BY ROSE POST
SALISBURY POST

A Salisbury man who helped set up NATO’s peacekeeping forces in Yugoslavia says President Clinton is making a mistake by promising to withhold ground troops.

Curry Krider, a lieutenant colonel in the Army Reserve, said NATO and America will ‘‘lose face’’ and embolden dictators around the world if they are not willing to commit troops to stop the genocide in Kosovo.

Krider is trying to reach former Sen. Bob Dole, who is serving as Clinton’s representative in the Kosovo peace negotiations.

He started trying to reach him before Yugoslav forces captured three American soldiers. The capture only strengthens his opinion.

‘‘It’s bad news when you tell someone like Milosevic that you’re not going to use troops,’’ Krider said. ‘‘You don’t tell someone like that what you are or aren’t going to do. All options should be open.

‘‘The problem now is that we’re in the thing. And if we don’t go forward as far as NATO is concerned, NATO and the western powers are going to lose face.

‘‘And this is going to have a large effect worldwide. Every little dictator out there is going to see this failure and have high hopes to come up with their master plan of whatever they want to do.

‘‘In my opinion, unless ground forces are utilized it’s going to be a much worse-case scenario.’’

To Americans, he says, the loss of life there is horrendous.

But Milosevic is just like Saddam Hussein. ‘‘He could care less. The thing’s just got to be stopped.’’

Krider has met Dole several times because he was a close friend of the late John Suther. Suther had a longstanding friendship with the senator’s wife, Salisbury’s Liddy Dole.

Krider, who has served in Europe, has had experience with Milosevic – and supports Dole’s position that the military group representing the Muslims in Kosovo should be armed.

‘‘I want to try to reinforce his belief in that,’’ Krider said. ‘‘NATO must go in with ground forces to get these two sides to a peace agreement.

‘‘Air power alone is not going to do it. Maybe it has a 10 percent chance. I know Dole has a lot of influence, and I think the president has to have a lot of ears open.’’

He thinks military advisers are already saying that ‘‘if you’re going to win this thing, this is the only way you can do it – and there are going to be losses.

‘‘But we’ve got to say we’ll take whatever measures are needed to halt the killing and the aggression.’’

Three years ago, Krider’s phone rang even as he was closing the deal for the Crosland Group to develop the Innes Street Market shopping center on the site of the former Rowan Mall.

He had three days to report to active duty in the Army Reserves.

Within 10 days he was at his desk at the European Headquarters Operation Center in Heidelberg, Germany, orchestrating operations of the U.S. Army in Europe, including sending peacekeepers into Bosnia.

‘‘I was the crisis team operations officer for all Europe,’’ he says.

He mobilized search teams to find U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown’s plane after it plunged into an isolated mountainside in Bosnia.

‘‘And while I was on duty there,’’ he says, ‘‘we had a major confrontation with Milosevic over the right to identify all weapons, basically those larger than your single shot rifles. We were more concerned with artillery pieces, tanks, this sort of thing.

‘‘He refused to allow inspectors to come into his main military compound in Bosnia.’’

And the problem was only solved by a show of force.

‘‘After a three-day back and forth refusal on this thing, we had to show force by taking an attack helicopter unit and a ready reactionary team and place them on a hill right over from the military compound to allow the international forces for the Bosnian operation in.’’

That was August 1996, he says, and that’s what it took to make Milosevic back down from his position – even though he had agreed to the Dayton Accords and signed on the dotted line in late December 1995, agreeing to let international military forces go in and assist as policemen.

Krider believes Milosevic is guilty of genocide.

‘‘He was trying to move all the Muslims out of the areas where he wanted Serb control – and that’s what’s taking place right now. Kosovo was 90 percent Muslim; 10 percent Serb. He’s maneuvering to get the Serb population there to keep it under Yugoslavia.

‘‘Whether he kills or runs them out of the country doesn’t matter to him.’’

Yugoslavia, he says, ‘‘used to run all the way from Austria to Greece and Albania, Romania, Bulgaria and Hungary – prior to the breakup.’’

After the death of Marshall Tito in 1980 and the breakup of the seven Balkan regions, one after the other pushed for independence and made Yugoslavia smalle r and smaller.

And that’s why Milosevic wants Serbs, not ethnic Albanians, in Kosovo.

So far, Krider has been unable to get in touch with Bob Dole, but he has left messages of support for ground forces.

Dole appeared on Wednesday’s ‘‘Nightline’’ with Ted Koppel – and sounded like he and Krider had been talking.

Dole told Koppel that the United States ‘‘should be deeply involved,’’ supporting NATO’s efforts in the Balkans.

‘‘We’re not going to do it in seven days, maybe not in seven weeks,’’ he said. But American interests are involved because genocide is against international law.

He referred to what has been called the ‘‘Christmas warning,’’ when President Bush said the killing in Bosnia would not be allowed in Kosovo.

President Clinton has repeated that warning.

Milosevic is a ‘‘war criminal, a bad man,’’ Dole said. ‘‘If this isn’t genocide, then I don’t know the definition.’’

He said he hopes what’s happening now can be stopped in the air, but there should always be options. And options can be used. Or else, when the next threat comes, ‘‘we won’t have any credibility.’’

‘‘This is war,’’ he said.