before receiving both NATO generals, he left them waiting for an entire day, according to an article in the Washington Post. The article also mentioned that NATO credibility is on the line.

NATO ordered the USS Enterprise — currently in the Aegean Sea — to move into the Adriatic Sea and moved an eight-vessel Mediterranean naval force to Brindisi (Italy).

January 21, 1999 - In his never ending attempt to manipulate the western world, it seems Milosevic realized he made a mistake in expelling William Walker. Russia, usually with sympathy for Yugoslavia, condemned the fact that the head of the OSCE mission in Kosovo was ordered to leave. Russia is a prominent member of the OSCE and considers it an organization with high potential for the near future. The Yugoslav government said Walker could remain until "the consequences of his behavior are fully clarified." Only hours earlier US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright warned that the entire 750-person monitoring team would be pulled out of Kosovo unless President Slobodan Milosevic allowed Walker to stay.

Louise Arbour — chief prosecutor for the UN war crimes tribunal — was back in The Hague, The Netherlands, after being blocked several times by the Yugoslav border police on her way to Racak.

January 22, 1999 - The Yugoslav government reversed its decision to expel William Walker. US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright threatened to withdraw the entire 750-member mission.

Serb sources reported that five Serb civilians in Nevoljani — 18 miles northwest of Pristina — were kidnapped by the KLA.

January 25, 1999 - Bosnian Serb legislatures rejected president Nikola Poplasen's choice for a prime minister. The moderates — supported internationally — want to keep the current premier, Milorad Dodik. It was the second unsuccessful attempt to elect a new government since elections last September failed to give either hard-liners or moderates a majority.

January 26, 1999 - NATO announced that its peace keeping force will be reduced by 10 precent over the next two months. Current troop strength is approximately 32,000 troops from 25 countries. The US will withdraw about 700 of their 6,900 troops, though no deadline has been set yet. This spring NATO troop requirements will be reviewed again.

January 27, 1999 - The US is studying a possibility of a combination of military force and political pressure to force a settlement for Kosovo. Moscow still opposes bombing Kosovo without prior approval by the UN Security Council.

January 28, 1999 - Along Kosovo's southwestern border fighting broke out between Yugoslav troops and KLA rebels. According to the Serbs, the rebels were caught trying to smuggle weapons out of Albania. The KLA reported two troops injured and one missing.

The KLA still reject any plan that does not lead to full independence. The current US peace plan does not provide that.

The Washington Post reported intercepted telephone calls between Yugoslav deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic and Interior Ministry General Sreten Lukic indicated that officials "at the highest levels of the Yugoslav government" ordered security forces to "go in heavy" into Recak and launch a "search-and-destroy mission" in response to the killing of three Serbs. The top officials then "systematically sought to cover up the assault," the Washington daily added.

January 30, 1999 - The international Contact Group set an international ultimatum for Kosovo peace talks in Rambouillet, France: February 6. In this plan, results are expected by February 19. The Contact Group — comprised of the United States, Russia, Britain, France, Germany and Italy — set up a draft framework of a settlement for Kosovo and wants a resolution to the conflict soon. Goal is maximum self-rule, but not independence, for the Albanians. Both Milosevic and the KLA stated they needed more time to consider. Eventually, Kosovo's moderate ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova promised to attend the peace conference. Milosevic said he would not accept the KLA as a full partner in talks until the rebels renounce violence. He also opposed NATO's proposal to hold talks outside Yugoslavia.

NATO said it will launch air strikes in case diplomacy would fail and a settlements has not been reached before February 19. To back up the ultimatum, two naval task forces have been dispatched into the region. NATO said that the Contact Group's demands "will be fully backed by NATO's military capabilities." Russia supported the diplomatic efforts, but opposed the possible use of force.

January 31, 1999 - Taiwan has promised Macedonia more than $300 million for its decision to establish diplomatic ties. In Europe, the Vatican is the only other state to recognize Taiwan.

February 1, 1999 - In the United States the discussion started whether to send ground troops to Kosovo to keep any peace agreement. In total, some 20,000 troops could be necessary. Britain has announced to contribute to the force and France said it will send some 5,000 troops.

US spokesman James P. Rubin warned that if the Albanians fail to negotiate and accept the self-rule plan, they will lose international support. The Kosovo rebels still have not agreed on attending the peace conference. On February 4, the Serbs will decide whether to show up. Milosevic and his hard-liners have always rejected foreign mediation of the Kosovo conflict.

February 2, 1999 - Even is a peace agreement is reached, ground troops will be necessary, says the US intelligence agency CIA. CIA Director George Tenet warned that neutral forces entering the region would be in much greater danger of coming to harm

The Kosovo rebels announced that they will attend peace talks in France.

February 3, 1999 - The US proposed a peace plan with greater autonomy for Kosovo during three years. The KLA said this plan was better than previous proposals. One of the KLA delegates, Krasniqi, said in France that the KLA will demand that Kosovo be made an international protectorate during the three-year autonomy period. After that, Kosovo's people should decide its future in a referendum.

US State Department spokesman James P. Rubin again warned the Serbs that "NATO has indicated that there will be swift and serious consequences if the Serbs do not make that decision."

A US contribution to the possible peace force in Kosovo might be 2,000 to 4,000 troops.

Of the 45 bodies found in Racak (January 16, 1999), possibly only 9 belonged to KLA members, while the others were civilians, including three women and a 12-year-old boy, all executed at short range. William Walker is almost certain that the massacre was perpetrated by Serbian military forces.

February 4, 1999 - Serb sources in Pristina reported a police officer was killed early today on a routine patrol in Djakovica, near the Albanian border. International monitors reported finding the bodies of three ethnic Albanian men shot in a car near Decani in western Kosovo, as well as the body of a Serb man along another roadside.

Serbia's parliament voted to send a delegation to Kosovo peace talks.

A Serbian court sentenced a former policeman to 15 years in jail for killing a war crimes suspect. The Washington Post suggested the killing could be a plot to silence a witness who could link Serbia's leadership with atrocities in Bosnia.

February 5, 1999 - Serbian authorities at Pristina airport refused to let four KLA representatives fly to France. Two of them did not have passports.

Macedonia offered to expand its role in supporting NATO if peace keeping troops are to be deployed to Kosovo. Macedonia is already being used as a base for aerial surveillance and the extraction force as a protection for the 2,000 observers. As a permanent member of the UN Security Council, China has threatened to end support for the extraction force if Macedonia does not withdraw its decision to recognize Taiwan.

February 6, 1999 - After international pressure Serb authorities allowed ethnic Albanian rebels to leave for the peace talks in France. The Serbs said they would refuse to negotiate with the rebels if they show up in France. They pledged never to let Serbia lose jurisdiction over its "heart" Kosovo. They also said foreign peacekeeping troops will never set foot in the province.

The French president Jacques Chirac opened the peace talks in Rambouillet.

February 8, 1999 - US mediators, Bosnian Serbs and members of the Muslim-Croat Federation met in Vienna to talk about the future of the city of Brcko for the third time in three years. The city is in Serb hands, but under international supervision. For Muslims and Croats, the town is both a symbol of the brutality of the Serb takeover and a vital link between the landlocked federation and the rest of Europe. The Serbs reiterated that they must keep control of Brcko because it is at the narrowest point of the corridor between the two halves of the Serb-run portion of Bosnia. A decision is expected by mid-March.

February 9, 1999 - China suspended diplomatic relations with Macedonia, but did not (yet) veto a UN resolution supporting peacekeeping in Macedonia. The current mandate of the 1,000-member UN peacekeeping mission expires on February 20, 1999.

February 11, 1999 - The Kosovo Liberation Army detained 8 ethnic Albanians on the accusation that they are working for the Serb police.

February 13, 1999 - At least 9 people were injured after a bomb explosion near a bank in Urosevac — 25 miles south of Prestina. The bank was closed at the time of the explosion. About 20 shops were damaged. The OSCE said the blast was comparable with that of an anti-tank mine Apparently, 11 pounds of explosives have been used. As usual, Serbs and ethnic Albanians were blaming each other.

Secretary of State Madeleine Albright joined the peace talks in France to put some pressure on the Serbs and Albanians. If the Serbs reject the plan, they are faced with a threat of air strikes by NATO. If the Albanians reject the plans, they are faced with an arms embargo by the Clinton administration.

A US official said Albright would tell the Albanians the most they can have is autonomy — not independence — during a 3-year trial period. As for the Serbs, Albright's position is they have lost all authority in Kosovo, which they consider the cradle of their civilization and religion.

February 16, 1999 - The Clinton administration announced that any American peacekeepers sent to Kosovo would remain there until some system of self-rule is "up and running" in the Serbian province and stability is restored. There would be no timetable or deadline for bringing the troops home. Officials said the job should be done in approximately three years. In 1995, Clinton said the 22,500 US troops would be home by Christmas of the same year. Today, some 6,700 are still present.

NATO continued to plan deployment of troops in Kosovo. The first troops could be in place in a matter of days with some 6,000-8,000 troops soon following. The first forces to arrive will probably be approximately 2,000 US Marines that are currently aboard US Navy ships already in the Mediterranean. Plans for the remainder of the 28,000-string force was expected in a few days.

Key issues in a possible peace deal include a NATO force in Kosovo to ensure implementation. It also includes withdrawal of Serb troops from Kosovo — apart from a small number of troops to guard the border — and elections to clear the way for some autonomy for ethnic Albanians. Another issue is disarming of the KLA. Russia might be willing to back a NATO force.

The 8 Albanians detained by the KLA on February 11, 1999, were released.

February 15, 1999 - After having established relations with Macedonia, Taiwan hopes to establish more relations with other countries in the Balkans. Slovenia has shown interest. Taiwan wants to use its new relations with Macedonia to demonstrate how recognizing the island can pay off for other financially strapped countries in the Balkans, the Liberty Times reported.

Serbian police arrested 40 Albanians in connection to the bombing of February 13, 1999. Serb officials said the bombing was connected to the peace talks in France.

February 17, 1999 - Despite Milosevic's no against any deal that includes NATO troops in Yugoslavia, British and French foreign ministers said there were signs of progress. Key issue in the negotiations is the deployment of a 30,000-strong NATO force in Kosovo to ensure the deal is actually implemented. "Our negative stand on the presence of foreign troops is not only the attitude of the leadership, but also of all the citizens of our country," Milosvic said. Interesting was the remark of the British foreign minister, Robin Cook: "Mr. Milosevic rarely confines himself to something as brief as saying no, and we are quite clear that there have been instructions given to the Serb delegation with respect to that."

Yugoslav Deputy Premier Vuk Draskovic said any peace deal would have to include lifting the remaining sanctions on his country. The US has barred Yugoslavia from receiving badly needed loans from international financial institutions. The European Union has imposed a flight ban on the Yugoslav national carrier.

Another aspect of the proposed peace deal calls for the disarming of the Kosovo Liberation Army. The KLA strongly rejects this plan.

Russia's parliament unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution opposing the use of force in Kosovo. NATO, however, said the Russians have told the alliance they are willing to go along with a NATO deployment as part of a three-year interim peace deal in Kosovo.

The US deployed an additional 51 war planes — 12 F-117 stealth fighters, 10 EA-6B electronic warfare planes and 29 refueling planes — to a European base. A total of 260 US planes is present at the time. Additional aircraft are standing by. Six B-52 bombers have been ordered to RAF base Fairford, UK, and six KC-135 tanker aircraft have been moved from Fairford to another European base, closer to the Balkan region. C-17 aircraft flew 250 support personnel and pilots from Hollowman AFB (NM, USA) to Aviano, Italy.

An OSCE team discovered two corpses of two men along a road between Stimjle and Urosevac, 15 miles south of Prestina, Kosovo. Apparently, they were shot elsewhere.

In Urosevac, a vendor found an unexploded bomb — of which the detonator malfunctioned — made of about 4.4 pounds of plastic explosives in a sack of potatoes.

At the international war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Bosnian Croat general Tihomir Blaskic — accused of a terror campaign during the Bosnian war — claimed he had no control over forces that murdered Muslims and burned their houses. He turned himself in in 1996, wanting to prove his innocence. If convicted, he faces up to life imprisonment.

February 18, 1999 - The French defense minister Alain Richard said that NATO will not automatically take military action against Yugoslavia if an agreement is not reached. This statement contradicts with statements made earlier by US secretary of state Madeleine Albright and US defense minister William Cohen.

