Operation
On 20 March 1999 OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission monitors withdrew from Kosovo citing a "steady deterioration in the security situation", and on 23 March 1999 Richard Holbrooke returned to Brussels and announced that peace talks had failed. Hours before the announcement, Yugoslavia announced on national television it had declared a state of emergency citing an "imminent threat of war … against Yugoslavia by Nato" and began a huge mobilization of troops and resources. On 23 March 1999 at 22:17 UTC the Secretary General of NATO, Javier Solana, announced he had directed the Supreme Allied Commander Europe (SACEUR), General Wesley Clark, to "initiate air operations in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia." On 24 March at 19:00 UTC NATO started the bombing campaign against Yugoslavia.
Read more about this topic: NATO Bombing Of Yugoslavia
Famous quotes containing the word operation:
“Human knowledge and human power meet in one; for where the cause is not known the effect cannot be produced. Nature to be commanded must be obeyed; and that which in contemplation is as the cause is in operation as the rule.”
—Francis Bacon (1560–1626)
“Waiting for the race to become official, he began to feel as if he had as much effect on the final outcome of the operation as a single piece of a jumbo jigsaw puzzle has to its predetermined final design. Only the addition of the missing fragments of the puzzle would reveal if the picture was as he guessed it would be.”
—Stanley Kubrick (b. 1928)