Nellis crews will stay until bombing ends

Thursday, May 27, 1999 | 10:53 a.m.

Beginning June 15 pilots and support crews at Nellis Air Force Base won't be able to leave the service until NATO's bombing of Yugoslavia ends.

The Pentagon said Wednesday about 6,000 Air Force personnel who already had approval to retire or leave for civilian jobs before the end of the year will have to stay in the service.

An estimated 120,000 active duty Air Force officers and enlisted people -- 40 percent of the service -- are employed in jobs considered vital to the Yugoslavian campaign, including nearly all pilots and navigators, specialists in computer and photo analysis, weather, rescue missions, life support and dozens of other areas.

All must stay in uniform until the action ends or until President Clinton lifts the ban on departures and retirements.

A spokesman for Nellis, which has more than 6,500 military personnel, today could not say how many people the policy will affect locally.

There have been no reports of an increase in the rate of retirements in an effort to beat the June 15 deadline, the Nellis spokesman said.

The ban affects only the Air Force, not the other military services.

The "stop-loss" policy, last used during the Persian Gulf War, reflects the fact that the Air Force is doing the "heavy lifting" of the campaign, Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said.

"This is a major-theater war for the Air Force -- not for the service as a whole, but certainly for the Air Force," Bacon said.

The Air Force also is calling up more reservists than the other military branches, and stop-loss will affect some of those units. Reservists may not leave units likely to join the campaign.

The reliance on the Air Force likely will increase as the number of NATO planes taking part in the nine-week-old campaign climbs above 1,000 and clear weather in the Balkans allows the 19-member alliance to sustain attacks 24 hours a day against Milosevic's forces in Kosovo.

"As we get more aircraft and this type of weather, that'll take away his sanctuary," Air Force Maj. Gen. Charles Wald told a Pentagon briefing. "And as he does move, it'll make it easier for us to find them and destroy them."

For years the Air Force has struggled to retain skilled pilots and others whose training costs millions but who typically can make far better salaries in the private sector.

Air Force officials said commercial airlines will be most affected by a halt in the flow of trained pilots, mechanics and others.

The Air Force has had the authority to impose the ban since late April, when the Pentagon announced that as many as 33,102 reservists might be called to active duty because of the Balkan campaign. Of those about 25,000 would be from the Air Force.

As many as one-third of front-line Air Force fighter planes and many support aircraft are involved in the effort to drive out the forces of Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and allow hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians to return to their homes.

Most of the 717 U.S. planes in the NATO bombardment come from the Air Force, as do the pilots, ground crews, air traffic controllers and others.

Clinton said Wednesday in a message to ethnic Albanians forced out of the Serbian province of Kosovo that the air campaign "is daily increasing the pressure on the Serbian leadership and on the Serbian forces in Kosovo."

In a taped message carried by Voice of America, Clinton said the effort to halt violence against Kosovars will take time but its outcome is certain.

"The campaign of ethnic cleansing in Kosovo will end. You will return," he said.

Twenty-eight House Democrats, most of whom had voted to support the air campaign, called on Clinton today to halt the bombing for three days "in an effort to encourage all sides to reach a viable peace agreement."

"We believe it is now time for NATO to open the door to a peace settlement," they said in a letter. The group is led by Rep. Rod Blagojevich, D-Ill., the House's only Serbian-American, who earlier this month helped win the release of three U.S. soldiers held as prisoners of war by the Yugoslav army.

Meanwhile the Senate late Wednesday voted down, 77-21, a move by Sen. Bob Smith, R-N.H., to cut off funding for U.S. participation in the NATO military campaign against Yugoslavia.

Smith told senators that Milosevic "has accomplished what he wanted to accomplish," driving ethnic Albanians out of Kosovo. "I don't know what we're achieving in continuing to bomb."

But Senate leaders of both parties said such an action would undercut NATO and U.S. troops in the region. The Senate has previously defeated efforts to scale back or step up the campaign.

The vote came as the Senate debated a defense spending bill.