Sources close to the Serbian delegation at the talks said if the pressure continues, they might consider allowing foreign troops in Kosovo, but only if they did not include soldiers from "unfriendly" nations like the United States, Germany, Britain and France.

NATO said it reviewed potential Serb targets in Kosovo. US president Clinton warned the Serbs to choose peace with ethnic Albanians or face a devastating military strike. Sea-launched Tomahawk cruise missiles would hit air defense and radar facilities first, then vital command centers. The Pentagon warned that a more aggressive attack plan was under consideration. Since January 30, NATO secretary-general Janvier Solana has authority to order airstrikes against Serb targets without having to consult the member nations again. The international OSCE verifiers are prepared to leave at short notice.

February 19, 1999 - As the deadline for a peace agreement was approaching, Western embassies — amongst which the Dutch and Canadian embassies — in Belgrade evacuated their staff. NATOs Extraction Force stood standby to evacuate the approximately 1,300 international monitors from Kosovo. Secretary-General Solana did not say how soon airstrikes would come if the deadline passed with no deal. Russia strongly opposes possible air strikes.

Serbia urged to stop threatening to enforce an agreement. Serb military convoys with tanks, armored personnel carriers and artillery were seen in Kosovo and Montenegro. OSCE monitors suspected this might be a show of force ahead of the deadline. Foreign Ministers Hubert Vedrine of France and Robin Cook of Britain, co-hosts of the conference, sent dire last warnings to Belgrade.

In an attempt to save the peace talks in France, Christoffer Hill — head of the international mediating team — tried to persuade Yugoslavia's president to accept peace. US State Secretary Albright tried to persuade the Serbs in Rambouillet. Yugoslav president Milosevic rejected the concept of NATO troops — approximately 30,000. "We will not give away Kosovo, not even at the price of bombing," he was quoted in the Washington Post.

Hashim Thaci — an influential person within the KLA — criticized the final draft of the peace agreement as presented by Western negotiators, saying it favors the Serbs. He also stressed that any agreement should include acceptance of the right of Albanians for a final declaration for the status of Kosovo. The Serbs reject this.

In Yugoslavia, 15 Kosovo Albanians received prison terms of between 3-4 years Friday for anti-state activities. They were convicted of raising money among fellow ethnic Albanians in Slovenia and funneling the money to the KLA.

February 20, 1999 - No real progress was made at the peace talks in France. The Yugoslav commander of the air force said his country's air defense was ready to defend the fatherland, especially Kosovo. However, the pro-Western government of Montenegro — the other part of Yugoslavia — pledged not to allow the Yugoslav military to engage NATO from its territory. Anti-aircraft radar and batteries are located in Montenegro's coastal areas, and play an important part in intercepting cruise missiles and enemy planes heading inland.

February 21, 1999 - The deadline for the peace talks were extended from February 13, 1200 hrs until February 16, 1500 hrs (0900 EST) because "very substantial progress" had been made on the political part of a 3-year interim agreement for Kosovo.

Serb resistance to a proposal to station peacekeepers in Kosovo could be weakening. However, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic remained adamant in his refusal to accept foreign troops on his territory. The US held the Serbs responsible for the delays. Robin Cook said the Albanians were also to blame.

While negotiations were still in progress in France, presumably leading to some sort of agreement, violence in Kosovo continued. Fighting broke out near the northern Kosovo town of Podujevo, 25 miles north of Pristina. Tanks, mortars and automatic weapons fire rocked the village of Studencane about 1.5 miles northwest of Suva Reka when ethnic Albanian rebels attacked a police station. Near the town the bodies of two Serb brothers were found earlier.

Twelve F-117 Nighthawk aircraft from Holloman Air Force Base, N.M., began arriving at Aviano Air Base to support possible NATO air operations over Yugoslavia.

February 23, 1999 - The peace talks were recessed and will resume on March 15, 1999. After 17 days, only partial agreement between warring Serbs and ethnic Albanians could be reached. Negotiators for the ethnic Albanians initialed a peace plan that would restore self-rule to Kosovo, but said they needed time to win approval of it from their countrymen. The Albanians have agreed on signing the deal within two weeks.

The military part of the proposal is not solved, as the Serbs refuse foreign military troops on its territory. They also refused to give their consent to major elements of the self-rule the Albanians appeared to have won back after Slobodan Milosevic nullified it in 1989. The Serbs said they considered the Rambouillet as a victory on president Milosevic. Serbian president Milan Milutinovic said: "Our principal efforts to preserve the territorial integrity and sovereignty of our country were affirmed."

State television in Belgrade reported that Yugoslavia is prepared to consider an international presence in Kosovo to implement a peace accord, signaling possible readiness for a compromise.

Germany pledged 5,500 troops to the proposed 28,000 NATO-led peacekeeping force that would also include 4,000 Americans.

New fighting broke out in Kosovo. So far, 2,000 people have been killed and 300,000 have been left homeless.

February 24, 1999 - US secretary of state Madeleine Albright said that "there is zero chance that the Kosovar Albanians will sign onto this deal if the US does not participate in its implementation."

February 25, 1999 - The US expressed concern that the Serbs and Albanians will use the recess in the peace negotiations to strenghten their military positions.

Eight cars with 21 international monitors from Britain, Italy, Germany, Sweden, France and Russia were held at the Macedonian border. In accordance with their diplomatic immunity they had refused the police to search their vehicles. Armed guards released them only after searching the vehicles by force.

China vetoed the extension of the mandate of the UN Preventive Deployment (UNPREDEP) mission in Macedonia. Since the mission helped defuse tension in the region, the UN had recommended an extension of the mandate of the 1,100-strong force. China's veto was the result of Macedonia's decision in January to establish diplomatic ties and accept over $1bn in aid from Taiwan.

February 26, 1999 - Fighting broke out between Serb forces and Kosovo rebels. Serb border police detained diplomatic observers and searched their cars because the police was "suspicious" about the contents of the vehicles. During this convenient delay police forces swept a nearby village. So much for the cease-fire between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.

The international monitors that were held at the Macedonian border Feb 25 were still not allowed to continue their mission.

The Yugoslav army was reported strengthening its defenses in the region where NATO forces in Macedonia would cross if ordered into Kosovo. Some 4,500 troops including tanks and artillery were ordered along the border.

China vetoed a UN Security Council resolution extending the stay of peacekeepers in Macedonia for six months as punishment after Macedonia started diplomatic relations with Taiwan. The veto is a major blow for the UN.

The Clinton administration invited the chief Kosovar Albanian negotiator Hashim Thaci to Washington to try to secure a settlement of their conflict with the Serbs. The US tried wanted to improve the Kosovar Albanians' "comfort level" with discussion of how the plan for self-rule, but not independence, would be implemented. The peace talks were recessed in order for the Albanians to sell the deal to the Albanian people.

February 27, 1999 - International monitors tailed Yugoslav army tanks and armored personnel carriers to prevent attacks against ethnic Albanians. The violence of the past weeks might be the prelude to a new Yugoslav offensive. Yugoslav troops targeted rebel positions in at least five northern villages.

February 28, 1999 - Ethnic Albanian rebels ambushed a police convoy near the Macedonian border, killing a Serb police commander and wounding four other officers.

March 1, 1999 - Yugoslav army troops to launch an attack on the Kosovo Liberation Army to try to free a kidnapped Serb. Another Serb was abducted and killed earlier.

Serb forces have driven thousands of ethnic Albanians from their villages in an military effort to control a strategic artery in Kosovo. Troops and tanks have been moved to the border and a bridge connecting Macedonia and Kosovo is mined. A preparation to prevent NATO forces from coming in — or keep diplomatic monitors and refugees from getting out.

March 2, 1999 - Taiwan's foreign minister visited Macedonia for the first time after the two countries established diplomatic ties. Macedonia said Taiwan's aid package could include $235 million in government-to-government aid and a further $1 billion in commercial investments.

Kosovo is willing to sign a peace plan, the Serbs remain against the stationing of NATO troops in Yugoslavia.

Two monitors were beaten by angry Serb civilians in the city of Prizren.

Yugoslav troops battled ethnic Albanian rebels along the border with Macedonia and pounded villages with tank and mortar fire. Several rebels and a Yugoslav army sergeant were killed.

March 4, 1999 - A group of gunmen killed two villagers near Berat — 40 miles south of Tirana. At least eight people including three policemen died in the fight resulting from this between Albanian police and the gunmen.

RS President Nikola Poplasen started proceedings to dismiss Prime Minister Milorad Dodik. OHR said that Poplasen is creating a sense of government crisis when in reality there is none, and that there are no grounds for elections. OHR also said if Poplasen would continue to hinder implementation of the election results, penalties will be taken against his party. OHR has the authority to remove the president.

Three commanders of different brigades of the VRS were suspended. They were accused by SFOR with weapons smuggling.

March 5, 1999 - US president Clinton said NATO remain ready to act to end "violent repression" of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians if Serbia refuses to sign the peace plan. He said Serbs must accept both the political agreement and the NATO force. So far they have accepted only part of the autonomy provisions and refuse to agree to foreign troops in Kosovo.

Both entities agreed on the status of Brcko. It was agreed that the city would come under independent arbitration, and that it would be final and binding. The status of Brcko was the one item of outstanding business left unresolved in Dayton three years ago.

Robert Owen announced the creation of a Brcko district, consisting of the entire pre-war Opstina. This district will be a condominium, which means that it will be territory shared by both entities. The district will have its own autonomous, multiethnic government with an elected assembly, executive board, judiciary and police force.

High Representative to Bosnia Carlos Westendorp took the decision to remove RS president Poplasen.

March 6, 1999 - Hard-line Bosnian Serb President Nikola Poplasen — the Serb president for Bosnia — refused an order by the top international official in the country to step down. The vice president refused to assume the presidency, as required by the constitution.

This is a result of the decision of Carlos Westendorp — senior international official in Bosnia — that the city of Brcko will no longer remain under Bosnian Serb control. Instead, all three ethnic groups — Serbs, Croats and Muslims — will administer Brcko. Until now, the city was run by the Serbs under international supervision. The Brcko decision was the last major territorial issue left from the Bosnian war.

Westendorp can impose legally binding decisions on issues Bosnian leaders cannot agree upon.

Amid high tensions over the Brcko issue, NATO soldiers shot and killed a leader of a Serb political party in a confrontation with angry Serbs. Four armed assailants entered a restaurant in Ugljevik where US troops were coordinating humanitarian support and began striking their table with clubs and breaking glass bottles in a threatening manner.

The soldiers fled while being punched and shoved, and were chased toward their vehicles by 15 to 20 people. One soldier drew his weapon after being struck in the back with a club, then fatally shot the attacker after he continued to advance with a club poised to strike. The victim was later identified as Krsto Micic, the vice president of the hard-line Bosnian Serb Radical Party in the town of Ugljevik.

The victim's party later stated that "bloodthirsty American criminals and terrorists" shot Micic "in cold blood" and that "American bandits ... will pay dearly for murdering Micic."

In Prijedor, a hand grenade was thrown at a peacekeepers' building and two more were hurled at an international police station there. In Pec, six Kosovo Serbs were wounded when a bomb was tossed into a restaurant. Elsewhere, armed groups of Serbs rampaged through the central town of Lipljan, smashing the windows of Albanian-owned stores. Officials fear that the violence might threaten the peace deal.

All factions of the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo have promised to sign a peace plan. Former US Senator Bob Dole negotiated the agreement at the request of US President Clinton. The KLA would have to disarm under NATO's protective watch. Serb military troops and police also must withdraw. If the ethnic Albanians sign the accord, attention would shift to getting Serb agreement. The Serbs face the threat of NATO airstrikes if they refuse and if they continue a military buildup.

March 7, 1999 - It appeared the Kosovo peace deal would not be signed before later in the week, despite US optimism earlier. KLA leaders voted on a plan for broad autonomy (not independence). Representatives of William Walker attended the meeting. KLA leader Hashim Thaci reiterated that the KLA should remain a defensive force, instead of becoming a political party with some of its members installed as police, as Western diplomats proposed.

In Prestina, an ethnic Albanian civilian shot and killed two Serb policemen who were seeking his son on robbery charges. In retaliation, Serb police forces searched houses for the father and son and beating occupants.

