|
Farce
At The Hague |
NATO Fraud - There Was No Genocide In Kosovo
Press Reports On False Claims
Of Genocide By Serbs In Kosovo
www.nlpwessex.org/docs/kosovofalsehoods.htm
|
Farce
At The Hague |
"A United Nations court has ruled
that Serbian troops did not carry out genocide against ethnic Albanians during Slobodan
Milosevic's campaign of aggression in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999... The court, which is
comprised of two international judges and one Albanian, was ruling on the case of a Serb,
Miroslav Vuckovic, convicted of genocide by a district court in Mitrovica".
Kosovo assault 'was not genocide'
BBC Online, 7
September 2001
".... everyone knows that those
claims of genocide bore as much relation to reality as did the claim made in 2002-2003
that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Indeed, the charge of genocide turned
out to be so unsustainable that it was never even included in the indictment against
Miloševic."
Kosovo’s Independence Will Stir Up Trouble. Who Will Benefit?
The Brussels Journal, 12 December 2007
"Castigating the press for
'journalistic crimes' committed during its reporting on the Balkans wars of the 1990s,
retired New York Times reporter David Binder claims the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for
International Reporting awarded to both the Times and New York's Newsday 'should, in all
fairness and honesty, be revoked.' Binder was speaking at a press conference for the
release of a new book criticizing the war reporting. Binder wrote the foreword to the book
by Peter Brock, titled 'Media
Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia.' 'What we're looking
at here is a series catalogued by Peter Brock of journalistic crimes,' said Binder.....
During his recent appearance at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., Binder said
it would take 'at least a decade' before historians 'clear out that wretched underbrush of
lies and concoctions' from 'despicable' politicians 'like Richard Holbrooke,' an
international negotiator during the administration of former President Bill Clinton and
'certainly the journalists' criticized in Brock's book. The rise of blogs and media
watchdog groups offers a 'corrective' for the public now, Binder contended."
Former NY Times Reporter: '93 Pulitzer Should Be Revoked
CNSNews,
22 March 2006
“Some media reports have quoted a senior Belgrade official as stating that there are 198 mass graves in Kosovo. The Office on Missing Persons and Forensics (OMPF) would like to categorically state that no evidence has been provided to OMPF regarding existence of any mass graves in Kosovo. Such unfounded statements reflect a lack of sensitivity to an issue that is extremely emotive and causes considerable anguish for all affected families.”
No Mass Graves Were Discovered In
Kosovo Until 2005
The Graves Discovered Were Of Serbian Dead
Whilst Albanian Bodies Had Been Disposed Of In Serbia
Why Did NATO Take Sides In This European Civil War
When There Were Atrocities On Both Sides And No Evidence Of Genocide?
Oil and US
Geopolitical Objectives in the Balkans - Click
Here
"...About 3,000 people are still
missing from the 1998-99 conflict. Most are ethnic Albanians but some 500 Serbs are also
missing, believed to have been killed by the rebels. Two mass graves with the bodies of
Serb civilians were unearthed in Kosovo earlier this month."
