-Caveat Lector- from: http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/05/05/timkoskos02005.html?1124027 <A HREF="http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/99/05/05/timkoskos02005.html?1 124027">The Times: Balkans War:Nato faults have prolong </A> ----- Nato faults have prolonged war, says top general FROM CHARLES BREMNER IN BRUSSELS Naumann: admits that planes were shot down NATO'S top general yesterday delivered a blunt admission of failings in the alliance's campaign against Serbia and predicted that it had prolonged the conflict and could cost additional lives. General Klaus Naumann, chairman of the Nato military committee, said the air war was now working, but Serbia could still achieve its aim of mass deportation of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo. The German general gave his unvarnished account of the campaign on the eve of his retirement this week. At the same time, the alliance claimed an "extremely successful" day of strikes against targets in Kosovo and Serbia and dismissed as Serb propaganda claims that it had bombed a bus on Monday, killing civilians. Nato also reported the shooting down of a MiG29 Serb warplane in a dogfight. However, the straight-speaking General Naumann gave the first confirmation that two US jets that crashed in the campaign had been shot down, as Serbia had claimed. Nato had previously reported only engine failure. Drawing lessons from the air offensive, General Naumann said: "Quite frankly and honestly, we did not succeed in our initial attempt to coerce [President] Milosevic through airstrikes to accept our demands. Nor did we succeed in preventing Yugoslavia pursuing its campaign of ethnic separation and expulsions." The air campaign alone could never entirely stop the Serb paramilitary from killing the population, he said. "President Milosevic's campaign of mass deportation is still achievable." General Naumann's main complaint was that the Nato military had its hands tied by the need to keep political consensus among the 19-member coalition. "We need to find a way to reconcile the conditions of coalition war with the prin-ciple of the use of surprise and the overwhelming use of force. We did not apply either in Operation Allied Force and this cost time and effort and potentially additional casualties. The net result is that the campaign has been undoubtedly prolonged." He did not elaborate, but his remarks appeared to back up reports that General Naumann and other top officers deplored the allies' failure to hit harder at the outset of the campaign and prepare a ground offensive. The general, who conceded some bitterness over being forced to make way for an Italian successor in the middle of Nato's greatest military test, insisted that there was no reason to change the alliance's approach to its campaign. He said it was true in military history that air power "never won a war", but he said he saw a "real chance that we can make it" in Yugoslavia. General Naumann lamented a catalogue of inadequacies in the campaign, mainly connected to the lack of suficient military capability in Europe. Last night France announced that it would increase its aircraft in the conflict area by 25 per cent. Europe was unable to organise the humanitarian air drop to refugees inside Kosovo because it lacked aircraft that could fly high enough to escape anti-aircraft fire, the general said. He complained of the alliance's "deplorable slow deployment of our forces in Albania and Macedonia". The outspoken general's blunt briefing at Nato headquarters gave the Serbs public credit for hitting the F117 Stealth fighter in the first days of the campaign and an F16 fighter last Sunday. "They were shot down," he said. 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