President Clinton has stopped short of calling President Milosevic a war criminal, but he said that the possibility of his indictment for war crimes should be examined.
Replying to a question at his press conference with the Chinese Prime Minister, Mr Zhu Rongji, Mr Clinton said that Mr Milosevic's policy of getting and maintaining power had led to "breathtaking" human losses. His policies had caused thousands of people to become refugees and thousands of completely defenceless people to be killed.
The US had asked the war crimes international tribunal to examine the possible determination of charges against Mr Milosevic. The facts were clear but it was not his job to make such a determination, Mr Clinton said.
"That is strictly speaking a legal decision that has to be made but I certainly think it should be looked into," he said.
Mr Clinton also said he hoped a mission to Belgrade by the acting president of Cyprus to secure the release of three US servicemen would succeed. The three were captured by Serb forces a week ago while near the border between Macedonia and Yugoslavia.
"I hope so. We would like to see the servicemen released because they never should have been detained in the first place. They were in Macedonia. They had nothing to do the operation against Serbia. And I would be for anything honourable that would secure their release, obviously."
The important thing now was to stop the killing and the exodus of refugees from Kosovo. They must be allowed to return and have the political autonomy which had been promised . An international peacekeeping force should be in place to stop this ever happening again.
The president said he believed NATO's campaign against Yugoslavia would succeed without the use of ground troops. "I believe our present strategy will work if we can keep the allies with it," he told the news conference.