Serbia to return Kosovo corpses found in
mass grave
Reuters,
26 May 2005
"The recent discovery [in 2005] of a second mass grave containing
bodies of Serb civilians in Kosovo has stoked tensions in the run-up to expected final
status talks this autumn. UNMIK investigators discovered the bodies of 13 Serbs in a mass
grave in Malisheva/Malisevo, in central Kosovo in mid-May. Forensic experts said all were
dressed in civilian clothes and had their hands tied behind their backs. The year of their
execution is believed to have been 1998, during the height of the armed conflict between
the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, and Serb government forces. The finding in
Malisheva follows the discovery of the first mass grave containing Serb bodies in Kosovo
at Volljaka, some 60 kilometres west of Pristina, in April 2005. Nine of the 24 bodies in Volljaka have been identified as missing Serbs,
but UNMIK forensic experts said they suspected all were local Serbs who went missing in
1998. The discovery has boosted fears this highly emotional issue may add to the tension
between Pristina and Belgrade during the run-up to final status talks. Outside observers
point out that the issue of missing persons has been manipulated, or used as a bargaining
point, before. At the core of the dispute is the unresolved fate of thousands of
Albanians, Serbs and others who disappeared at the height of the Kosovo conflict in the
late Nineties. Nothing is known of around 2,900. According to the Red Cross, ICRC, some
2,400 of these are Albanians and 700 non-Albanians, including 500 Serbs... More recently,
the Serbian media revealed that large numbers of Albanian bodies were also incinerated at
the Mackatica aluminium factory, in southern Serbia. Without faster progress on the return
all of these bodies, Albanian missing persons groups say the Kosovo government should slow
down the return of Serb bodies.... Kosovo Serb leaders, on the other hand, say the
discovery of Serb mass graves in Volljaka and Malisheva alters the whole dynamic of the
discussion about atrocities. Serb representative Rada Trajkovic told IWPR the discoveries
showed the West had been wrong to intervene in Kosovo in the first place. 'The
international community made a mistake with its intervention in Kosovo in 1999, bringing
us to where we are now,' she said. 'The KLA killed Serb civilians in the territory it
controlled.'"
Kosovo: Tussle Over Mass Graves
Balkans
Crisis Report, 2 June 2005
"If Senator
Kennedy wants to talk about fraud [in relation to the Bush administration's invasion of
Iraq], he ought to talk..... about what he and President Clinton told us in 1999 when they
told us to bomb innocent Serbs, we'd find 100 thousand mass graves. Those mass graves were
never found. They lied to the America people to justify the aerial bombardment
campaign."
Congressman Curt Weldon (R) Pennsylvania on 'Hardball with Chris
Matthews'
NBC News, 19 September 2003
"Former Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic says he will call ex-US leader Bill Clinton and other Western
politicians to testify at his trial for war crimes at The Hague.... Mr Milosevic, who is
conducting his own defence, said he also wanted to question UK Prime Minister Tony Blair,
Germany's former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and former US
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright among others."
Milosevic wants Clinton to testify
BBC Online, 15 February 2003
"The
War on Terror suffered a major blow three years before it was ever announced. It happened
when the people of this democracy [in America] were misled into attacking the sovereign,
emerging post-Communist democracy of Yugoslavia - over rumors of genocide and ethnic
cleansing that proved false. In so doing, we put the final touch on delivering the
Balkans to al Qaeda. Today we are being asked to seal that historical blunder, whose
repercussions seven years later are only escalating as those we 'rescued' turn their
weapons against UN and NATO forces.
While NATO spends most of its time rooting
out terror cells in Kosovo and Bosnia—which served as the logistics bases for
the London and Madrid
bombings--the 2006 deadline to complete our eagerly forgotten debacle and determine
the province’s final status is fast approaching.... [Deputy commander of the
Kosovo Liberation Army Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji],
according to the December issue of the Defense & Foreign
Affairs Strategic Policy journal, is the man who supplied the Semtex-like
explosives used in the London and Madrid attacks. But to perpetuate the version of events we were sold from the
beginning, all these connections have gone purposefully unmade by our nation’s
'journalists,' who were gung-ho supporters of our 1999 offensive against a historical ally and
the culmination of our pro-terror policies in 1990s Yugoslavia.... Only
Britain's Sky News has caught on, in December airing a segment
entitled 'The Hidden Army of Radical Islam,' about Bosnia, where there
is 'growing radicalization' and a base for Al Qaeda: 'In the
heart of Europe, thousands of Arab fighters. Zenica [Bosnia], 1995. They come to wage holy
war in support of the Bosnian Army. [Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic shown
welcoming the mujahadeen.] ...They committed many atrocities; the tapes Sky News has
obtained include beheadings and signs of torture. …This isn’t just about