March 8, 1999 - In clashes near Kacanik — near the Macedonian border — at least one ethnic Albanian fighter was killed and four wounded and an unspecified number of Serbian security forces were wounded.

The Serbs declared that they do no longer wish to cooperate with the multiethnic government that has been at the core of Bosnia's fragile peace. Cooperation with Bosnia's Muslims and Croats was suspended after two international decisions:

• Dismissal of the Bosnian-Serb president, Nikola Poplasen.
• Transfer of control over Brcko from the Bosnian Serbs to all three Bosnian entities.

The Bosnian Serbs declared Poplasen's dismissal unconstitutional. Carlos Westendorp dismissed Poplasen for refusing to officially name moderate Milorad Dodik as prime minister in the Bosnian-Serb republic.

March 9, 1999 - Yugoslav forces with tanks swept through an area along the Macedonian border. Near Vucitrn in northern Kosovo artillery fire was heard. The Serb Media Center said two Serb policemen were killed and three were wounded when their vehicle hit a land mine near Djakovica, about 45 miles southwest of Pristina.

March 10, 1999 - In Ivaja, near the Macedonia, three bodies were found. Two had been shot in the back. Residents said neither one of them were KLA rebels.

According to the UN High Commissioner for Refugees, about 4,000 villagers have been reported fleeing.

In the village of Kotlina, Serbs forces destroyed seven or eight houses.

Shooting also was reported along the Malisevo-Lapusnik road, one policeman was wounded.

March 11, 1999 - In the US, the House of Representatives voted in favor of support for Clinton's Kosovo policy.

The fired Bosnian Serb president Nikola Poplasen vowed to stay in office. He threatened violence against the foreign officials who dismissed him and ended Serb jurisdiction over Brcko.

March 14, 1999 - Ethnic Albanian delegates said they were ready to sign a Kosovo peace plan if the Serb-led government backs down on its opposition to allowing NATO troops to enforce it. Milosevic still rejects the presence of NATO troops. Negotiations are expected to continue on March 15, 1999. The deadline for an agreement has been set to March 18.

Three bombs went off in two government-controlled cities, killing at least six people and injuring more than 60. International monitors said government forces had set fire to more than 25 ethnic Albanian homes in villages near the northwestern town of Vucitrn in retalliation for the killing of two Serb civilians in the area a week ago.

Serb forces shelled and burned the village of Mijalic in apparent retribution for the Albanian rebel slaying of two Serb brothers. Yugoslav army troops were still patrolling the province in violation of an October cease-fire.

March 15, 1999 - The second rounds of the peace talks in Rambouillet started. Mediators expressed little hope for a peace deal. Both sides have been building up their forces during the two rounds of peace talks.

Heavily reinforced Yugoslav forces have swept through the south in an apparent effort to clear out villages across from Macedonia. There, approximately 10,000 NATO soldiers are gathered in preparation for a possible peacekeeping mission in Kosovo. Yugoslav forces, backed by tanks, have mined part of the border and rigged a key bridge with explosives.

US president Bill Clinton, NATO Secretary General Janvier Solana, and German defense minister Rudolf Scharping urged Milosevic for unambiguous commitment to sign the Kosovo peace accord, threatening with NATO air strikes. Meanwhile, the US Senate will debate the issue of using American soldiers in an attack on Serbia.

The Serbs accused the Kosovo Liberation Army of attacking an army post after firing on two police stations the previous night.

A Yugoslav army officer was shot and wounded as he rode in a jeep along the main road just north of Pristina. In retaliation, the Yugoslav army responded by sending tanks and other armored vehicles to the rebel-held village of Besinje, where the shooting was believed to have come from.

OSCE monitors saw 10 bodies of victims of fighting elsewhere — four in the western Klina area and six in the southwest. The Albanians said the dead included two pairs of brothers, shot to death by Serb police while chopping wood.

Yugoslav army forces blasted Bukos and Osljane in the foothills of Cicavica mountain, 12 miles northwest of Pristina. The attack came from both the north and west, with forces pounding the area with frequent tank, rocket and Katyusha fire.

Deputy interior minister in the Muslim-Croat Federation government Jozo Leutar plus two other people were injured in a bomb explosion.

March 17, 1999 - A Finnish forensic team reportedly found that 40 ethnic Albanians killed in January were civilians executed in an organized massacre — some of the victims were forced to kneel before they were shot. The findings contradict claims by the Yugoslav government that the victims were armed separatists or civilians accidentally caught in the crossfire. A report that was released said pathologists determined that 22 of the people were slain in a gully that was so narrow the victims could only have been shot deliberately at close range.

The Serbs indicated earlier that they were prepared to sign the political part of the Kosovo peace deal. They objected the possible deployment of NATO forces. However, the new sticking point for the Serbs has been the political part of the peace accord. NATO commander Clark warned that Serb forces are prepared to resume fighting in Kosovo on a "very large scale".

March 18, 1999 - The Pentagon warned on US casualties if NATO airstrikes are to be launched. Serb air defenses were referred to as sophisticated and heavily defended. "There is a distinct possibility we will lose aircraft," Air Force chief of staff Gen. Michael Ryan said. The Clinton administration warned that "NATO will act" against Serb targets if Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic doesn't accept the peace accord.

The Bosnian Croat leadership pulled out of all state and federation institutions on to protest a car-bomb attack on a Bosnian Croat official on March 16, 1999. They accused their Muslim partners in the federation of backing the attack. The US criticized the hard-liners' push to establish a Croat mini-republic.

March 19, 1999 - In Rambouillet, the ethnic Albanians unilaterally signed the US proposed peace plan for Kosovo. The 82 page agreement is called "Interim Agreement for Peace and Self-Government in Kosovo". With just one side signing, it is merely a symbolic gesture that will bring them no closer to peace.

The accord was signed by two of three mediators at the talks — Christopher Hill of the United States and Wolfgang Petritsch of Austria. The Russian mediator, Boris Mayorsky, did not sign. Russia is Yugoslavia's ally, although Russia urged Milosevic to accept the peace deal. The Serbs refused to sign. They rejected the military part of the agreement and since a few days, also object the political part of the agreement.

There are seven chapters in the agreement:

1. Constitution - There is an 11-point constitution, dealing with:
   • Assembly
   • Judiciary
   • National Communities
   • Communal Police
2. Borders
3. Elections
4. Economic issues
   • Taxes
   • Aid
5. Implementation (1)
   • Commission to oversee civilian implementation of the accord
6. Implementation (2)
   • Multinational military force
   • Demilitarization
7. Ombudsman

The US deployed five EA-6B Prowler electronic warfare planes to Europe. Earlier, Clinton gave congressional leaders a detailed briefing on the crisis. Clinton seemed ready to act — and warned the Americans that military action could include risk to US pilots.

Belgrade now has until March 24, 1999, to accept or reject the plan, after which NATO might make good on its long-standing threat to bomb Serbian military installations in Kosovo. A Russian Foreign Ministry source in Moscow said on condition of anonymity that Russia may cut off relations with NATO if the alliance attacks Serbia.

The Bosnian Serb premier Milorad Dodik agreed to accept and implement an arbitrator's decision over the disputed town of Brcko. The fate of Brcko was the last decision left unresolved in the Dayton agreement. Dodik said he was still in power because his resignation was not accepted by the Serbian National Assembly. The Serb National Assembly must give final approval to the implementation of the Brcko decision for it to take effect.

March 20, 1999 - In Srbica, Serbian security forces blocked two major roads after it came under KLA attack, Serb sources said. Serbian commandos wearing black masks and white jumpsuits broke into homes and turfed out thousands of ethnic Albanians. The independent radio station B-92 said a long column of Yugoslav army vehicles rolled into Kosovo.

The OSCE ordered the evacuation of the 1,380 monitors, five months after the start of their mission. The OSCE mission started under an October 12, 1998 agreement between Milosevic and US envoy Richard Holbrooke for a cease-fire, which began breaking down in December.

The departure of the monitors raised fears that the Serbs and the ethnic Albanians might step up the conflict. On their way out of Kosovo, the monitors passed a Yugoslav convoy of about 30 vehicles, including tanks, armored vehicles, and trucks carrying anti-aircraft guns, heading westward from the Pristina area.

The head of the OSCE mission, William Walker, said the evacuation went uneventful. However, Serb police canceled their visas as they left, meaning it could take protracted negotiations to relaunch the verification mission.

Bosnian Serb hard-liners on rejected claims by their moderate prime minister Milorad Dodik that the Serbs have accepted an decision on the town of Brcko.

An ethnic Albanian newspaper was charged for publishing recent statements by rebel leader Hashim Thaci. The Serbian government accused the newspaper of "racial and national hatred". The rebel leader accused the Serb state of genocide against the Albanians in Kosovo.

The international war crimes tribunal recommended indictment of three Croatioan army generals for leading the army to summary executions, indiscriminate shelling of civilian populations and ethnic cleansing during a 1995 assault against the Serbs. Until then, 83 people had been indicted by the tribunal, most of the Serbs.

March 21, 1999 - The Yugoslav army took advantage of the departure of international monitors and launched a furious offensive against outgunned ethnic Albanian rebels, especially near Drenica. A UNHC spokesman said the past week alone about 20,000 people were forced to flee.

March 23, 1999 - The Croatian prime minister said Croatia will not surrender any of its generals to an international war crimes tribunal (see March 20, 1999).

March 24, 1999 - NATO commenced air strikes on Yugoslavia in Operation Allied Force. Eight NATO allies were taking part in the first air strikes. The air strikes were NATO's first attack on a sovereign country in the 50 years since the alliance was formed.

Eight NATO nations participated in the air strikes, with approximately 400 aircraft from the US, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, and Spain. For the first time, the B-2 bomber was used in combat, carrying satellite-guided 1-ton bombs. Nearly 100 sea- and air-launched cruise missiles were aimed at the Serb's sophisticated air defense system.

Slovakia granted a NATO request to allow the NATO planes to use Slovak air space and to land for refueling. Premier Mikulas Dzurinda told journalists that NATO's decision to strike is "the smallest of two evils". Hungary also allowed NATO to use military airfields for strikes against Yugoslavia. Earlier, only Hungarian airspace was allowed to be used.

In Montenegro, president Milo Djukanovic said on state-run television that Milosevic's policies led to the NATO air strikes. He said that the bombings "are the tragic consequences of an irrational policy of confrontation with the entire world." (...) "Our future is not in confrontation with the entire world and therefore I demand from Milosevic to halt the policy that has led to collective suffering of innocents and endangered the survival of the country."

Albanian prime minister Pandeli Majko "the Albanian government welcomes this NATO initiative, taken after all political means for solving the crisis in Kosovo and ending Serbian repression were exhausted." NATO Secretary-General Javier Solana sent a letter to Majko providing assurances of NATO support in case of a Yugoslav attack.

Slovenia's president Milan Kucan said that NATO is welcome to use Slovenian air space to launch air strikes against Serbia. He added that UN Secretary-General Solana assured him in a letter that NATO will protect Slovenia's security if is threatened.

Similar assurances had been provided to Macedonia. Solana assured the Macedonian government that the alliance would stand behind its territorial integrity.

Bulgarian President Petar Stoyanov said that since Bulgaria wishes to join NATO and the EU, it "has no other choice but to back the international community" in its conflict with Milosevic's "totalitarian regime".

Russia condemned the NATO attacks and pulled out of the NATO Partnership for Peace program and military cooperation programs. President Yeltsin recalled his chief military envoy to NATO, Lieutenant-General Viktor Zavarzin, and ordered the closure of Russia's offices at NATO headquarters. In addition, Russia decided to return its 100 members of the Kosova Verification Team currently in Macedonia.

In Belgrade, the independent radio station B-92 was shut down by the authorities. Editor-in-chief Veran Matic was arrested for questioning. Programs were continued via the Internet.

SFOR imposed a Training and Movement Ban on the Entity Armed Forces throughout Bosnia Herzegovina, as a precautionary measure.

March 25, 1999 -

For a second night NATO launched an aerial bombardment on Yugoslavia. Aircraft took off from various allied bases and ships in the Adriatic fired Tomahawk cruise missiles on Serb targets. As expected, the Serbs moved their military assets, including tanks and artillery.

