By
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON-President Clinton ruled out U.S. military intervention in Yugoslavia's civil uprising and administration officials urged Russia to use its influence to persuade President Slobodan Milosevic to step aside.
Pentagon spokesmen said the approximately 5,200 U.S. troops in Bosnia and 6,700 in Kosovo - part of separate multinational peacekeeping forces - were not on a heightened state of alert, and that U.S. forces had detected no signs of unusual movements by the Serb army in Kosovo or other parts of the country.
Notable among other U.S. military forces in the area was the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, which is making a port call on the Greek island of Corfu, off the Albanian coast.
There also is a three-ship Marine Corps unit known as an amphibious ready group, comprised of about 2,000 Marines, in the Adriatic Sea. And there are about 1,000 U.S. troops at a peacekeeping support base in Macedonia, on Serbia's southern border.
At the White House, Clinton branded Milosevic's government a "hard-core dictatorship," and said, "We support democracy and the will of the Serbia people."
In Belgrade, the capital, mobs seeking to topple Milosevic turned their fury on his centers of political power, leaving parliament and other key sites in shambles and flames.
Hundreds of thousands of people demanded that Milosevic accept his apparent defeat in the Sept. 24 election.
Pentagon spokesman Kenneth Bacon said that as far as the United States was aware, Milosevic remained in Belgrade, apparently under the protection of his internal security forces.
Asked if the United States would intervene should Milosevic order that force be used the Serb people, Clinton said: "I don't believe that it's an appropriate case for military intervention and I don't believe that the United States should say or do anything which would only strengthen Mr. Milosevic's hand."
Clinton said he was confident that democratic forces would succeed.
"The people of Serbia have made their opinion clear," Clinton said. "They did it when they voted peacefully and quietly and now they're doing it in the streets because there's been an attempt to rob them of their vote.
"If the world community will just stand for freedom, stand for democracy, stand for the will of the people, I think that will prevail," the president said. "It did all over Eastern Europe."
Later, in a speech a Princeton University in New Jersey, Clinton said it was his hope for Serbians that "the hour is near when their voices will be heard and we can welcome them to democracy, to Europe, to the world community.
"And when they do," Clinton added, "we will move as quickly as possible to lift the sanctions and build the kind of responsible partnership that the people there deserve."
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, on a refueling stop in Ireland en route home from Middle East peace talks in Egypt, was trying to reach Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov to seek his country's help in getting Milosevic to step aside.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has not recognized opposition presidential candidate Vojislav Kostunica as the winner of the Yugoslav election. He has offered to mediate between Milosevic and Kostunica.
In a weekend telephone call to Putin, Clinton urged Russia, which has been sympathetic to Milosevic, to acknowledge Kostunica. Since that call, "We have reinforced that message in other ways to the Russian government," national security spokesman P.J. Crowley said.