history; it's about now. Western intelligence agencies are now pressing the Bosnians
to look into exactly where these people are and what they are doing, and
asking have any of these men been in contact with the three young Bosnian
Muslims arrested last month on terrorism charges. ...In Sarajevo now
the influence of Saudi ideas can be found all over the city. ...Radical
Islam is attempting to plant deep roots in the community. …The seeds for change
were planted back in 1995.'... The narration continues: 'There
were some serious players sent to Bosnia, among them the man who planned 9/11, Khalid
Sheikh Mohamed...' A similar picture began to
emerge in Kosovo, where the late Wall St. Journal reporter Daniel
Pearl was uncovering that
'Ethnic-Albanian militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off
each other to give genocide rumors credibility.' The anti-Serb propaganda which misled
Americans throughout the 90s and which Daniel Pearl was debunking continues to guide
our perceptions and foreign policy in the Balkans today. But
despite the media’s blackout on the subject of Balkans terror--including by Pearl's
own Wall St. Journal--more and more Americans have been scratching their heads, wondering
why we forcibly precluded the Serbs from doing in their own backyard what we’ve gone
halfway around the globe to do.... For the
past four years, the Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia has been finding what multiple international forensic teams have
found--that claims of Serb 'atrocities' were exaggerated and
often invented. It turns out we confused an attempt to create an Islamic 'Greater Albania' with one to create a 'Greater
Serbia.' Surely if the latter were Slobodan Milosevic’s goal,
he would have started by ethnically cleansing the nearly 300,000 Muslims of
Serbia. Though he built his career in whatever dirty ways Tito's Yugoslavia allowed,
he was the least of the Balkans' villains. For most Serbs, he was not a
hero until he was called upon to defend an entire nation at the Hague. Now that Milosevic is dead, we are spared the worldwide
riots that would have ensued had the tribunal mustered the courage to issue a verdict
based on the evidence. And we can all sleep comfortably as the disproved charges
are accepted as history.... In early 2001, German TV broadcast a report titled 'It Began
with a Lie,' which publicized the findings of the observer force Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that no genocide had taken place in Kosovo. The revelations set off a huge public debate in Germany, a
member of the NATO coalition, after the
public realized their country had been party to a hoax, and they held the responsible politicians’ feet to the
fire. It’s long past time that we also set the record straight on what
we 'achieved' in the Balkans -- and change course. As the world closes in on
the Serbs again this year, we must stop bin Laden from establishing a terror
state in Europe. We know from Madrid and London that we’ll pay for it with our
own blood. In fact, we already have."
A Balkan Base For Al Qaeda?
FrontPageMagazine,
20 March 2006
| US Backed
Islamic Terrorism in the Balkans Press Reports Click here for access to sections below |
| 1. Oil and US Geopolitical Objectives in the Balkans |
| 2. US backed terrorism in Croatia |
| 3. US backed terrorism in Bosnia |
| 4. US backed terrorism in Kosovo |
| 5. US backed terrorism in Macedonia |
| 6. The human cost of US backed terrorism in the Balkans |
July 2004
US And UK Face Embarrassment At The Hague
Why The West
Doesn't Want Milosevic
To Speak For Himself
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATMilosevictrial.htm
Western Powers
Covertly Used
Islamic Terrorists To Break Up Yugoslavia
Click Here
"It is no exaggeration
to say what is happening in Kosovo is racial genocide... Thousands murdered. One hundred
thousand men missing... These atrocities cannot be seen, of course, because the Serbs will
not allow journalists or TV crews to report what is happening behind Kosovo's closed
borders for themselves....".
British Prime Minister Tony Blair
BBC Online, 14 May 1999
"Where are the bodies?
Was the other big war of the last decade, Kosovo in 1999, triggered by bogus allegations
as well? Another case of mass deception? In Iraq, it's the missing mass weapons of
destruction. In Kosovo, it's the missing mass graves. In alleged ethnic cleansing
exercises by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, as many as 100,000 to 200,000 civilians
were said to have gone missing or been killed in Kosovo, many of them buried in mass
graves. Members of a Canadian forensic team to the Serbian province have come forward to
label the numbers nonsense. No mass graves, they say, and, on both the Albanian and Serb
sides, only a few thousand dead. A mockery of the numbers used to justify the war..... The
Kosovo story has etchings of Iraq all over it. The United States (the Democrats this time)
and Britain (Tony Blair again) demonize an enemy with fraudulent accusations. They play
the gullible media, Canada's included, like a violin. The latest person to debunk
the genocide numbers is retired Vancouver homicide detective Brian Honeybourn, a member of
the forensic team. He told The Ottawa Citizen this week that his nine-member group found
mainly single graves, with a couple of exceptions being one of 20 bodies and another 11.