In a speech, General Clark said: "We're going to systematically and progressively attack, disrupt, degrade, devastate and ultimately — unless President Milosevic complies with the demands of the international community — we're going to destroy these forces and their facilities and support." In the first series of bombardments, some 40 targets were attacked. Lt Gen Nebojsa Pavkovic — commander of Yugoslav troops in Kosovo — called the impact of the first NATO attack "minimal".

Despite the fierce words from the supreme NATO commander, NATO did not reach its prime objective: getting Milosevic to sign the peace deal. Serb offensive seemed to have increased. It is unclear whether NATO member nations will be prepared to send ground troops if the objectives can not be met by air strikes.

Serbian army and special police stepped up their efforts to crush resistance in Kosovo. Serbian forces also opened fire with mortars and automatic weapons at the villages of Dobruna and Vicidol in neighboring Albania.

The Serbian health minister, Dr. Leposava Milecevic, told CNN that 10 civilians and one soldier were killed and 60 wounded in NATO attacks. US Defense Secretary William Cohen said those reports were unconfirmed and questioned the reliability of the information.

In the first wave of attacks, 40 targets were hit. NATO fighter aircraft destroyed three Yugoslav Mig-29s — two shot down by US F-16s and one by a Dutch F-16.

In Macedonia, hundreds of demonstrators sympathetic to Yugoslavia damaged cars and some threw firebombs at the US Embassy. There were also protests near the British and French embassies in Skopje. Also China denounced the strikes during a UN Security Council emergency meeting. Russian president Boris Yeltsin angrily denounced the air strikes but said Moscow would not use force in retaliation.

The Serbian government ordered all foreign journalists working for media from countries involved in the air attacks expelled. The Yugoslav government — made up of dominant Serbia and smaller Montenegro — said all journalists are welcome to stay, as long as they are objective. The Washington Post reported that these contradicting messages reflected the power struggle among relative moderates and radicals in top government ranks.

In Serbia, police detained a number of foreign journalists in Belgrade and Pristina and prevented them from sending footage abroad. A BBC reporter said that police "kicked in the doors" of an unspecified number of journalists' rooms in Prishtina's main hotel.

The three brand new NATO nations, Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, backed the NATO decision to launch attacks on Yugoslavia. In Poland, Marek Siwiec — head of the presidential National Security Bureau — said the government sees the current crisis as a test of Poland's credibility as a NATO member. Czech president Vaclav Havel said the air strikes are the only way Europe and the US can express their commitments to human rights. A Czech military field hospital will be sent to Macedonia to support a NATO peace-keeping operation in neighboring Kosovo.

About 200 Kosovo Albanians crossed into Albania, saying Serb security forces had swept into the village of Goden, detaining men, setting the village on fire, and marching women and children across the border.

In Banja Luka, a crowd of approximately 700 to 1,500 young people held a protest march against the NATO air strikes against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. A handful of protesters threw eggs and stones at the local offices of the United States, German and United Kingdom embassies, breaking windows. Police officers at the scene were able to keep the overall level of violence to a minimum. Later, a smaller group of demonstrators went to the offices of the UNHCR and broke some windows there as well.

In Bosanska Gradiska, an hand grenade exploded sixty meters away from the United Nations - IPTF station. There was no damage to UN property or personnel.

March 26, 1999 - NATO fighters shot down two Yugoslav MiG jets that had crossed the border into Bosnia from Serbia. The Washington Post called the incident "a dangerous broadening of the showdown between the Western alliance and President Slobodan Milosevic". SFOR troops captured the pilots in Bosnia. It was unclear why the MiGs had crossed into Bosnian airspace. The Pentagon said it was possible they had intended to attack NATO peacekeeping troops in Bosnia or that they intended to shoot on NATO aircraft. The MiG was shot down by US F-15s that were conducting routine air patrols over Bosnia as part of NATO's enforcement of a "no-fly" zone over Bosnia. That mission was separate from the NATO air offensive against Yugoslavia.

For the first time, NATO attacked targets in daylight.

The Serbs said they hardly used their air defense systems. Surprisingly only one launch of a surface-to-air missile has been spotted and it wasn't successful.

Russia failed to gather sufficient support to pass a resolution in the UN Security Council demanding NATO stop bombing Yugoslavia.

In Greece — NATO member but close to Yugoslavia, Bulgeria, and Russia people protested against the NATO strikes. Greek officials have urged NATO to halt the bombing and resume negotiations.

March 27, 1999 - For the third night in sequence, NATO attacked targets closer to Belgrade. The raids ended shortly after midnight. There were conflicting reports of leaks of toxic substances because of bomb damage. Just like after the first attack, Yugoslav media claimed two NATO aircraft were shot down, but NATO reported all planes landed safely.

The KLA claimed that Serbs killed more than 30 in "mass executions," including 20 slain in Orahovac and 10 in Podujevo. BBC reported that Yugoslav MiG fighters were used against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

A NATO aircraft crashed during raids on Yugoslavia. The US F-117 was claimed to be shot down by the Serbs, 40 km west of Belgrade, about 10 pm local time. CNN reported that two F-117s took off from Aviano (Italy) earlier, and that only one returned. At first, NATO denied any planes were lost. A few hours later a senior officer at Holloman Air Force Base in New Mexico confirmed a plane from his squadron was down. It was the first stealth aircraft lost in combat. The F-117 flew over 1,300 sorties over Iraq without losses.

Radio B92 had earlier said that Yugoslav army air defence forces shot down a NATO plane and NATO helicopter overnight near Uzice in western Serbia.

NATO expanded its air assault by ordering its forces to attack tanks, artillery and troops in Kosovo.

March 28, 1999 - CNN quoted Serbs officials claimimg farmers had found at least two pilots, one of them German, from "a number of" Phantom jets. Germany said all its aircrews were safe.

Hours after his plane went down near Belgrade, the US F-117 pilot was rescued and taken to a NATO base.

Serb police units continued a sweep of large tracts of ethnic Albanian-dominated Kosovo, expelling hundreds from the village of General Jankovic, on the Macedonian border, and razing their homes. Albania said Saturday alone, some 20,000 refugees crossed its border.

In an unconfirmed report it was said that Serb paramilitary gangs had slaughtered several hundred ethnic Albanians in the Kosovo town of Djakovica after NATO bombed a local barracks.

Thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees fled into neighboring Albania and Macedonia. Bratislava Morina — Serbia's commissioner for refugees — stated on Serb state-controlled television: "There is no humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo whatsoever. Those manipulations with the number of refugees, carried out by foreign agencies and media, are used to intensify (NATO) attacks on Yugoslavia." Apparently, the Serbs have a different meaning of the word genocide.

In the past few days, between 50,000-60,000 ethnic Albanians were driven from their homes. Yugoslav authorities closed at least one crossing point into Albania. About 500,000 Kosovars are displaced from the crisis, NATO said. It is the biggest shift of population since WW2.

Along the border with Macedonia police were charging $60 per car to allow refugees to cross.

Albanian president, Rexhep Meidani, said NATO ground troops must be deployed in order to stop the violence. This scenario, however, has been rejected by NATO. NATO performed air attacks for the fifth night in a row.

Fehmi Agani — founder of the Democratic League of Kosovo, the moderate party of ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova — was executed. Last year, he signed an agreement with the Serbs that dealt with the return of ethnic Albanian students and teachers. He was also one of the negotiators in Rambouillet.

March 29, 1999 - The Pentagon added 6 to 12 more planes, including B-52 long-range bombers, as well as 12 more fighters and light bombers. The US already had about 200 war planes participating in Operation ALLIED FORCE. The USAF F-117A that was lost earlier might have been shot down by a Serbian SA-3 surface-to-air missile.

The American A-10 aircraft was used in what NATO called the second phase of attacks. The British Air Commodore David Wilby said the new phase is beginning to show signs of success.

British Harrier jets successfully hit Serb targets but came under heavy fire. All Harriers safely returned to Aviano, Italy. NATO missiles fired at a military airport at Podgorica hit a MiG-21 jet fighter and an army vehicle, a Yugoslav army source said. It was the sixth day of the air strikes.

In the Czech capital Prague, one person was killed by a rifle fire when a demonstration organized by human right groups and ethnic Albanians was disrupted by Serb demonstrators.

Russian prime minister Yevgeny Primakov announced plans to travel to Belgrade on March 30, to meet with Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic. Russia strongly opposed the NATO air campaign against fellow Slavic Yugoslavia.

Refugees are crossing the Albanian border at an estimated rate of 4,000 per hour. NATO attacks seem to have intensified Serb anger at the ethnic Albanians.

March 30, 1999 - The talks between Primakov and Milosevic did not result in anything substantial. Milosevic stated he would be willing to stop his campaign against the ethnic Albanians and resume peace talks if NATO would stop its air strikes and would stop its support for the Kosovo Liberation Army. Clinton responded saying: "We will see that his military will be seriously diminished, key military infrastructure destroyed, the prospect for international support for Serbia's claim to Kosovo increasingly jeopardized."

German chancellor Gerhard Schröder, the current president of the European Union, called Milosevic's offer unacceptable. He specifically rejected the condition that NATO stop its attacks first.

French president Jacques Chirac took a hard line: Europe "cannot accept on its soil a man and a regime that, for nearly 10 years, has conducted ... operations of ethnic cleansing, murders and massacres, of destabilization in the entire region, resulting in more than 200,000 deaths and millions left homeless."

The Pentagon ordered five B-1 bombers from Ellsworth (South Dakota) and additional air defense-jamming planes and refueling tankers to Europe for intensified airstrikes. Five Navy EA-6B aircraft were being deployed to help jam the target-seeking radar of the Serbs' anti-aircraft missile network. Ten refueling tankers also were being added.

British Air Commodore David Wilby said NATO was going after units that had committed atrocities.

French defense minister Alain Richard said that NATO airstrikes had halved Yugoslavia's capacity to strike and defend itself by air.

The Serbian government — coping with a gas shortage — decreed that gasoline and diesel fuel will be rationed.

Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader, told on television that the Serbs had created three concentration camps, including one in the stadium of Pristina which he said is holding 100,000 people. It is impossible to get an independent confirmation.

Albania said it would be willing to allow its territory to be used to funnel arms into Kosovo to arm the KLA, should the international community decide to do so. The UN Security Council imposed an arms embargo on Yugoslavia in March 1998. Lifting it would require support from all five permanent members of the council including Russia and the United States. Earlier, Russia suggested lifting the arms embargo, only to allow their Serb friends to defend themselves against NATO attacks. Many arms were smuggled from Albania into Kosovo already.

Yugoslav deputy prime minister Vuk Draskovic admitted that atrocities may have been committed: "Emotions rise up extremely, and it's possible that there are circumstances to crack down, maybe atrocities, but it is not a state strategy."

March 31, 1999 - Bad weather has forced NATO to scratch many attack missions.

Three US army soldiers on patrol along Macedonia's border with Kosovo were missing after reporting that they were surrounded and under fire. Local commanders lost contact with the soldiers during a reconnaissance mission in Macedonia in a rugged region with no precise or defined border between Macedonia and Yugoslavia. The soldiers were part of the forces that are on stand-by in Macedonia in case a peace agreement might be signed and peace keeping troops are required in Yugoslavia. NATO first insisted the soldiers were on the Macedonian side of the border but later stated that the exact location was unknown.

The Clinton administration announced a plan to airlift supplies in a $50 million aid effort to benefit the more than 100,000 ethnic Albanian refugees who fled Kosovo.

Russia said it planned on dispatching a frigate to the Mediterranean and putting other warships on standby. Russia strongly opposes the air campaign against their Yugoslav allies. Parts of the F-117 wreck (shot down March 27) are said to have been shipped to Russia.

In a TV interview, US president Clinton said: "The thing that bothers me about introducing ground troops into a hostile situation, into the Balkans and Kosovo, is the prospect of never being able to get them out." NATO commander in Europe General Clark said: "We've slowed him (Milosevic) down and we've hurt him, but we never thought air power alone can stop this kind of paramilitary tragedy."

In Montenegro Yugoslav president Milosevic fired the army commander for Yugoslav republic and seven other top generals. The Washington Post suggested Milosevic was strengthening his position against any possible military coup by officers who are calling for a cease-fire, since Montenegro has a pro-Western government.

Two trains jammed with more than 10,000 people arrived Thursday at the Macedonian border.

KLA official Jakup Krasniqi told reporters that the rebels were helping NATO bombing operations in Kosovo by locating targets.

