Rousing Welcome For U.S. Defense Chief In Kosovo
By Charles Aldinger
UROSEVAC, Serbia (Reuters) - Cheering crowds of ethnic Albanians gave
Defense Secretary
William Cohen a rousing welcome Saturday during a visit to U.S. peacekeepers
in Kosovo.
``USA, USA'' and ``NATO, NATO,'' shouted the crowd, peppered with young
children, in the
town of Urosevac, where U.S. Army soldiers have made their regional
headquarters.
A flak-Jacket-clad Cohen, fresh from clinching an accord on the Russian
role in Kosovo, paid a
heavily guarded visit to troops from the U.S. 82nd Airborne Division
in Urosevac and the 26th
Marine Expeditionary Unit near the town of Gnjilane.
``The hard part begins now,'' he told a company of young Marines after
his helicopter landed in a
muddy field at their headquarters.
``It's one thing to fight the most successful air war in history, but
we have a very volatile situation with
high emotions. That's where you come into play,'' said Cohen.
In Urosevac, two ethnic Albanian men grabbed Cohen in a bearhug and
kissed him roundly on each
cheek before anxious security guards with submachineguns moved him
away.
He later flew aboard a U.S. Blackhawk helicopter, escorted by two Apache
assault helicopters,
over a suspected mass grave in Kacanik, in the southern Serbian province.
The Pentagon, using before-and-after aerial photographs, says Serb forces
may have killed 143
ethnic Albanians there, buried them and then tried to destroy the evidence.
Since arriving in Kosovo in the wake of British, French and German troops,
U.S. soldiers have
fanned out across their sector on a mission to keep the peace and disarm
all elements, including
fighters of the pro-independence Kosovo Liberation Army.
Cohen was accompanied from Aviano air base in Italy by NATO's supreme
commander, U.S.
General Wesley Clark, who said it appeared Serb forces were on track
to complete their
withdrawal of all troops from Kosovo by a Sunday midnight deadline.
``At the very least, they are trying to get out,'' Clark told reporters
in the Macedonian capital
Skopje, where he and Cohen lunched with U.S. troops near the city's
airport.
It was their first visit to Kosovo since NATO forces entered a week
ago, after an 11-week air
offensive to force Yugoslavia to accept NATO demands for ending ethnic
slaughter and mass
deportations in the Serbian province.
``Now you're here and a lot of people are glad. They know you're going
to be tough and fair,'' Clark
told the Marines.
Some 3,300 U.S. Army and Marine soldiers are deployed in the American-controlled
sector of
Kosovo. That number will swell to 7,000 next month as the United States
completes its contribution
to a NATO force of 50,000.
After his visit to the troops, Cohen flew back to Macedonia to tour
the teeming Stankovic refugee
camp where the former college basketaball player shot baskets with
children.
Cohen left Helsinki earlier Saturday after signing an accord with Russian
Defense Minister Igor
Sergeyev which allows for 3,600 Russian troops to serve in KFOR, the
NATO peacekeeping force
in Kosovo.
The agreement reached Friday night, after three days of difficult talks,
outlined Russia's military role
in the Kosovo peacekeeping force and gave a boost to relations between
the West and Russia at a
Group of Eight summit in Germany.
For its part, NATO did not back down on its insistence that it could
not give the Russians their own
military zone.
Moscow will however retain control over its own troops and will have
representation in several
NATO sectors as well as at Pristina airport, where it caught the alliance
off-guard by deploying 200 soldiers.