He wonders how genocide charges against Mr. Milosevic can stand up. 'It seems as though
The Hague is beginning to panic.' But having everybody in the wagon doesn't excuse what
happened. If the forensic teams' stories are correct, the missing dead in Kosovo is indeed
a scandal comparable to the absence of WMD in Iraq. In a five-year period, political
leaders twice duped their populations into going to war."
Another Case of Mass Deception?
Globe and Mail (Canada), 2
September 2004
"Like the war in Iraq, the neocon-inspired war against
Yugoslavia in 1999 - which Hari still defends - had nothing to do with 'humanitarian
concerns' or 'spreading democracy' (Yugoslavia under Milosevic was a multi-party
democracy, with a well-financed opposition media) but was purely and simply about
extending Pax Americana and, to use Hari's own words the imposition of
mass privatisations. In order to achieve their goal, the empire builders in Washington
had to resort to deceit: in 2003, the Big Lie was that Iraq
possessed WMDs, four years earlier, it was that Yugoslav forces were
committing genocide in Kosovo. Sadly, large sections of the liberal left believed
the official version, and in 1999 backed the illegal war. Messrs Perle, Wolfitowitz and
Rumsfeld - all members of the executive of the the Balkan Action
Committee (which lobbied for US involvement on the side of the separatist leader
Izetbegovic in Bosnia, and then for full scale war against Milosevic's rump Yugoslavia in
1999) would never have got the level of public support they did for their wars without the
propagandising done for their cause by liberal-left writers like Nick Cohen, David
Aaronovitch and Johann Hari - and of course, Christopher Hitchens. Once the liberal-left
wakes up to the fact that in Yugoslavia, as in Iraq, they were sold a pack of lies, it
really is game over for the serial warmongers."
Seeing the light?
Guardian,
Comment Is Free, 25 July 2007
"While the U.S. fights Muslim
terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. and the United Nations are helping allies of
Muslim terrorists come to power in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. This is a foreign policy
disaster in the making that you should hope and pray gets some immediate attention from
the media. To illustrate the dimensions of the problem, Father Keith Roderick of Christian Solidarity International has testified that
Albanian Muslims in Kosovo have been systematically destroying Christian churches and
other sites in Kosovo and the Serbian Christian population in the province is being
'squeezed down to oblivion.' The evidence is on display in a new DVD, 'Days Made Of Fear,'
directed, produced and distributed by Ninoslav Randjelovic. At the same time, Father
Roderick also says that hundreds of new Mosques have been built in Kosovo over the last
several years, financed mostly by Gulf Arab money. The excellent DVD consists of 8
different films, but the most explosive is 'Notes About the Rock,' on the destroyed and
vandalized churches and monasteries in Kosovo. Many of the scenes captured on film are
considered the only video documentation on this subject available. There is no question
about the reason for the destruction. The churches were targeted by the Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA), also known by the acronym UCK. These initials are visible on the ruins, like a
calling card. They openly advertise their
anti-Christian Jihad, but our media pay no
attention. Writing for the Byzantine Cultural Project and reviewing the DVD, Theodoros
Georgiou Karakostas comments, 'The footage of ravaged and destroyed Serbian Churches and
Monasteries is appalling. The DVD is a shocking affirmation that the American television
Networks such as CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the others are all lined up with the foreign
policy establishment and are active practitioners of official censorship. I cannot recall
seeing any of the horrifying footage on this DVD on American television.' He adds, 'The
same U.S. media which continues to attack the Bush administration for lying about the Iraq
war, continues to give Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Wesley Clark,
and Samuel Berger a pass for their destructive war on Yugoslavia. We should remember also
that at the last Democratic National Convention in Boston two years ago, one of the top
KLA men was an honored guest of John Kerry. 'The same U.S. media which was appalled by the
Taliban's destruction of the 2,000-year-old Buddhist statues has nothing to say about the
remarkable Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries which have stood since the period
preceding the Ottoman conquests, and which are being systematically destroyed.' Why are
the media ignoring what is happening in Kosovo? One reason, as explained in the book, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting,
is that the media reported the war wrong and now
refuse to report who has really been victimized by it.