Yugoslavia charged two Australian CARE aid workers — working in Kosovo — as spies.

April 1, 1999 - The Yugoslav government announced that the three US soldiers captured will have to face military court proceedings. This is a direct violation of international law. President Clinton says the United States will hold Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic responsible for the safety of the three.

Canadian foreign minister Lloyd Axworthy urges the sharply divided UN Security Council to address the "very horrific" humanitarian crisis in Kosovo.

NATO countries are not willing to send in ground troops. Military strategists point out that in Yugoslavia it would increase the likelihood of casualties as it brings the war to rough terrain known well by Serb fighters.

The American Predator unmanned surveillance aircraft began flying over Yugoslavia

April 2, 1999 - Serb forces are systematically rounding up ethnic Albanians, herding them into trains and other vehicles and transporting them to neighboring countries, the UN said. Pristina is turning into a ghost town, refugees said.

Western officials said to have evidence that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is plotting to oust the democratically elected president of pro-western Montenegro. Montenegro provoked the federal Yugoslav government's wrath by refusing to go along with the declaration of a state of war or with its order to break ties with four Western powers.

On March 31, 1999, Milosevic removed a Montenegrin general as head of Yugoslavia's 2nd Army and replaced him with an ally, General Milorad Obradovic. That gives Obradovic command of 10,000-12,000 troops and 3,000-4,000 reservists in Montenegro.

At the borders with Yugoslavia, cars of refugees are stripped of their license plates to prevent the owners from returning.

Two Spanish journalists were detained by Serbian police Friday near the border between Macedonia and Kosovo province after boarding a train to interview ethnic Albanian refugees. Earlier, Serbian authorities ordered journalists from NATO-member countries out of Yugoslavia.

NATO released aerial photos that showed how Serb military forces chase ethnic Albanians from their homes in Kosovo, then destroy their properties. British Air Commodore David Wilby said that Serbian forces "continue to terrorize ethnic Albanians and take advantage of the situation to loot and pillage."

Venezuelan president Hugo Chavez condemned NATO's air operations against the Serbs.

Yugoslav authorities took over the independent radio station B92. The director was replaced by a government loyalist. A week ago, the station's transmitters were disabled, but the Internet was used to continue broadcasting. B92 is the most influencial of 35 independent radio and 18 television stations in Yugoslavia.

April 3, 1999 - For the first time, NATO hit the center of Belgrade. Eight cruise missiles hit symbolic targets. One of them was the Interior Ministry, which controls Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's special police forces. Serb state television stated that a maternity hospital was evacuated after a missile exploded 30 meters away.

NATO airstrikes destroyed the Freedom Bridge across the Danube River at Novi Sad — Yugoslavia's second largest city. Seven people were reported injured.

Another Danube bridge was damaged at Backa Palanka near Yugoslavia's border with Croatia. The bridge is located 48 km west of Novi Sad.

In Bosnia-Herzengovina, NATO-led peacekeeping forces blew up a crucial Yugoslav rail link connecting Serbia with the southern Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, preventing the Yugoslav military forces from traveling on the line. During the operation, the Western troops exchanged gunfire with two attackers shooting assault rifles. One of them was killed.

Two civilians driving in an SFOR vehicle in a Sarajevo suburb were shot at with a small caliber weapon. One person was wounded.

Washington said it suspected the Iraqis have provided Serb leaders with tactical information about American warplanes.

Almost 700,000 people have been internally displaced or forced to flee the country. Organizations say it is almost impossible to count the number of refugees.

Macedonia announced it would not accept any more refugees unless they can go on to other European countries. At the borders, 60,000 people are stuck. The mounting crisis, with similar scenes in Albania and the Yugoslav republic of Montenegro, was fast becoming the worst-case scenario that Western officials had hoped to prevent by launching NATO airstrikes on Yugoslavia on March 24 (quote Washington Post). Ethnic Albanians comprised 90 percent of the Kosovo population. It was feared that the large number of refugees might eventuelly threaten the stability in the entire Balkan region. The Security Council said "It is going to cause economic collapse and political instability."

Germany announces it will accept some Kosovo refugees and will urge other European countries to do the same.

NATO decided to send approximately 6,000 Italian troops to Albania to protect a humanitarian relief effort for more than 100,000 refugees there.

Yugoslav Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic refered to 3 captured US soldiers as prisoners of war. This would offer some protection under the Geneva Conventions on the conduct of war.

A short video clip was smuggled out of Kosovo. It appeared to add graphic evidence to the reports of widespread slaughter of ethnic Albanians by Yugoslav authorities across Kosovo. The video was handed to international media by Melaim Bellanica, who said he hid from Serbs for five days in his basement in the village of Velike Krusa while killings and looting raged above. He also had a list of 26 names of people he said were executed in his village after Serb police gave an ultimatum following the start of NATO bombing of Yugoslavia: leave Kosovo or be killed.

Bellanica said he witnessed police order three young men to stop. "And when they did, they started executing them, shooting them one by one. One man was shot in the neck, one had his brains blown out ... the usual thing" (quote Washington Post).

Thirteen F-117A stealth fighter-bombers left Holloman Air Force Base to join NATO's air campaign against Yugoslavia.

April 4, 1999 -

NATO bombs struck three targets in Belgrade. A thermal heating plant in New Belgrade was hit, along with the police academy in the Banjica suburb. A day earlier, the first target inside Belgrade was destroyed in what is considered a series of infrastructure attacks in the Serbian heartland. The Serbs reported 17 people injured. Some 75 miles south of Belgrade, a fuel depot was destroyed. A power plant in the town of Pancevo, 10 miles northeast of Belgrade, also was hit.

NATO said 290,000 ethnic Albanians have been expelled from Kosovo in the past 10 days and estimated that 200,000 to 300,000 more were heading toward the Serbian province's borders with Albania and Macedonia. At the current rate, NATO said "Serbian forces will have emptied the country in 10 to 20 days."

NATO countries plan to airlift 1 million military meals, 187,000 blankets and drinking water to Macedonia for refugees.

April 5, 1999 - President Clinton said it would no longer be enough for Yugoslav president Milosevic to just stop the killing. "A Kosovo denied its freedom and devoid of its people is not acceptable. ... Our plan is to persist until we prevail."

NATO cruise missiles struck the headquarters of the Yugoslav air force in the Zemun district of Belgrade.

NATO agreed that the 12,000 NATO troops in Macedonia — originally intended as peace keeping forces in case of a peace agreement — will be used to assist in the humanitarian effort.

A NATO Black Hawk helicopter flying on a routine mission apparently came under fire over Bosnian Serb territory, 10 miles southwest of the city of Doboj.

April 6, 1999 - The first of tens of thousands of refugees were evacuated from Macedonia. This first group was flown to Turkey and Norway. NATO stressed that while the goal was for the refugees to return to Kosovo, the alliance wanted to take pressure off neighboring states by providing temporary homes elsewhere.

Albania has been flooded with 239,000 refugees. In Macedonia arrivals numbered about 120,000. Macedonia has said no more than 20,000 can stay.

Fearing that Kosovo Albanians may be dispersed far from their homeland and might not ever return, the Albanian government protested plans to settle many of them in Western countries and agreed to accept more refugees. NATO nations and other Western countries have offered to take in about 110,000 refugees.

Macedonian deputy prime minister Radmilla Kiprjanova said Macedonia could not deal with the refugee problem without international help. Macedonian officials mobilized army troops and police patrolled the border to prevent refugees from entering illegally.

Japan said it will supply tents for 10,000 refugees. Kuwait today sent a jumbo jet to Skopje carrying 40 tons of tents, blankets, clothes, food, baby formula, medicines and medical supplies. A number of more flights were expected. Israel sent two relief planes to Macedonia and Albania, including one carrying a field hospital and doctors.

April 7, 1999 - NATO stepped up its air campaign even more after rejecting President Slobodan Milosevic's cease-fire declaration.

The Pentagon confirmed the loss of a twin-engine unmanned Hunter reconnaissance plane. The aircraft was used as a surveillance aid that can transmit video images to battlefield commanders.

In Morini, Yugoslav authorities closed the main exit route where a quarter-million ethnic Albanians have fled Kosovo, forcing tens of thousands of people back. OSCE said that the refugees were told to return of their places of residence — whatever is left of those places.

Macedonia emptied a border enclave at Blace with tens of thousands of Kosovo refugees. The country sharply criticized NATO allies for failing to stem the flood of refugees.

The privately run Israeli relief group Giving organized a relief operation, shipping eight tons of relief supplies. Israel announced would take in 100 Kosovar refugees. Kuwait commenced a three-day airlift operation. Saudi Arabia also sent a plane packed with relief supplies.

Former Cypriot President Spyros Kyprianou said he was close to arranging the release of three U.S. soldiers captured by Yugoslav forces:"I have to meet with President Milosevic. The exchanges have been very constructive so far and the indications are that this mission will succeed."

Naming names, the US warned 9 top Serb commanders they could face war crimes prosecution. The US had no specific evidence that the individuals ordered soldiers to commit crimes, but the commanders could be prosecuted for allowing crimes to occur or for not prosecuting soldiers who committed them.

The Pentagon estimated that 1.3 million ethnic Albanians have been displaced, either inside the province or in neighboring countries — 430,000 of them since March 24, 1999.

April 8, 1999 - The hardline Serbian vice premier Vojislav Seselj said that freeing the three was out of the question and that the soldiers should be tried as terrorists.

At the NATO debriefing Air Commodore David Wilby said "NATO has certainly not caused the reported widespread and random damage which we believe has been orchestrated by Serbian forces."

French RTL radio reported that KLA forces are using a satellite telephone to help NATO identify Serb targets.

April 9, 1999 - A group of 1,500 Kosovo refugees crossed into Albania from Yugoslavia, saying Serbs had chased them from their homes. Apparently, the Serbs suddenly reopened their borders. About 450,000 Kosovo Albanians have been forced to leave Kosovo during the last two weeks.

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan called on Yugoslav authorities to withdraw forces from Kosovo and accept an international military presence to oversee the return of refugees. This point of view is similar to that of NATO.

Clinton accused Milosevic of presenting an "illusion of partial compliance" with NATO demands in Kosovo by declaring a cease-fire after violently chasing nearly 1 million ethnic Albanians from the province. Clinton said the ethnic rout won't stand and NATO airstrikes will continue.

CNN reporters said Serbs are planting land mines along the Yugoslav-Albanian border just inside their territory. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees — Sadako Ogata — said the flow of people out of Kosovo had suddenly stopped.

About 10,000 refugees queuing for days to enter Albania and forced to return to Kosovo by the Serbs have reportedly disappeared. Serb media said that the Kosovars had returned to their homes.

April 10, 1999 - Kosovo Albanian refugees from Serbia stated they had been forced out of their homes by Serb police forces. Anyone left behind would be killed.

A column of about 3,000 Kosovars in tractors, trucks and other vehicles stretched more than a mile near the province's border with Albania. The border opened about 2100 (local time) and the flow of refugees picked up. A lot of refugees said they were arrested by police or other (para) military units, and being beaten.

Brian Atwood, the US coordinator for Kosovo relief, said: "There is no question that people that have been driven back into the country are being used as human shields."

NATO governments were giving increasing credence to the refugees' stories, warning that any evidence of war crimes will be turned over to an international tribunal.

The latest figures compiled by the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees estimate the exodus at 521,000 people, the vast majority of them ethnic Albanians.

US president Clinton came under increasing pressure from Congress members to use ground troops in Kosovo. Canada has also raised the possibility of using ground forces in Kosovo despite Clinton's opposition. Macedonian president Kiro Gligorov told the Turkish press that he would not allow a land offensive into Kosovo to be launched from his country.

Russian president Yeltsin said NATO should not force Russia into an armed conflict, as it may trigger a world war. The Kremlin denied that Russian missiles had been retargeted toward NATO countries. The statements came during preparations by the Russian opposition to impeach president Yeltsin.

Spyros Kyprianou did not succeed in freeing the three US soldiers. While he was in Belgrade, NATO airstrikes continued.

In Amsterdam, the Netherlands, people protested against the NATO actions. Serbs beat up one of the demonstrators.

April 11, 1999 - US Secretary of State Albright said the Serbian actions against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo means fewer Serb troops will be permitted to remain in the province than once envisioned under a failed peace settlement. She did not rule out partitioning Kosovo as part of a settlement.

