in March nature winter war did Milosevic believe we were the bomb of course he did did he believe it would be as severe and sustained as it actually was that I can't say it was a wolf fault in the name of Human Rights get NATO's determination not to take casualties extended the war and the suffering it's fair to say that we were not allowed to apply military power in the optimum way you never go into a combat situation where you tell the enemy what you're not going to do now it's emerging that NATO was secretly planning a land invasion of Kosovo I'm absolutely sure that NATO would have done whatever it took to be successful in this campaign tonight on four corners the main players of the war tell their story for the first time our operation allied force was one Tuesday night and the Kosovo capital of Christina the Nativity skeeters from kfor are on reassurance patrol by the way please corporal Kevin Martin of the Royal Irish Regiment is acting as a social worker she's afraid what's yours yummy lomita and da Brat sir are in their 80s and they're trembling with fear Albanians are threatened to kill them the bruise on lewbert's is forward is from a recent confrontation ratha boom me another after some deal equal to the dinosaur this wasn't really just through patient always have a plan be careful Park Circle Carla is that your last meet up with him better this lady is saying that they're not does accounts a little ball said that leg was clear they will the law does not say they have to leave they are free to live here like anybody else free in principle but not in practice intimidation has been systematic more than half the Serbian residents have fled Kosovo the wall that NATO fought to stop the ethnic cleansing of Albanians has created a new cycle of revenge now the Serbs are the main victims and that's a striking reversal of the power balance in the province he's passed in years how the Serbs lost Kosovo is a conflict story assailed international diplomacy and misjudgments that led to the worst war in Europe in half a century in March the US special envoy Richard Holbrooke was sent on a final mission to negotiate with Yugoslavia's President Slobodan Milosevic well I have a brief statement to make President Clinton and secretary Albright said our delegation here to Belgrade on a mission of peace at a time of escalating violence in the region I will persuade in the loss of each doing the Bosnian war in 1995 now he threatened a new war unless the oppression of the Albanians were stopped at about ten in the morning a march 23rd I went in to see him alone and we SAT alone in this vast room and the white Palace surrounded by his art and normally they were other people in the meetings and I said to him you understand what will happen when I leave here today if you don't change your position and he said yes u Obama's and there was a dead silence in the room uncharacteristic and I said I want to be clear with you it will be and I used three words I'd worked out very carefully with the US military it will be swift it will be severe it will be sustained and he said in a very matter-of-fact way very flat no more engagement no more negotiations I understand that you will bomb us videos later we climbed the top of the hotel roof and watched as the first missiles of operation allied force slammed into the outskirts of Belgrade Vito and planned a short war I think there's no doubt at all that NATO believe that this would be a very quick military operation I think two or three days is perhaps a little much of an exaggeration but certainly they thought it would be over in a week I made a speech in the House of Lords in which I said that bombing would not end up in three days it would stiffen the Serb resistance and it would cause much more hardship to the cost of an hour bad news if we hadn't done it the big difference was the estimate of weather was likely to be a two-day bombing campaign or a two-week bombing campaign and the real underlying reason for that was that everybody believed that Bosnia had shown in 1995 that if only you bombed for two weeks you would have peace but NATO had miscalculated possible was more important to most serves and certainly to Milosh [ __ ] than Bosnia well Jen was from Lee two countries right they expel were advised to leave we were able to keep reporting now it's time to return I've been looking forward to this day for some time going back to Belgrade having reported the war there for three months I'm need the tea or what features like in the city and to talk to the government ministers about the war they thought about the genocide in Kosovo the forcible expulsion of perhaps of vegan people and those particularly about the lies that they told divas have people he knows I 501 C deletion givaudan jovanovic is the foreign minister of Yugoslavia he's an old-style socialist on the day we met he just come from Malaysia [ __ ] white Palace and he was as ready as ever to argue the claim that NATO's campaign had breached international law you could hardly expect sovereign country and especially this country with well known history to surrender indeed with and because of threats because of absolutely unacceptable positions which were not justified by law by standards by moral principles etc Stephen which tries to characterize Yugoslavia as the righteous David up against Goliath like NATO the mightiest military organization in one hand and here you have one very tiny small country small people resisting and defending itself politically speaking and political types of NATO countries expected basically military to except Nate to demands of the couple of days of not so serious bonding and on the other hand militias here he taught that after a couple of weeks of bombing that European public opinion will go against the NATO and against airstrikes in against the United States philosophy church the 19 nation alliance would split after all greece italy in other countries that never favored going to war the nato maintaining unity would become the overriding challenge and it would test all of the diplomatic skills of the Alliance's supreme commander General Wesley Clark from the time we went into this we had to move from a political dynamic of consensus compromise least common denominator solutions up to a military dynamic that relied on the principles of war surprise mass concentration focus on the objective and so forth Colonel Colin Botha that's come on old fellow let us see you from the outset General Clark was hamstrung