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UNITED NATIONS - Running afoul of US policy toward Yugoslavia, a group of retired American military commanders and Serb-Americans is struggling to bring humanitarian aid to Serbian cities damaged by NATO bombs.
Calling their group the Yugoslavian-American Humanitarian Relief Council, the former generals and admirals have run the gauntlet seeking clearance for a reconnaissance mission to Serbia, one of Yugoslavia's two republics and the main target of the 11-week bombing. They propose to work through private companies to supply medicine, food, and spare parts for water purification systems and electrical plants.
Eventually they hope to clean up thousands of undetonated explosives; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization dropped 23,000 bombs in an effort to deter Yugoslav attacks on the ethnic-Albanian population of Kosovo province. Retired Army Major General Paul Vallely said the council would like to apply ''a Band-Aid to get them through the winter.''
The group includes a former senior US intelligence officer and an American whose wife is chief of staff to Belgrade's mayor, an opposition politician.
State Department officers have refused to endorse the project. They say it goes beyond humanitarian aid into commercial transactions and is not in the interests of US foreign policy. The Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, which enforces sanctions, said it is reviewing the proposal.
US sanctions, and a similar European Union package, permit humanitarian assistance but not reconstruction aid so long as Slobodan Milosevic remains president of Yugoslavia.
EU foreign ministers agreed Oct. 11 to support a pilot project for energy assistance that would deliver heating oil to two Serbian cities governed by opposition party mayors. Vallely said US policy is ''not compassionate'' and is ''holding the people hostage because of their government.'' In addition, the council charges that US companies are being cut out of contracts to rebuild Yugoslavia, once Milosevic loses power, while European companies are already active there.
Craig Johnstone, vice president of the US Chamber of Commerce, said there are valid concerns over whether American companies will get a fair share. ''The US contributed the preponderance of the war effort. The Europeans will bear the preponderance of the reconstruction costs. That does not mean they'll get the preponderance of the contracts,'' he added. ''It needs to be monitored very closely.''
David Aaron, undersecretary of commerce for international trade, said the Commerce Department is encouraging American firms to get in on other Balkan reconstruction and will do the same in Serbia, once sanctions are lifted.
More and more private companies see opportunities for themselves in the field of humanitarian aid, he added. The retired commanders are upset that the military they once served targeted power plants, television stations, and factories. They say NATO was intended to be a defensive organization and should not have intervened in a civil war.
Another retired US commander, Navy Rear Admiral Mark Hill, said that ''the use of weapons was absolutely wrong'' because it was inappropriate and ineffective. He urged Americans to aid people in Serbia and rebuild ties with a World War II ally.
International aid has poured into Kosovo: Donor governments pledged $2 billion in July for humanitarian and reconstruction aid. More than 200 relief organizations are active there, serving the 772,000 refugees who have returned to a land where 40 percent of homes were destroyed.
There are nearly as many refugees in Serbia, according to the UN office for humanitarian affairs. At least 220,000 people, mainly Serbs and Gypsies, fled Kosovo for Serbia. They join half a million refugees from earlier fighting in Bosnia and Croatia. The UN High Commissioner for Refugees and the Red Cross are among the few groups active in Serbia.
Even those in Serbia who have homes face escalating prices for declining stocks of food, the UN reports. Electricity will be 30 to 50 percent below winter requirements. Belgrade is issuing coupons instead of cash to retirees. Salaries have plummeted and thousands are unemployed. European economists estimate the war damage at $30 billion to $60 billion.
Yugoslavia Foreign Minister Zivadin Jovanovic said half a million citizens are without heat because of the bombing.
''This needs immediate attention, especially regarding the approach of winter,'' Jovanovic said during a UN visit last month. Bombed oil refineries and chemical factories have become ''environmental catastrophes.'' He proclaimed Yugoslavia's right to ''full compensation of war damages'' from NATO.
''Instead of stepping up aid, we are witnessing the opposite,'' Jovanovic said.
Few nonprofit groups have worked in Serbia since three CARE staff members were arrested there last spring; one, a Yugoslav national, remains in prison. The US government recently invited American aid organizations to submit proposals for projects in Serbia that could receive government funds.
Dr. Arthur Keys, president of International Relief and Development, said his group is part of a coalition of nonprofit groups, some 15 of which are preparing proposals for that kind of work. ''There is increasing evidence that there will be a major humanitarian crisis in Serbia this winter, and nobody's looking at it,'' he said.
''In the beginning there were two areas of resistance: public perceptions that we had a conflict between NATO and Serbia and that the Serbs deserve what they are getting. It was unspoken,'' Keys said. ''The second has been the reticence of US government agencies to clarify US policy.''