Top UN refugee official Sadako Ogata said the Serb ethnic cleansing planning "certainly" was the culmination of long and detailed preparations at the highest level of the government of Yugoslav President Milosevic.

NATO showed aerial images of what it said was a possible freshly dug mass gravesite at Pusto Selo, outside Pristina. The ground appeared to be freshly dug and the pictures resembled those of mass graves seen during the war in Bosnia.

April 12, 1999 - Yugoslavia's state news agency reported that about 150 KLA rebels were "liquidated" in a battle with Yugoslav forces near the Albanian border.

State media claimed NATO struck a passenger train near Leskovac — 180 miles south of Belgrade. There was no immediate confirmation from NATO. It was said about 20 people were killed.

Albanian foreign minister Paskal Milo said the country has handed over control of its airspace, ports and military infrastructure to NATO and is ready to accept more ground troops.

To demonstrate their unity, the 19 NATO ministers gathered. Albright denied any discussion of partition as a possible option for the future of Kosovo. NATO said ground troops will only enter the province in a "permissive environment," either as part of a NATO implementation force or to escort refugees back into Kosovo.

The Yugoslav parliament voted to join an alliance with Russia and Belarus in an attempt to draw Russia into the fighting. Russia favors the idea of incorporating Yugoslavia into an alliance, but membership would not be instantaneous and any military aid would not be automatically granted, according to Russian foreign minister Igor Ivanov. Moscow suggested any formal strengthening of ties will have to wait until the end of the NATO bombing campaign. Russia said it is still intending not to get involved militarily.

The UK newspaper Sunday Telegraph said 80 British commandos have infiltrated Kosovo to direct NATO bombers to Serb police and military units, and identify massacre sites and "death squad" commanders.

Slavko Curuvija, the owner of the prominent newspaper Dnevni Telegraf — representing opposition views — was shot to death in Belgrade.

British officials said some 100,000 ethnic Albanian men were believed missing, based on the low number of males among the refugees crossing into Macedonia and Albania.

US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and NATO allies considered establishing a protectorate to shield Kosovo from Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's forces.

A six-nation peace plan that was rejected by Milosevic would have permitted 5,000 Serb troops to remain, half of them to patrol the border of Kosovo, which would remain a part of Serbia. The other half would leave after a year. However, NATO Secretary General Javier Solana said all Serb troops must depart.

The highest-ranking Bosnian Croat war crimes suspect in UN custody went on trial for allegedly leading what prosecutors called a "monstrous" purge of Muslims from central Bosnia in 1992 and 1993.

SFOR announced that in Bosnia-Herzegovina airports and airspace will remain closed to all non-authorized traffic at night until further notice.

April 13, 1999 - Serb infantry troops crossed into Albania. They briefly seized control of a border village, and fought a running battle with border police and Albanian soldiers.

The UN reported nearly 5,000 ethnic Albanians poured into Albania after a systematic clearing out of their villages near Pristina.

About 4,800 more refugees entered Albania and hundreds more crossed into Macedonia. More and more ethnic Albanians report systemathc Serb atrocities.

Bosnian airports that were closed since the start of the NATO air strikes will be reopened to civil flight operations during daylight hours. Carlos Westendorp argued that the no-fly zone over Bosnia would do no good to the commercial health of the country.

Russia said it will send more navy vessels to the Mediterranean and it considered pulling out Russian peacekeepers from Bosnia. Earlier, Russia suspended all contacts with NATO, and removed all soldiers from NATO command in Bosnia. The Washington Post reported that that has little meaning, since the Russian forces depend on NATO logistical support.

April 14, 1999 - At a European Union meeting, Germany unveiled a plan calling for a one-day suspension of airstrikes if Yugoslavia begins withdrawing troops from Kosovo. But EU leaders set the idea aside in favor of a similar initiative by UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. That plan called for:

• An immediate end to the campaign of intimidation and expulsion of civilians.
• Ceasing all military and paramilitary activities in Kosovo and withdraw these forces.
• Accepting unconditionally the return of all refugees and displaced people to their homes.
• Accepting the deployment of an international military force to help in the return of refugees and delivery of aid.
• Permitting the international community to verify compliance.

These are very similar to NATO's own conditions for halting the bombing. Under the German plan NATO would suspend its airstrikes on Yugoslavia for 24 hours to give Milosevic time to begin moving his troops out of the province, and permanently suspend the attacks once the pullout is complete.

The World Bank said it planned loans totaling more than US$70 million to Albania to help it deal with the costs of providing for thousands refugees fleeing Kosovo.

The KLA claimed that Serb troops killed 1,000 ethnic Albanian civilians over the past four days in the heartland of the rebel movement.

April 15, 1999 - Serb forces lobbed artillery shells over the border into northern Albania in a running battle with the KLA. According to the OSCE, mortars landed close to Albania's border checkpoint at Morini, where international aid workers were operating and refugees were passing through.

April 16, 1999 - The Bosnian Serb TV station Kanal S, based in Pale, was ordered to stop broadcasting because its coverage of the Kosovo crisis was deemed inflammatory and inaccurate.

According to the UNHCR thousands of refugees were driven into Albania and Macedonia — with tens of thousands more on their heels. At least 5,000 refugees crossed into Macedonia and another 8,000 arrived in Albania.

Washington said there is evidence of "mass killings and graves associated with those mass killings" in an area west of Pristina. Serb forces damaged or destroyed over 400 villages and towns inside Kosovo, 45 of them in the last week to 10 days.

A German newspaper reported that ethnic Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova was being held under house arrest in Pristina.

The KLA rebel forces captured a Yugoslav Army officer during an overnight ground operation near Junik, Kosovo, on April 13-14. The officer was handed over to the US and is being held in Tirana as a prisoner of war. The Red Cross has not been allowed access to the three American servicemen held by Yugoslavia — captured March 31.

As a part of their media campaign against western countires, the Serbs organized a bus trip for journalists to the site where a convoy allegedly was attacked by NATO planes.

April 17, 1999 - Serb forces appeared to be making a final push to empty Kosovo of ethnic Albanians. Some 25,000 refugees arrived in Albania and Macedonia after fleeing their homes.

In Dresden (Germany) the European Union finance ministers supported a plan to freeze debt payments for both nations.

During a press meeting, NATO displayed aerial photos of what it claimed to be 43 fresh mass grave sites in Kosovo, one with up to 150 victims from the Kosovo town of Izbica.

Macedonia warned the KLA against doing anything to destabilize the former Yugoslav republic. In the past several days, Macedonian police have confiscated more than four tons of weapons from the KLA.

The prominent Italian TV journalist Lucia Annunziata was roughed up and expelled from Yugoslavia. He was detained at the Yugoslav-Croatian border on the way back to Italy on April 16. She was searched, stripped, handcuffed, hit and then taken back to Belgrade, where she was interrogated for nearly eight hours. She said was questioned about Italy's role in the NATO bombing campaign.

The Red Cross was allowed to exmine the Yugoslav POW, captured before April 16.

April 18, 1999 - A car carrying seven ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo struck a land mine at the border, killing five refugees, including three children. Yugoslav troops have been planting mines along the road for weeks to guard against crossings into Kosovo by KLA rebels or by NATO troops.

April 19, 1999 - Yugoslav officials broke diplomatic relations with Albania, on the accusation that Albania supported "agression". Yugoslavia also shut the main crossing point for ethnic Albanian refugees fleeing Kosovo.

US President Clinton asked Congress for $6 billion in emergency spending to sustain US military operations in Kosovo and to increase aid to ethnic Albanians fleeing Kosovo. The US is seeking NATO support for cutting off seaborne shipments of oil into Yugoslavia to limit President Slobodan Milosevic's ability to fight ethnic Albanians.

Clinton met with Russian President Boris Yeltsin, who has been critical of the NATO campaign. The White House said the two emphasized the things they agreed upon, such as the need for Serb forces to withdraw from Kosovo.

The US ambassador for war crimes said Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is being investigated as a war crimes suspect since more than 100,000 ethnic Albanians are unaccounted for.

The Training and Movement Ban as imposed by SFOR on March 24 was partially lifted.

April 20, 1999 - NATO said that Serb military and paramilitary forces were shelling hills where ethnic Albanians had fled, marching the refugees on roads and putting them on trains to the border, then closing the border to them.

Two to three hundred Yugoslav soldiers entered Croatia's southernmost peninsula — a demilitarized zone between Croatia and Montenegro, controlled by a 28-man UN monitoring mission. Ivan Simonovic, Croatia's representative to the United Nations, said he was convinced diplomatic means would lead to their withdrawal. "But Croatia must be ready to use other means if necessary."

One Albanian soldier was wounded in a seven-hour exchange of machine-gun and sniper fire across the Yugoslav-Albanian border south of the Kosovo city Djakovica, the OSCE reported.

NATO commanders spoke of new accounts of mass executions, including ethnic Albanians flushed from their homes by Serb forces firing tear gas.

The UN refugee agency declared its camps in Macedonia full beyond capacity.

Aid workers worried about the fate of a reported 15-mile-long convoy of refugees seen coming south from the Kosovo capital Pristina, on Saturday April 17. The convoy — estimated to include 9,000 to 16,000 people — disappeared.

Aid workers also worried about the few refugees that made it accross the border, uncertain whether border fighting had stopped the flow or Serbs had blocked it.

A report said 700 ethnic Albanian boys as young as 14 were being used either as "human shields or as blood banks for Serb casualties."

April 23, 1999 - Albanian Foreign Minister Paskal Milo said his country feared Milosevic might drag Albania into the armed conflict, after Yugoslav troops have crossed the border with Albania on April 20. He also said that "there is evidence that shows that many people from the Serbian secret services have been infiltrating (Albania) with the poor men and women coming into Albania from Kosovo."

NATO offered suspend its air strikes if President Slobodan Milosevic would accept the five conditions for peace in Kosovo and begins withdrawing his troops, said British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook.

April 24, 1999 - Again, Yugoslavia ruled out the presence of armed foreign soldiers on its territory to enforce a possible peace agreement in Kosovo. So far, Russian prime minister Viktor Chernomyrdin made little progress in Moscow's latest attempt to persuade Belgrade.

April 26, 1999 - The European Union banned fuel shipments to Yugoslavia. It is unknown whether it should be enforced with a naval blockade in the Adriatic Sea.

Despite the fact that ground troops still were out of the question, NATO military planners started to review the estimate of the number of troops required for a ground war in Yugoslavia — 200,000 in a worst-case scenario. The Washington POst wrote that Harry Summers, retired US Army colonel, said NATO's high-end estimate of 200,000 troops is likely to become its low-end estimate.

The European Union banned fuel shipments to Yugoslavia. It is unknown whether it should be enforced with a naval blockade in the Adriatic Sea.

Yugoslavia's deputy premier, Vuc Draskovic, said Serbia has been seriously weakened by the allied bombardment. Draskovic said his government was ready to accept a peace deal calling for a UN presence that would include NATO countries. According to Draskovic, his party's privately owned TV station was taken over by the Serb army.

April 26, 1999 - Approximately 5,000 ethnic Albanians entered Macedonia — the leading edge of a major exodus ignited by Serb forces operating south and east of Pristina. More than 600,000 refugees have fled Kosovo over the past month — 360,000 to Albania and the remainder to Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia.

In negotiations with Russia key obstacles to a settlement are NATO's refusal to stop the bombing and Yugoslavia's refusal to accept armed NATO peacekeepers to enforce a peace accord for Kosovo.

April 28, 1999 - Yugoslav deputy premier Vuk Draskovic was dismissed because of "public statements which were contrary to the government stands." Montenegro's president Milo Djukanovic — strong Milosevic critic — said the dismissal "is a confirmation ... that there are people who cannot support, nor accept, whatever" Milosevic says.

More than 2,000 ethnic Albanian refugees fled into Albania, telling of a new Serb campaign to clear villages in southwest Kosovo and a possible massacre in near Djakovica.

In Macedonia, the UN refugee agency warned that camps packed beyond capacity were "on the verge of rioting" because of tensions.

A top European Union official said the refugees near Kukes could become a target of Serb attacks and a prime source of recruits for the guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army. The first concern was to try to move the people southwards.

