Lott Attacks Clinton's Kosovo Plan

WASHINGTON--Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.) said yesterday he finds it curious that the White House is moving toward military action in Kosovo just before the November election. He said neither the American public nor Congress would support sending American ground troops to the area.

Lott said Serbian forces appear to be withdrawing under threat of a NATO strike and asked why, in "what appears will be three weeks before an election, we are going to go in and bomb some artillery tubes inside Kosovo."

He said he has been backing aggressive action against Serbia since last March, but the administration and NATO have done nothing. "The genocide has been taking place. The damage has been done," Lott said. "Now and only now they prepare to take serious action. I think that is curious."

A White House spokesperson, Nanda Chitre, said the administration is focusing on "ending the violence and creating the conditions for the safe return of refugees and serious negotiations toward apolitical settlement. If we get close to a peace settlement, we will consider what role if any the United States will play in its implementation."

In closed-door briefings to members of Congress last week, the administration generally found bipartisan support for threatened NATO airstrikes aimed at protecting civilians in Kosovo. But several lawmakers said airstrikes alone would not be enough, that ground troops would have to be dispatched to keep the peace.

If a diplomatic solution includes "putting a few more people on the ground from NATO to make sure the peace is kept, then I'm for it," said House Democratic leader Dick Gephardt (D-Mo.)on ABC's "This Week with Sam Donaldson and Cokie Roberts." "This is the new world we are in: We are peace-keepers, and we have to help the world do that."

But Lott, also on ABC, said the administration has not prepared for such contingencies.

Senators "came out of that briefing shaken," he said, "because there is no real plan on how to carry this out, there is no plan B, and to suggest that we would have ground troops there without any plan of what that would mean, how to get out, I think is unacceptable."