Another factor is that the much-vilified neoconservatives got Kosovo wrong, too. As I
noted in a Media
Monitor, 'In 1999 the neocons supported the NATO war on Yugoslavia launched by
President Clinton. That benefited a Muslim terrorist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army
(KLA), with links to Osama bin Laden.' The neocons thought they were supporting a tougher
and a new NATO. To compound this tragedy, the Bush Administration has continued the
misguided Clinton policy on Kosovo. Let's remember that Clinton ordered U.S. military
intervention in the Balkans against the Christian Serbs on the grounds that 'ethnic
cleansing' and even 'genocide' were being waged against Serbia's neighbors. Most of that was hokum.
Serbia, a U.S. ally in World War II, was being ruled by the communist Slobodan Milosevic,
who was desperate to hold on to power in the former Yugoslavia, which included Serbia.
While Milosevic was a problem, the Clinton 'solution' made the problem worse. Clinton gave the green light to military aggression against the
Serbs and even ordered the CIA to provide support to the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was
allied with Osama bin Laden and radical Islamists.
The U.S. bombed Serbia and forced Milosevic, who was later turned over to a U.N. court, to
capitulate. Milosevic recently died in a U.N. prison."
Christians Under Siege in Kosovo
Media Monitor, 1 June 2006
"Something strange is going on in
this Kosovo Albanian village in what was once a hard-line guerrilla stronghold, where NATO
accuses Serbs of committing genocide. An estimated 15,000 displaced ethnic Albanians live
in and around Svetlje, in northern Kosovo, and hundreds of young men are everywhere,
strolling along the dirt roads or lying on the grass on a spring day. So many fighting-age
men in a region where the Kosovo Liberation Army fought some of its fiercest battles
against Serbian forces are a challenge to the black-and-white versions of what is
happening here. By their own accounts, the men are not living in a concentration camp, nor
being forced to labor for the police or army, nor serving as human shields for Serbs.
Instead, they are waiting with their families for permission to follow thousands who have
risked going back home to nearby villages because they do not want to give up and leave
Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.... A foreign journalist spent
two hours in Svetlje over the weekend, his second visit in less than a week, without a
police or military escort or a Serbian official to monitor what was seen or said. The
closest Serbian security forces were two policemen sitting at a checkpoint half a mile up
the dirt road, who weren't pleased to see so many refugees moving back into the Podujevo
area. Just as NATO accuses Yugoslav forces of using ethnic Albanian refugees as 'human
shields,' the Serbs say KLA fighters hide among ethnic Albanian civilians to carry out
'terrorist attacks.' But Velia and other ethnic Albanians interviewed in Svetlje said they
haven't had any problems with Serbian police since the police allowed them to come back.
'For the month that we've been here, the police have come only to sell cigarettes, but
there hasn't been any harassment,' Velia said. That isn't what North Atlantic Treaty
Organization Secretary-General Javier Solana believes is happening in Kosovo. Solana told
BBC television Sunday that he expected much more evidence of 'ethnic cleansing' in the
province to emerge once the war is over. 'You don't see males in their 30s to 60s,' he
said. And on CBS-TV's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said
that as many as 100,000 ethnic Albanian men of fighting age have vanished in Kosovo and
may have been killed by Serbian forces.....The Kosovo Democratic Initiative, an ethnic
Albanian political party opposed to the KLA's fight for independence, is distributing
relief aid, offering membership cards and gathering the names of Serbs accused of
committing atrocities. ' As an Albanian, I am convinced that the Serbian government and
security forces are not committing any kind of genocide,' Fatmir Seholi, the party's
spokesman, said in an interview Sunday. 'But in a war, even innocent people die,' Seholi
said. 'In every war, there are those who want to profit. Here there is a minority of
people who wanted to steal, but that's not genocide. These are only crimes.' As an
Albanian, Seholi also knows the risks of questioning claims that Yugoslavia's leaders,
police and military are committing crimes against humanity in Kosovo. His father, Malic
Seholi, was killed Jan. 9, 1997, apparently for being too cooperative with Serbian
authorities. The KLA later claimed responsibility for the slaying in a statement published
in Bujku, a local Albanian-language newspaper, his son said."
