Fra Kosovo til Kosova - BA Forlag

have said that in one incidence we have conducted an investigation and we hit one civilian vehicle.
Now that does not mean that you should presuppose that every other incidence of civilian vehicles
is automatically to be laid at NATO's door, clearly not. There is only one incidence, one incidence,
where we have any indication of damage to a civilian vehicle
which could have resulted in civilian lives. As far as the rest of all of the operations are concerned
we are satisfied that we struck military targets. If we have further information we will share it with
you, but we cannot give you information that we do not have at the present time. Sometimes also,
as you know, in these kind of situations it takes a while to establish the facts. Not every situation
is one in which you can immediately have a complete and total picture, sometimes it is possible,
in other times it isn't. As I have said before, if Kosovo was the type of place where Milosevic would
allow international organisations, international observers to roam freely, if he would allow the
foreign press to operate freely and to go where they like, without being escorted back and forth
to the various locations, it would be much easier for everybody to ascertain the facts in this
situation. We are, as you know, operating from the air and it sometimes takes time, particularly
on the basis of purely aerial observation material, to establish the exact parameters of the
situation. But we have on this particular incidence only indications in one situation, in one
situation, which was the one described to you yesterday by the General of where we would have
hit a civilian vehicle. For the others I think you should seek your explanation in Belgrade, as much
as you should at NATO headquarters and I hope you will do so.
DAG: Can you deny that NATO was responsible for the incident, or incidents, which have been
shown on Serbian television and to which western correspondents were invited to go and look at
that, headless bodies and so on, which appeared to have occurred on the road between Djakovica
and Prizren, can you deny that?
JAMIE SHEA: Dag, I have no indication at the present time that NATO was responsible for
any other damage to a civilian vehicle than the incident north of Djakovica described to you
yesterday.
DAG: But was it the one that is being shown, for which you are being blamed?
JAMIE SHEA: Well I do not accept any blame for any other incident except the one which
we were able to investigage north of Djakovica and which we outlined to you yesterday.
GEORGE: I understand that it is a political question to decide to reduce the altitude which would
enable the pilots to avoid this kind of incident. I wonder if any kind of thinking has begun, or any
discussion, to make this kind of decision or not yet?
GENERAL MARANI: Tactical employment of aircraft doesn't have anything to do with politics.
Of course we have already started to review our tactics to see if we can improve the capability of
identifying targets and at the same time reduce the possibility to have another accident in the
future like the one we had.
NICK: You have been speaking a lot recently about the activity of the KLA. Does NATO support
politically and/or militarily in hardware the KLA? And General, for those of us here who are not
defence experts, can you explain with the missiles and the bombs that are being used at the
moment in this area that we have been discussing for the past few days, can you tell us a bit
about the payload, what is in there and what actually happens when one of these things
explodes?
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