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NATO'S top brass deployed a battery of evidence yesterday in an effort to rebuff widespread claims that its 78-day bombing campaign in Kosovo inflicted only minimal damage on the Serbian military.
General Wesley Clark, the Supreme Allied Commander Europe, drew on cockpit videos, aerial photographs, pilots, military experts and a stageful of mission files to back his contention that "we succeeded in this conflict".
As the screen behind him showed clips from European and American newspapers disparaging Nato's efforts, General Clark complained that much of the media had chosen to listen to Yugoslav military propaganda. "The public has a right to know," he said as he unveiled the results of Nato's own comprehensive in-depth "strike assessment" at a press conference in Brussels.
This showed that in the course of more than 3,000 missions Nato warplanes successfully struck 93 Serb tanks, 153 armoured personnel carriers, 339 military vehicles and 389 artillery pieces and mortars, although the targets were not necessarily destroyed in each case. Of the 93 tanks hit, only 26 could be confirmed as "catastrophic kills".
General Clark was clearly stung by media reports that just 13 of more than 300 Serb tanks were destroyed and that his pilots were fooled by decoy targets. He attributed those reports to misinformation by the Yugoslav Army, which had made extensive efforts to conceal its losses. Nato's extremely slick presentation even included pictures of drag marks across fields where the Serb military had removed damaged equipment.
He insisted that all the successful strikes claimed by Nato had been verified by on-site inspections since the campaign ended or by at least two sources such as cockpit videos, aerial imagery or witnesses on the ground. The figures were if anything conservative.
He said: "We destroyed enough. We struck enough. The conflict ended on Nato's terms. The Serb forces are out. Nato is in. The refugees are home. Peace is in place." The figures were only marginally lower than the estimates Nato issued amid much scepticism immediately after the war.
General Clark also argued that this "battle-damage bean-counting" was only a part of the story. What it failed to show was the extent to which the Yugoslav military had to keep its tanks and other assets hidden and inoperative to avoid their being hit.
The general refused to answer questions about his falling-out with General Sir Michael Jackson, the British commander who refused to obey his order to rush troops to Pristina to confront incoming Russian peacekeepers.