BELGRADE BURNS; MISSILES RAIN ON GOVERNMENT TARGETS.

Byline: Steven Lee Myers The New York Times

After nine days of hesitation, NATO attacked the center of Yugoslavia's capital, destroying the command centers of the security forces carrying out President Slobodan Milosevic's offensive against the ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

A barrage of seven cruise missiles - fired from American warships and a British submarine in the Adriatic - struck just before 1 a.m. today in Belgrade, the officials said.

In Washington, the Pentagon refused Friday night to disclose the targets hit, but flames raged from two buildings near the Sava River in Belgrade's core, the federal Ministry for Internal Affairs and the Ministry of the Interior. The buildings house the headquarters of the paramilitary police forces that have carried out Milosevic's yearlong crackdown against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

It was the first time in 10 days of attacks that NATO had struck the center of Belgrade, a once-thriving capital that has slowly withered under years of economic sanctions and diplomatic isolation caused by Milosevic's policies.

Although previous attacks battered military targets on Belgrade's edges, the missiles early this morning struck with a thunderous clap that shook the entire capital. Within minutes of the first explosion, an enormous arc of flames soared hundreds of feet into the air.

The extent of casualties from the strikes was not immediately clear, but the attack occurred in the middle of the night, at a time when the buildings presumably would have few people in them.

The two buildings are close to other government buildings, including a hospital. But it appeared that the cruise missiles - each with a 1,000-pound warhead - struck their targets with pinpoint precision, leaving other buildings nearby still standing.

Nevertheless, Yugoslavia's deputy prime minister, Vuk Draskovic, said there were ``many, many victims.''

Militarily and psychologically, the strikes were the first firm evidence that NATO was carrying out the warning by its commander, Gen. Wesley Clark, that there would be ``no sanctuary'' for Yugoslavia's political and military leaders.

Earlier this week NATO gave Clark the authority to expand the raids beyond strictly military targets in or near Kosovo. On Thursday, American F-15s destroyed a bridge over the Danube River in the city of Novi Sad, and Pentagon and NATO officials have vowed that more bridges and other targets in cities would be pounded as long as Milosevic continued his repression in Kosovo.

This morning's strikes came after nine days of bombing had made little progress in slowing Milosevic's onslaught against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. Refugees continued to pour from Kosovo into Albania and Macedonia, telling of killings and forced expulsions from villages, towns and cities throughout the province.

The mushrooming refugee crisis along Kosovo's border - where hundreds of thousands of refugees have gathered, short of food and shelter - has put new pressure on the United States and NATO to intensify its campaign, even if that meant considering the use of ground troops.

Clinton appeal

President Clinton, facing sharp questions at a White House news briefing Friday, appealed for patience and expressed confidence that an air campaign alone would be able to achieve NATO's military and political objectives in Yugoslavia.

``We must be determined,'' Clinton said. ``We must be persistent. We must be patient if we expect to see this mission through. And I am absolutely determined to do that. We have to make sure that Milosevic pays a heavy price for this policy of repression. We have to seriously diminish his capacity to maintain that policy.''

The NATO air campaign has been severely hampered by the Balkan weather, with rain, low clouds and fog forcing many warplanes to abandon their targets. Through the first nine nights, alliance aircraft flew some 2,700 missions over or near Yugoslavia, 405 of them combat strikes. The Pentagon estimated that 20 percent of the missions had been scrubbed because of foul weather, but other officials have said the number was much higher.

Earlier Friday, a number of NATO warplanes - including F-16s and F-15s - took advantage of a brief break in the rainy weather to launch the first daylight air raids against Yugoslav forces. The jets attacked ground forces operating near the center of Kosovo, NATO and Pentagon officials said, declining to identify what was struck.

By nightfall, however, clouds and rain once again blanketed the region, forcing frustrated NATO commanders to limit their attacks to weapons unaffected by weather, including the Tomahawk cruise missiles that struck Belgrade. Forecasts predict that the weather will clear over the weekend, and when it does, officials at NATO and the Pentagon said, the raids will increase in scope and intensity.

At NATO's headquarters in Brussels, officials said the brunt of the raids occurring now are falling on ground forces directly involved in the campaign against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. A military spokesman, Air Commodore David Wilby of Britain, described a series of strikes against military targets Thursday night.

Base hit

One strike hit what he described as a support base for Yugoslavia's 243rd Mechanized Brigade, which is now operating in the Pagarusa Valley, where thousands of Albanians reportedly have been surrounded by Yugoslav forces and repeatedly shelled. The Pentagon's spokesman, Kenneth Bacon, said American B-1 bombers, joining the attacks for the first time, also had bombed a staging area for armored forces in Yugoslavia.

Despite those attacks, the Yugoslav forces have continued to press their offensive in the Pagarusa Valley and near Malisevo, a city west of Kosovo's capital, Pristina, that is the last stronghold of the Kosovo Liberation Army.

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Photo

PHOTO (Color) Flames light the Belgrade skyline early today in Yugoslavia after NATO missiles exploded the Ministry of the Interior in the war-torn capital. The attack was the first on Belgrade.

Dmitri Messinis/Associated Press