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Aerial attacks by NATO bombers on Serbian troops in the Kosovo conflict were "a near failure" as few bombs hit their intended targets, according to a study by alliance experts cited in the American magazine US News and World Report.
An investigation of 900 sites in Kosovo had shown that fewer bombs hit their targets than pilots had reported during the NATO campaign earlier this year.
The magazine in its latest issue quotes an unnamed NATO representative as saying that only 26 destroyed tanks were found in Kosovo against earlier claims that NATO planes destroyed 110 tanks.
The official said 12 armoured personnel carriers were destroyed, not 210 as earlier assumed, while eight artillery sites were flattened, not 449.
"The campaign against mobile targets was a near failure," the official was quoted as saying.
Initial expectations that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic might give up after two to four days of NATO attacks had turned out to be "absolutely" wrong, a high-ranking NATO officer told the magazine.
He said that this error of judgement had led to "a lack of coherent campaign planning".
The officer said that the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation had not been prepared for round-the-clock operations until mid-May, a full six weeks after the NATO strikes against Yugoslavia were launched on March 24.
He said analysts now believed that Yugoslavia pulled out of Kosovo because Russia withdrew its support for Belgrade in the conflict and also cited the effects of NATO's targeting of energy and transport facilities.