NATO Spokesman Jamie Shea May 9 -- Armed conflicts always bring their fair share of accidents and mishaps, that has been the same throughout human history and no doubt it will be the same in all future conflicts as well, no matter how much the technology moves on, and that is one reason of course why NATO would have greatly preferred to have not been obliged to have recourse to force. But having started the campaign, despite the obvious problems that one will have from time to time along the way, we recognise that, we are determined to push it through because we believe that to stop now would simply hand Milosevic ethnic cleansing on a plate. In other words, that we are not going to follow a mistake by the even greater mistake of allowing ourselves to be intimidated or to stopping before we have achieved our goals. That would serve no purpose and nobody's interest except those of President Milosevic.

At the same time, I believe that we have been conducting this campaign in a professional as well as a deliberate way. We know that we have dropped around 9,000 pieces of ordnance, missiles and bombs. Only 12 have gone astray as a result of either mechanical error, or some other error, or the mistake that occurred yesterday. If you do a mathematical computation you are talking about a fraction of 1%, and so we continue to be accurate. Obviously I understand that sometimes international attention, or TV pictures, prefer to focus on the 12 that went astray, as opposed to the 8,988 that didn't go astray. But let's remember that if you look at the big picture, the overwhelming majority of these weapons are landing every day and every night accurately against legitimate military targets.

And you have seen after yesterday, with our apologies, with our regrets to the Chinese authorities, that we have continued this operation because we know that at the end of the day it is the only way that we can secure peace with justice for the people in Kosovo. I have mentioned the 5,000 refugees that were thrown out of their homes and forced over the border yesterday, the 4,000 this morning, the death of Mr Ogani, all of the other accounts which are now all over the newspapers of individual suffering, of mass executions and so on. I am afraid the tally of destruction is still overwhelmingly on the side of Milosevic, so let's not lose the wood for the trees, that would be my main message today. NATO Press Conference Transcript