In One Village, Albanian Men Are Everywhere
Los Angeles
Times, 17 May 1999
"The Kosovo Liberation Army killed two
Serb hostages yesterday morning after an American initiative to forge a cease-fire around
the guerrillas' former headquarters of Malisevo had been blown apart in a KLA rocket and
grenade assault on the town's police station. The hostages, both police reservists, were
apparently forced to kneel at the side of the road 200 yards from their besieged
colleagues in the station, before being raked with at least 24 bullets fired from a
machine pistol. Their bodies showed signs of torture as well as gunshot wounds. Yesterday
Serbian police said that they would step up patrols in the restive province within 48
hours unless international observers guaranteed safety on its roads. The hostages's deaths
represented a crushing reversal for the American's go-it-alone policy in Kosovo; only last
Friday, Christopher Hill, Washington's negotiator in the peace process, had visited
villages around Malisevo and pleaded with guerrillas to stop their often unprovoked
attacks on Serb security units. The hostages, who were attempting to deliver food to the
police station, were captured hours after he left, and the KLA has subsequently shown its
determination to push the Serbs out of Malisevo.... The incident provided the Serbs with a
graphic opportunity to reveal KLA brutality, and the media centre in Pristina took a
convoy of journalists to Malisevo to survey the scene..... A bizarre sideshow then
developed in which a Day-Glo orange American Humvee pulled up from the opposite direction,
only for its driver, a Contact Group observer, to be harangued by police officials who
accused him of removing a key witness from the scene. 'He won't come back now, whatever I
tell him to do,' protested the American. 'We were doing all we could.' Realising he was
within earshot of journalists, he changed tack and insisted he was in Malisevo because of
engine problems with his vehicle, and then beat a hasty retreat.... Another American
vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban in a similar shade of orange and containing David Scheffer,
the State Department war crimes envoy, then passed on the other side of the crossroads
without stopping....."
Kosovo rebels deal blow to peace hopes
London Times, 10 November 1998
"What, however,
was the situation within Kosovo before March 20, and are we now being misled with biased
media information? Is this aggressive war really justified to counter alleged humanitarian
violations, or are there problematical premises being applied to justify the hostilities?...
As an OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) monitor during February and
March of this year, I was assigned as the Director of the Kosovo Polje Field Office, just
west of the provincial capital of Pristina.... By the time I arrived, vehicles and other
resources along with the majority of international monitors were arriving, but the
cease-fire situation was deteriorating with an increasing incidence of Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) provocative attacks on the Yugoslavian security forces. In response the
security forces of the Ministry of Internal Security police supported by the army were
establishing random roadblocks that resulted in some harassment of movement of the
majority Albanian Kosovars. The general situation was, though, that the bulk of the
population had settled down after the previous year's hostilities, but the KLA was
building its strength and was attempting to reorganize in preparation for a military
solution, hopeful of NATO or western military support.....Consequently the October
Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement restraining the Internal Security police and army was not
strictly adhered to, as unauthorized forces were deployed to maintain security within the
major communities and internal lines of communication. In my estimation, however, the KLA
was left in control of much of the hinterland unchallenged, comprising at least some fifty
per cent of the province. In addition the parallel Albanian government of the Kosovo
Democratic League (KDL) continued to provide some leadership to the majority of the
Albanian Kosovars. This low intensity war since the end of 1998 had resulted
in a series of incidents against the security forces, which in turn led to some
heavy-handed security operations, one being the alleged 'massacre' at Racak of some 45
Albanian Kosovars in mid-January...Upon my arrival the war increasingly evolved into a mid
intensity conflict as ambushes, the encroachment of critical lines of communication and
the kidnapping of security forces resulted in a significant increase in government