April 29, 1999 - Yugoslavia said it was suing NATO countries involved in the five-week-old bombing campaign of its territory at the International Court of Justice in The Hague.

Former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin flew to Germany, presenting "concrete proposals" in Bonn, Rome and Belgrade in a two-day shuttle mission. He said that the key precondition for peace remains a halt to NATO airstrikes, highly unlikely given NATO's requirements. The Russian plan calls for a U.N.-controlled international peacekeeping force in Kosovo but a top Serb official rejected the notion of any military force whatsoever in the province. "No armed forces will be allowed to come, not even UN peacekeepers," said ultranationalist Serbian Deputy Premier Vojislav Seselj, whose views generally reflect those of Milosevic.

Refugees reaching the Albanian border told about how Serb forces had taken roughly 100 young and middle-aged men into custody at gunpoint April 27 in the southwestern Kosovo village of Meje. Refugees who passed through the village hours later said they saw bodies heaped in a street, all of them men. The information could not immediately be verified. Other refugees told aid workers how men were taken off tractors that were taking them to the border.

May 1, 1999 - President Clinton imposed a US trade embargo on the Yugoslav republic of Serbia, forbidding American exports of oil, software and other items — except for food and medicine — to the Serbian province. The US also froze all official Yugoslav assets in the United States and banned imports from Serbia. This coincides with a similar ban on oil products imposed by the European Union that also took effect. Earlier, a arms sales and financial transactions were banned.

There has been some disagreement about enforcing the oil embargo in the Balkans. France questioned the legality to visit and search ships in the Balkan region.

May 2, 1999 - Three US servicemen, captured March 31 by the Serbs along the Macedoian border, were freed after 32 days of captivity. They were handed over to the American reverent Jesse Jackson.

Yugoslav forces in Kosovo increased cross-border attacks on guerrilla camps and civilian villages in Albania, firing rockets and mortars.

May 3, 1999 - At Albania's northern border with Kosovo, refugees said they saw groups of citizens from the city of Prizren, mostly women and children, walking back toward the city from the border and said they had been turned back by Serb border police.

At least 5,000 refugees passed through the main Blace border post.

After the release of the three American POWs on May 2, the White House said there can be no deal with Milosevic until all forces are ordered out of Kosovo, the mass expulsions have stopped, and a peace plan including NATO troops to enforce peace is accepted.

Former Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin was sent to Washington by President Boris Yeltsin, who discussed the Yugoslav crisis with Clinton by phone.

In an appearance on the US talkshow "60 Minutes" Milosevic's wife Mirjana Markovic insisted that "no, there isn't any" ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.

May 4, 1999 - Russian envoy Viktor Chernomyrdin met with President Clinton's top foreign policy advisers for a second day. Clinton offered a pause in the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia as well as negotiations on a peacekeeping force for Kosovo. Clinton still insisted on the four US key requirements for ending the war — withdrawal of Serb forces from Kosovo, return of the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanian refugees, acceptance of an international security force to protect the refugees, restoration of Kosovo self-rule. Chernomyrdin also met UN Secretary General Anan. In Europe, Clinton met NATO Secretary General Solana. Clinton and Norwegian officials mentioned compromises on several issues, but not the presence of an international security force.

The UN and local Albanian officials asked 30,000 refugees to leave the volatile border region around Kukes and relocate to camps further south. The main concern was an escalation of border conflicts with Serb forces. A great number of refugees were reluctant to leave because of unknown whereabouts of family members still in Kosovo.

NATO top general Klaus Naumann, head of NATO's military arm, acknowledged that the air campaign failed to stop the Serb ethnic cleansing campaign: "We cannot stop such a thing entirely."

May 5, 1999 - Though initially thought to be under house arrest, Ibrahim Rugova held talks with Italian Premier Massimo D'Alema. Rugova's delegation opposed Milosevic's at peace talks in Rambouillet. It was unclear whether he brought proposals from Milosevic, or whether he had resumed activity as an advocate for Kosovo Albanians. Rugova was elected president of the unrecognized Republic of Kosovo by ethnic Albanians.

More than 7,000 ethnic Albanian refugees flooded into Albania, telling of large scale massacres and abuses by Yugoslav security forces.

May 6, 1999 - Russia and the major Western powers agreed on a draft plan for ending the conflict in Kosovo, but many details needed to be worked out. Milosevic repeatedly indicated he would only accept a UN-controlled, non-NATO international force, armed only with personal weapons.

Even if Milosevic would accept any agreement on the return of refugees, it leaves the problem unresolved of the hundreds of thousands of refugees. Serb authorities hoped they either choose not to return or if they do, will have a problem proving that they have the right to do so, since most refugees were stripped from identity papers by Serb forces.

Macedonia closed its border to all but a handful of ethnic Albanians after more than 230,000 refugees entered the country — a tenth of its population. Albania said it would accept up to 1 million Kosovo refugees.

The World Bank approved a $30 million boost to Albania to help counter the impact of the Kosovo crisis. Albania does not have to start paying back the loan for 10 years, and then has 30 years to pay it off.

May 8, 1999 - Fehmi Agani, a politician, a close aide of Ibrahim Rugova, and member of the Kosovo Albanian delegation at February's peace talks in France, was found dead. Tanjug news agency blamed the KLA.

May 9, 1999 - In Stenkovec — just north of Skopje, Macedonia — angry refugees protested poor camp conditions, demanding that alliance troops take over the camp. Ten days before, NATO handed over camp security to the Macedonian police.

The Washington Post wrote that in Yugoslavia, Goran Matic — minister without portfolio — claimed that 3,000 to 4,000 terrified refugees fleeing Kosovo in the first ten days of the campaign were actors, who were paid $5.50 each to participate in a NATO-directed screenplay. He said the "actors" were marching in a circle so as to seem like vast numbers of people on the run. He also questioned the number of ethnic Albanians that were living in Kosovo before the war — some 800,000 instead of 1,8 million. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees estimates that more than 750,000-780,000 people were forced to leave Kosovo since March 24. Yugoslavia always blamed NATO for the refugee crisis, not its own military and police forces.

May 12, 1999 - Yugoslav troops fighting ethnic Albanian rebels swept over the border into Albania in one of their deepest incursions yet from Kosovo, international observers reported.

May 13, 1999 - Montenegro's president — Milo Djukanovic — called Milosevic's policies a "total failure". He said he would wait for an end to the NATO airstrikes before deciding whether his country should split from Yugoslavia. He also said Milosvic could not be removed by force and that elections should be held after the airstrikes.

In Germany, the Greens voted to back the NATO campaign and rejected a pacifist call for a ceasefire. The vote averted a political crisis that could have shaken NATO unity and forced German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder to seek a new coalition partner.

Loral Space and Communications said it might be forced to cut transmissions into Yugoslavia from one of its satellites, which serves at least two of the country's major Internet providers. The US issued order two weeks ago banning US companies from selling or supplying to Yugoslavia "any goods, software, technology or services," although the order allows for the "special consideration of the humanitarian needs of refugees."

May 14, 1999 - Yugoslavia charged two Australian CARE aid workers as spies. They were detained on March 31. Australia responded angrily.

May 15, 1999 - CNN said it obtained video footage from inside Kosovo depicting the aftermath of a massacre of ethnic Albanian men. A Yugoslavia minister denied the Yugoslav military has been involved in any mass executions.

The flow of ethnic Albanian refugees reaching the mountain border of Mirini, Albania slowed down. Almost 800,000 refugees were forced to leave Kosovo.

May 16, 1999 - A group of 800 refugees described horror stories of Serb police, seeking out men suspected of links to the ethnic Albanian KLA.

For the first time since the start of the NATO air campaign against Yugoslavia, a 15-member UN team arrived in Belgrade, on a 15-day mission.

May 17, 1999 - Serb forces barred a group of 800 ethnic Albanians who arrived at the Macedonian border in a packed train from leaving the province.

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said NATO "now documented 80 different cases reported by the refugees of the use of human shields by the Serb forces".

May 18, 1999 - About 800 ethnic Albanians packed into a train were allowed to leave Kosovo for Macedonia.

NATO said there was evidence that Milosevic was digging up mass graves near the Kosovo towns of Glogovac and Lipljan and tried to hide the evidence of war crimes against Kosovo Albanians.

The NATO airstrikes were having an impact on the Republika Srpska, since 80% of its market is in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The European Commission urged the RS to seek diversification of its market.

An SFOR spokesman said the figures for arms and ordnance handed in during the first two months of Operation Harvest 99 in Bosnia-Herzegovina and the RS have been most encouraging.

May 19, 1999 - A Muslim-Croat forensic team exhumed the bodies of 50 civilians killed during the 3 1/2-year war in Bosnia. The victims were killed by the Serbs in Jun 1992 near Zijemlje, 25 miles east of Mostar. In a ten-day period, forensic teams found 124 bodies. More than 20,000 people are still missing.

An bomb blast outside a mosque in Skopje, Macedonia, injured two. Tensions have run high in the capital between the Muslim ethnic Albanian minority and the Slavic majority. More than 200,000 refugees from Yugoslavia entered Macedonia.

Reports indicated that between 500 to 2,000 Serb soldiers have deserted in Kosovo and returned to their homes, the US reported. In some cities, there were demonstrations against Milosvic.

May 20, 1999 - UNHCR published a four-stage strategy for the post-conflict return of Kosovo refugees. Apart from the nearly 800,000 refugees outside Kosovo, the UN used planning figures of more than 600,000 people displaced inside Kosovo. A spokesman said "the main conditions would be the complete pullout of Serb military, police and paramilitary forces to create some sort of secure situation."

May 22, 1999 - Some 5,000 refugees from Kosovo entered Macedonia. Many said Serb forces came to their homes, ordered them out, and demanded money and valuables along the way. Some described being herded into a field and ordered to "wait for NATO" to bomb them.

Yugoslav forces released an estimated 2,000 Kosovo men. They were detained several weeks earlier at Smrekovnice prison near the northern Kosovo town of Kosovska-Mitrovica, after being taken from refugee columns. On many occasions, Serb forces separated men from columns of refugees.

May 23, 1999 - After heavy diplomatic pressure from NATO Eutelsat announced it would pull the plug on Serbian television. Serbian television used the satellite to beam its signal to Serbia and Montenegro. The satellite feed was also used to resume broadcasting inside the country if NATO bombs knock out relay stations. Thirty-one Eutelsat members voted in favor. Russia, Belarus and Armenia voted against, and he Vatican, Ukraine and Greece abstained.

May 24, 1999 - More than 1,000 refugees entered Albania. UNHCR estimates tat some 438,000 refugees entered Albania.

Refugees reaching Albania say Serb troops in Kosovo handcuffed 50 Kosovo men to one another and ordered them to march as a human shield in front of troops and tanks.

May 25, 1999 - Forensic experts discovered 30 bodies in Kiseljak, 20 miles northwest of Sarajevo, and six on another location. It was believed to be those of Muslim victims from the Bosnian war.

An estimated 200,000 people were killed in the 1992-95 Bosnian war and international experts said more than 24,000 people are still missing. Forensic teams found 1,700 bodies in 1998. In 1999, 250 bodies were exhumed.

NATO troops began relocating 30,000 Kosovo refugees from Albania's northern border to safer camps deeper inside the country.

Mines, laid by Serb forces in border areas are expected to slow down the return of refugees. Removing the mines would be so time-consuming, that the refugees would have to return in phases, leaving many of them to spend the winter in camps in Macedonia and Albania.

More than 150,000 refugees were said to be on their way to Macedonia. Violence against refugees was increasing.

Two Kosovo Albanians in the United States filed a federal lawsuit against Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and a dozen others, alleging genocide and other war crimes in Kosovo.

May 26, 1999 - Two houses in the area of Zvornik, Republica Srpska, were attacked early in the morning, resulting in serious property damage, but no deaths or injuries. Four anti-tank rounds were fired at one house and five anti-tank rounds were fired at the second house, 4 km away. SFOR spokesman LCdr Dave Scanlon spoke of an attempted murder of SFOR personnel and Republika Srpska citizens living in one house, and attempted murder of Joint Commission Observers living in the other house.

Six soldiers of an SFOR unit in Bosnia-Herzegovina were kidnapped near the town of Rudo by 15-20 Yugoslav forces and taken into Yugoslavia, interrogated and held for about eight hours before being released.

