By Butler T. Gray, USIA Staff Writer

Washington -- Pentagon spokesman Ken Bacon announced April 3 that Defense Secretary William Cohen has ordered the USS Theodore Roosevelt aircraft carrier to the Adriatic Sea to take part in "Operation Allied Force against Serbian forces."

The USS Theodore Roosevelt, which is part of the U.S. fleet patrolling the Mediterranean, is scheduled to arrive in the Adriatic off the coast of the former Yugoslavia on April 5, Bacon said. It was originally scheduled to go to the Persian Gulf to relieve the USS Enterprise by the end of the month. "Instead the Kitty Hawk, based in Japan will go to the Gulf to replace the Enterprise and support our operations in the Southern Watch" Bacon said in a briefing at the Defense Department.

Bacon also announced that the number of F-117s in "Operation Allied Force" will be doubled from 12 to 24. The 12 new Stealth fighters are scheduled to arrive at an Air Force Base in Germany on April 4 for use in NATO operations in Yugoslavia.

In London, Britain's Minister of State for the Armed Forces, Doug Henderson, described NATO's cruise missile attack the evening of April 2 on "the headquarters of the infamous Serbian police, the MUP," in Belgrade.

"The buildings struck last night," the British Minister said, "were the nerve centre of the operations planned to drive out the Kosovar Albanians through a campaign of violence, intimidation and thuggery. NATO's attacks were carefully planned and implemented in order to avoid civilian casualties."

"This so-called police force," Henderson said the morning of April 3, "is in reality a ruthless paramilitary organisation, equipped with a full range of military hardware, including heavy machine guns and armoured personnel carriers.

"Its weapon of choice for attacking villages is an anti-aircraft cannon. It has been the main organisation responsible for the brutal killings and mass depopulation going on in Kosovo," said Henderson.

Henderson told reporters in London that "the sort of military action which we saw last night will be the pattern for the future. We shall attack his (Slobadan Milosevic's) murderous forces in Kosovo, as and when we are able to do so, in order to stop him as soon as we can. Our planes will be involved again today doing that work and we shall strike at the nerve centres of his decision-making machine. As we said before, he will pay a high price for what he is doing to the Albanian population in Kosovo."