Ground War an Unknown in Equation

A NATO ground invasion of Kosovo would involve weeks of preparation, difficult logistics and high risk to alliance troops as they seek to wrest mountainous terrain from a determined foe, Pentagon officials say.

While casualties from such a mission would be hard to predict, some defense officials fear the death toll could quickly reach the hundreds or more even before the difficult follow-on job of peacekeeping began.

Such an operation could require 200,000 troops, Clinton administration officials say. They insist that they have no plans to use ground forces--a step entailing huge political risks--but have not ruled out such a move.

And the rising toll of alleged atrocities against Kosovo’s ethnic Albanians could make using ground forces the best of many bad choices, according to some people in Congress and elsewhere.

But Pentagon officials and some outside experts warn that advocates of such a strategy should not underestimate the time or costs of a forced entry through the narrow approaches to Kosovo, an impoverished southern province of Serbia, which is the dominant republic in Yugoslavia.

“There is no magic military bullet,” Kenneth H. Bacon, Pentagon spokesman, said Monday. “There is not a quick solution.”

Though perhaps not as daunting as the jungles of Southeast Asia, this Balkan terrain has none of the advantages U.S. forces have enjoyed during eight years of intermittent clashes with Iraq in open desert.

Kosovo, about 80 miles long by 80 miles wide, has only 14 entrance roads into it, several of which traverse narrow mountain passes.

The entry roads are already defended with antitank mines, defense officials say, and the bridges are laden with explosive charges that could be set off if North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces approached.

Yugoslav forces now hold the high ground at many places in Kosovo. Despite six days of bombing, they are believed to still have about 40,000 troops, 400 tanks, 300 armored personnel carriers and 300 artillery pieces in and near the province.

Tank and artillery positions are built in along communications lines, and officials fear that the Serbs may have buried large stocks of supplies, weapons and ammunition during the many months that they have anticipated a possible fight with NATO.

“No one would mount a light attack against this,” Bacon said. “It would be an extremely heavy and determined attack.”

The Yugoslav forces have been fighting in small groups of men and equipment, which are more difficult to find and destroy. In the event of a ground attack, officials say, they could disperse further and harass NATO forces from the flanks.

Even if their tanks and artillery columns were largely destroyed, the Serbian forces appear well-equipped with mortars, grenade launchers and antitank guns.

“They could be picking at you from the flanks the whole time,” said one senior official. “There’s a lot of trouble in coming in at somebody who knows the territory.”

Alliance officials have tried to bomb military communications systems and supply and ammunition dumps, hoping to disable Serbian forces by severing the military’s “head” from its “body.” But even in the Persian Gulf War, in which Iraqi troops were probably less committed to the fight, this bombing strategy could not put all units out of action.

NATO would have to enter the country through narrow passes that would concentrate its forces and make them vulnerable to big losses. And once the troops reached the Kosovo capital, Pristina, and other larger cities, they would confront all the problems of urban fighting, in which a maze of buildings makes it difficult to find enemy soldiers.

In their invasion of Germany in World War II, American troops would blow up whole city blocks, building by building, to wipe out enemy soldiers. But here the buildings may protect cowering civilians that the NATO troops have come to protect.

“You get into the old question from Vietnam: Are you going to destroy the village to save it?” said the senior official. Urban warfare “is what soldiers hate the most.”