May 27, 1999 - Yugoslav president Milosevic, Milan Milutinovic, the President of Serbia, Nikola Sainovic, Deputy Prime Minister of the FRY, Dragoljub OJDANIC, Chief of Staff of the Yugoslav Army, Vlajko Stojiljkovic, Minister of Internal Affairs of Serbia were indicted by the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague. They were charged for crimes against humanity and violations of the laws and customs of war. It was the first time an international court has charged a sitting head of state with war crimes. Belgrade rejected the indictments as a political stunt.

May 28, 1999 - Newsweek reported that US president Clinton authorized the CIA to train ethnic Albanian rebels in sabotage and the National Security Agency to meddle with Milosevic's international bank accounts.

May 29, 1999 - A Yugoslav military panel convicts two Australian aid workers of CARE International of espionage. The court sentenced one to 12 years, and the other to a four-year term. Australia calls the proceedings unacceptable.

June 1, 1999 - The UNHCR says 442,000 refugees have sought refuge in Albania and nearly as many to Macedonia. In all, 850,000 ethnic Albanians have fled Kosovo since March. Some 100,000 of them sought asylum in European countries before the airstrikes on Yugoslavia.

June 2, 1999 - The Clinton administration said it would not object to adoption of a resolution by the United Nations to endorse the peacekeeping plan after a settlement to protect returning refugees.

June 3, 1999 - The World Bank approved two loans to Albania. One is a structural adjustment credit of $45 million, to help the government complete privatization efforts and strengthen the judiciary and other state institutions. The other is a $24 million loan designed to improve irrigation facilities.

Carlos Westendorp said that about $11 million — including funds for reconstruction projects and governmental monies — have repeatedly been diverted and are not available for use.

Serbia's parliament, controlled by Slobodan Milosevic, overwhelmingly approved a Western-backed peace plan for Kosovo.

Chief prosecutor for the UN War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, Louise Arbour, who indicted Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for war crimes said that any peace deal for Kosovo should guarantee investigators probing alleged atrocities access to the Serb province. She said there was "a credible basis" to believe that Milosevic and his four aides were responsible for the deportation of 740,000 Kosovo Albanians and for the murder of 340 Kosovo Albanians.

June 11, 1999 - In Multi-National Division North, the Russian Seperate Airborne Brigade was ordered by the Russian government to prepare to deploy to the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia to arrange for the arrival of a Russian peace keeping contingent. Russia said it did not intend to withdraw the 200 troops from Bosnia.

June 18, 1999 - The United Nations Security Council authorized NATO to keep peacekeepers and the seperate UN civilian mission in Bosnia for another year. In Bosnia, the United Nations handed over peacekeeping responsibilities to SFOR after the 1995 Dayton peace agreement ended the Bosnian war.

The UN Security Council adopted resolution 1247, authorizing the continuation of SFOR in Bosnia Herzegovina from Sunday the 20th of June 1999 — as established in accordance with UN Security Council resolution 1088 — for a further 12 months.

June 24, 1999 - Ambassador Robert Barry, who heads the OSCE's mission to Bosnia said that the next round of local elections will be postponed from September 1999 until April 2000. He cited "tensions" in neighboring Yugoslavia following the Kosova crisis as part of the reason for the postponement. He also noted that there are "practical difficulties particularly at this time" in registering voters there.

Special envoy Carlos Westendorp announced that he will impose economic sanctions on areas governed by the Muslim Party of Democratic Action (SDA) unless the SDA implements a local power-sharing agreement in Zepce, which is northwest of Sarajevo.

June 30, 1999 - A forensic team began an exhumation of a mass grave in northeastern Bosnia related to the Srebrenica investigation. The grave was disturbed and at least some of the remains moved to secondary graves in an effort by the perpetrators to hide evidence. The work was kept confidential for operational security reasons.

Background

The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1199 on September 13, 1998, which demanded to all parties to end hostilities and maintain a ceasefire in Kosovo.

On October 12, 1998, the North Atlantic Council issued an Activation Order for Operation Determined Force, which allowed for limited air strikes and a phased air campaign if Yugoslav authorities refused to comply with UN demands.

Yugoslav president Milosevic agreed to cease hostilities and withdraw mobilized forces in Kosovo and accept international verification of compliance on October 15, 1998.

The UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1203 on October 24, 1998, which endorsed and supported both OSCE and NATO verification missions.

On October 30, 1998, the North Atlantic Council approved the plan for Operation Eagle Eye. Two weeks later, on November 13, the NAC approved Operation Determined Guarantor, of which the execution started on December 4. On December 6, troops were deployed to the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Headquarters was activated on December 10, 1998.

Objective

The Extraction Force (EFOR) was a NATO contingency force ready to extract verifiers of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and Persons with Designated Special Status (PDSS) from Kosovo in the event all other means are unsuccessful and at the request of OSCE. Actions would be performed at short notice with minimum necessary use of force. It would be followed by a rapid re-deployment of the forces outside the Former Republic of Yugoslavia.

The headquarters of the Extraction Force was stationed in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and comprised of about 1,500 persons from several NATO countries.

Admiral James Ellis — Commander in Chief Allied Forces Southern Europe — was the Commander of Determined Force for the on-going NATO Kosovo verification operations, including the NATO Extraction Force.

Mission

The primary mission of the extraction force was:

• Conduct the extraction of OSCE KVM verifiers and/or PDSS in part or in whole in a permissive environment.
• Conduct the emergency evacuation and extraction of a limited number of OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission verifiers and/or Persons with Designated Special Status in a specific geographical location in an uncertain environment.
• Conduct extraction operations, including hostage rescue in an uncertain environment, or OSCE KVM Verifiers and/or PDSS from specific geographical areas.
• Conduct large scale or full extraction of OSCE KVM verifiers and/or PDSS in a hostile environment.

Request For Extraction

The following guidelines were set out:

• The OSCE KVM Head of Mission would have requested extraction through the military chain of command to the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, General Wesley Clark.
• SACEUR would have informed the North Atlantic Council.
• SACEUR will then order the extraction mission to take place.

Contributing Forces

The following countries contributed to Operation Determined Guarantor:

NATO Extraction Force Commander was French Army Brigadier General Marcel Valentin.

The Extraction Force was comprised of about 1,500 personnel as follows:

NATO Extraction Force
France	Battalion Helicopters
Netherlands	Air Mobile Company Air Component with 3 CH-47D Chinook Helicopters Engineer Company 3 Ambulances
Italy	Company 9 Helicopters
United Kingdom	Warrior Company
Head Quarters	300 (international)

Background

Early October 1998, the US put more pressure on the Yugoslav president Milosevic to allow for a verification team to check compliance by Yugoslavia with UN demands. Earlier, NATO intensified Partnership for Peace activities in the Balkans and deployed troops in Albania and Macedonia. In August 1998, plans for the offensive use of ground troops were terminated.

Chronology

On September 23, 1998, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1199, demanding to all parties to end hostilities and maintain a cease-fire.

The North Atlantic Council issued Operation Determined Force's Activation Order on October 13, 1998.

Due to persisting tension in Kosovo, NATO's Standing Naval Force Mediterranean (STANAVFORMED) was temporarily detached to the Adriatic Sea on October 14, 1998.

On October 15, 1998, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the Chief of General Staff of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia signed in Belgrade an agreement establishing an air verification mission over Kosovo, complementing an OSCE verification mission. And a day later, on October 16, 1998, the Chairman-in-Office of the OSCE and the Minister of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) signed in Belgrade an agreement establishing a verification mission in Kosovo, including the undertaking of FRY to comply with UNSC resolutions 1160 and 1199 of 1998.

On October 24, 1998, the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1203. The resolution supports NATO and OSCE verification missions and demands all parties in Kosovo to comply with the agreement.

NATO's Supreme Allied Commander Europe and the Chairman of NATO Military Committee met with Yugoslav President Milosevic and his Army Chief of Staff on October 25. NATO delivered a clear message pressing for immediate and total compliance with Security Council Resolution 1199 and related agreements.

On October 27, 1998, NATO decided to maintain the Activation Order for the phased air campaign and to remain prepared to carry out air operations should they be necessary.

Background

The first phase of this multinational operation was initiated on October 13, 1998. That day, NATO's higher decision-making body - the North Atlantic Council - authorized an activation order allowing for both "limited air strikes" and a "phased air campaign" in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia should Yugoslav authorities refuse to comply with the UN resolution.

The execution of these air strike options was initially set to begin not earlier than 96 hours from the authorization of the activation order, to allow time for negotiations between Ambassador Holbrooke and Yugoslav President Milosevic.

Progress in the diplomatic negotiations was largely due to pressure maintained by the NATO maintained through deployment of NATO air and naval assets in Italy and in the Adriatic sea. After nine days of negotiations, Holbrooke secured an agreement from Milosevic to comply with the provisions of UN Security Council Resolution (UNSCR) 1199, with both air and ground regimes to verify compliance.

In accordance with this agreement, signed on October 15, Milosevic committed to cease hostilities and withdraw mobilized forces in Kosovo. Furthermore, the agreement allows the international community to verify compliance by all parties with the provisions of UNSC Resolution 1199. This is to be conducted through NATO unarmed flights and the deployment in Kosovo of a Verification Mission provided by the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).

As the 96 hour deadline for compliance with the negotiated settlement approached, the international community had clear evidence that Yugoslavia was still some distance from full compliance with the terms of the accord. While diplomatic efforts continued to secure full compliance, NATO decided to extend the period before execution of air strikes would begin. The extension gave president Milosevic until October 27, 1998 to comply fully with Resolution 1199. NATO additionally decided to maintain its readiness to launch air operations against the Former Republic of Yugoslavia, to include continuing deployment of substantial air forces in the region.

Just prior to the end of this extension on October 27, evidence indicated that Serbian military and security forces had made progress toward the demanded restraint and withdrawal. Despite the substantial steps, NATO's objective remained to achieve full compliance with UNSC resolutions. As a result, NATO decided to maintain both activation orders in place, with execution subject to decision by the North Atlantic Council.

Despite the progress made, the crisis did not end. NATO remains ready to act. The immediate focus is to ensure the effectiveness of the verification regime. The North Atlantic Council will keep the situation in Kosovo under constant review and of they sees evidence of substantial non-compliance in the future, NATO is ready to use force. The activation orders for limited air operations and for phased air campaign remain in effect. NATO military forces remain prepared to carry out these air operations should they be necessary and to maintain forces at the appropriate readiness levels.

Mission

The mission of NATO Operation Determined Force is to implement, when ordered by the North Atlantic Council, one or several of the following courses of action:

• Conduct limited air operations -- such as air strikes against designated militarily significant targets.
• Conduct a phased air campaign.

Organization

The Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR) delegated authority for the implementation of Operation Determined Force to the Commander in Chief of Allied Forces Southern Europe (CINCSOUTH), whose headquarters is in Naples, Italy. CINCSOUTH delegated control of the operation to the Commander, Allied Air Forces Southern Europe (COMAIRSOUTH), also based in Naples. Operational conduct of day-to-day missions was delegated to the Commander 5th Allied Tactical Air Force, at Vicenza, Italy.

Contributing Forces

Fourteen NATO countries are currently contributing to Operation Determined Force. The countries include Belgium, Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Depending on which of the limited air or phased air options is implemented, the sustainment of the operation would require up to 300/400 aircraft. As of October 27, 1998, over 300 aircraft are committed to this operation and many of them are already deployed forward on stand-by at various air bases in Italy and other NATO nations or on carrier vessels.

Belgium	F-16
Canada	CF-18
Denmark	F-16
France	Jaguar, Mirage 2000C/D/IV, E-3F AEW, C-135, Super Etendard, Alise
Germany	GE Tornado
Netherlands	F-16A/AR, KC-10
Norway	F-16
Portugal	F-16
Spain	EF-18, KC-130
Turkey	F-16
United Kingdom	L-1011, E-3D, GR-7
United States	A-10, B-52, F-16, EC-130, KC-135, C-135, V-2, F-15, C-130, MC-130, MH-53, P-3C, EP-3, KC-10 USS Eisenhouwer

Operation Joint Forge

NATO operations in Bosnia from June 20, 1998 to December 2, 2005.

On December 2, 2005 the Stabilization Force mission ended after nine years. NATO maintains a headquarters in Sarajevo (Bosnia-Herzegovina) to assist the country with defense reform.