Cost of Kosovo Conflict Said $4B
By TOM RAUM - AP
WASHINGTON (AP) - Waging war with $2 million missiles can run up a quite a tab.
So can preserving peace. NATO's 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia cost the
United States as much as $4 billion, according to private and congressional estimates.
Annual peacekeeping and reconstruction expenses are expected to run nearly as
high, and that assumes the United States will honor President Clinton's pledge that ``not
a penny'' will go to rebuild Serbia's roads and bridges while Yugoslavia President
Slobodan Milosevic remains in power.
The U.S. military contributed to the NATO force more than 725 aircraft, a
variety of artillery, multiple-launch rocket systems and about 5,500 supporting Army
troops. Clinton called up about 5,000 reservists.
U.S. aircraft flew 2,300 missions in the 11 weeks of airstrikes. U.S.
Navy ships fired about 450 Tomahawk cruise missiles, at a price of about $1 million a
missile. U.S. Air Force B-52 bombers launched 90 air-launched cruise missiles, which cost
about $2 million apiece.
The Pentagon has not put a price on these deployments or on replacing the
munitions they consumed. An independent research organization has: $2.3 billion to $4
billion, according to the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments. The costs
are difficult to estimate because the Pentagon has not given details on how many munitions
other than cruise missiles were
used.
Further, the Pentagon plans to upgrade, rather than replace, some of the cruise
missiles and other munitions while also increasing stockpiles, center analyst Elizabeth
Heeter said. In late May, President Clinton signed an emergency spending bill that
set aside about $5 billion for the airstrikes through Sept. 30, if necessary.
With the fighting over and warplanes headed home, the administration hopes to
use as much of the remaining money as possible - about $2 billion by some estimates - to
pay for peacekeeping in Kosovo, a province of Yugoslavia's dominant republic Serbia.
Tending to the peace in Kosovo is expected to run $2 billion to $3.5 billion
annually, not including reconstruction costs, the center says. The international force of
50,000 peacekeepers includes 7,000 U.S. troops to help resettle and protect ethnic
Albanian refugees.
The White House chief of staff, John Podesta, said U.S. peacekeepers will
be needed indefinitely. U.S. peacekeepers in a second Balkans hot spot, Bosnia, have
cost more than $9 billion. About 6,700 U.S. troops remain in Bosnia, down from a peak of
more than 22,000. They are helping to implement the 1995 U.S.-brokered Dayton peace
agreement that ended three years of fighting by the country's Serbs, Muslims and
Croats. For Kosovo, the administration and congressional leaders insist the bulk of
Western reconstruction aid must come from Europe. Without waiting for the
administration to request a U.S. share, the Senate Appropriations Committee voted to
provide $535 million for postwar Balkan reconstruction. Kosovo would receive $150 million,
but the rest of Serbia would get nothing.
Lawmakers want the United States to provide about 20 percent of total costs,
said Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee on foreign
operations and author of the reconstruction plan. The Senate could take up the measure
this week.
The European Commission, administrative arm of the 15-nation European Union, has
estimated the cost of rebuilding Kosovo at $7 billion for the first three years. It plans
to spend up to $722 million on reconstruction during each of the next three years.
While no independent agency has assessed damage in Serbia, Yugoslav claims range as high
as $90 billion. Factories, railroads and bridges bore the brunt of NATO's airstrikes.
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