Arizona RepublicWednesday, October 27, 1999
U.S. price tag for Kosovo: $5 billion and counting
By John Omicinski
Gannett News Service
WASHINGTON The U.S.dominated 78 day air campaign against Serbia, and the peacemaking effort that followed in Kosovo, has cost US. taxpayers nearly $5 billion, according to Pentagon figures.
Count in the costs of Bosnia and Iraq operations, and the 1999 costs of US. emergency operations abroad total close to $7 billion.
US. peacemaking operations in Bosnia and what has become. a virtual siege of Iraq cost $1 billion each over and above normal payroll, equipment and training in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, Defense Department budget analyst Susan Hansen said Monday..
Replenishing supplies of air-to-ground cruise missiles and "standoff" weapons that can be fired by aircraft from scores of miles away will cost $1.5 billion alone. The weapons, especially the conventional air-launched cruise missile, were exhausted or depleted in the Serbian air campaign.
A detailed breakdown of the cost of the Kosovo campaign:
$1.9 billion for general costs of the operation, including food, fuel and housing on airstrips scattered around Europe.
$1.5 billion for production and replenishment of precision ammunition, as well as reserve supplies.
$1.2 billion to establish the portion of the Kosovo peacekeeping effort.
$175 million to repair airplanes used in the operation.
$134 million for refugee relief efforts in and around Kosovo.
in all, Operation Allied Force may have cost the 19 NATO countries that participated more than $16 billion. The Guardian, a British newspaper, quoted defense experts as estimating those overall costs.
Reconstruction costs may total $30 billion on top of that.
President Clinton has said the United States will not participate until Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic is out of power. The Serbian autocrat has shown no signs of leaving and, for the moment, appears to have survived a wave of anti- Milosevic sentiment.
While $7 billion doesn't appear to be a big piece of a $266 billion
annual U.S. Defense Department budget, service chiefs don't want it biting into their growing need to replace equipment, some of which now is of Vietnam vintage. They
will try to keep the costs of Kosovo, Bosnia and Iraq operations apart in contingency accounts that must be paid with funds outside the regular budget.