Retired Air Force Maj. NATO officials say that Lt. Gen. Michael Short, commander of all the NATO air forces in the campaign, has argued that he does not need the 300 extra aircraft requested by Gen. Wesley Clark, the NATO commander. Clark and others insist they have done that, by bombing one of Milosevic's mansions, an increasing number of government buildings in Belgrade, and TV towers used to broadcast Yugoslav propaganda. NATO aircraft recently have been flying a total of nearly 700 sorties per day, about 400 more than in the opening days of the war. Attacks against Serbian forces in Kosovo have more than tripled.
Concussions now shake Belgrade nightly.
Yet this intensification of the bombing comes after most of Kosovo's ethnic Albanians have been driven from their homes, and there is skepticism even at the Pentagon that airstrikes alone will ever force Serbian troops out of Kosovo and let the Albanians return to their homes. NATO's strategy essentially has been to starve Serbian forces of fuel and supplies by attacking bridges, roads, and other supply lines, petroleum reserves, and storage sites. There is little doubt those attacks have hurt. All of the major roads from Serbia proper into Kosovo have been bombed, and at least 30 highway and railroad bridges throughout the country have been knocked down. NATO has destroyed all of Yugoslavia' s oil-refining capability, and the alliance is preparing this week to begin enforcing a naval embargo against tankers bringing oil into ports in Montenegro, the smaller of Yugoslavia's two republics.