casualties which in turn led to major Yugoslavian reprisal security operations that
included armour, mechanized forces and artillery to secure there same lines of
communication. By the beginning of March these terror and counter-terror operations led to
the inhabitants of numerous villages fleeing, or being dispersed to either other villages,
cities or the hills to seek refuge.... The situation was clearly that KLA provocations, as
personally witnessed in ambushes of security patrols which inflicted fatal and other
casualties, were clear violations of the previous October's agreement. The security forces
responded and the consequent security harassment and counter-operations led to an
intensified insurrectionary war, but as I have stated elsewhere, I did not witness, nor
did I have knowledge of any incidents of so-called 'ethnic cleansing' and there certainly
were no occurrences of 'genocidal policies' while I was with the KVM in Kosovo. What has
transpired since the OSCE monitors were evacuated on March 20, in order to deliver the
penultimate warning to force Yugoslavian compliance with the Rambouillet and subsequent
Paris documents and the commencement of the NATO air bombardment of March 24, obviously
has resulted in human rights abuses and a very significant humanitarian disaster as some
600,000 Albanian Kosovars have fled or been expelled from the province. This did not
occur, though, before March 20, so I would attribute the humanitarian disaster directly or
indirectly to the NATO air bombardment and resulting anti-terrorist campaign. "
Returning OSCE human rights monitor offers a view from the
ground in Kosovo
The Democrat, May 1999
"Nato strikes
on Serbia caused, rather than prevented, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, says Nato's
former Secretary-General and former UK Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington.... in the Saga interview,
published on Friday, Lord Carrington openly accuses Nato governments of creating the mass
exodus of Kosovo Albanians.... Lord Carrington also criticised Britain for being 'a little
bit selective' about its condemnation of ethnic cleansing ... "
Ex-Nato chief criticises Kosovo Campaign
BBC Online, 26 August 1999
"....it
was impossible for Milosevic to accept the Rambouillet
agreement because what it asked him to do was allow Nato to use
Serbia as a part of the Nato organisation. Sovereignty would have been lost over it. He
couldn’t accept that. I think what Nato did by bombing Serbia actually
precipitated the exodus of the Kosovo Albanians into Macedonia and Montenegro. I think the
bombing did cause the ethnic cleansing. I’m not sticking up for the Serbs
because I think they behaved badly and extremely stupidly by removing the autonomy of
Kosovo, given them by Tito, in the first place. But I think what we did made things very
much worse and what we are now faced with is a sort of ethnic cleansing in reverse. The
Serbs are now being cleared out. I think it’s a great mistake to intervene in a civil
war. I don’t think [Milosevic] is any more a war criminal than President Tudjman of
Croatia who ethnically cleansed 200,000 Serbs out of Kyrenia [Krajina]. Nobody kicked up a
fuss about that. I think we are a little bit selective about our condemnation of ethnic
cleansing, in Africa as well as in Europe"
Interview with Lord Carrington, Former British Foreign Secretary
Saga
Magazine, September 1999
"...the estimate of a
Spanish forensic surgeon, Emilio Perez Pujol, who has just returned home, disillusioned
after investigating war crimes in Kosovo, is that as few as 2,500 civilians were killed.
In an outspoken interview, Pujol complained he had been sent to head a large investigation
team attached to the ICTY, consisting of pathologists and police specialists, to work in
the north of the country. But he found that what was publicised as a search for mass
graves was 'a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines, because we did not find
one -- not one -- mass grave'.... The gap between the hyperbole of the western
propaganda machine and the realities of Kosovo were wide throughout the air campaign and
led to the publication of wild, misleading and just plain untrue stories. Above all, there
was a tendency to claim there was a systematic campaign of genocide in Kosovo... The war
in Kosovo was Nato's first intervention in a sovereign country, so building a case to sway
public opinion was crucial for it and member governments.... War reporting is now
experiencing extraordinary changes. In the case of Kosovo, western military officers,
officials and ministers all conspired to push out the party line. There was spin-doctoring
on an unprecedented scale, which has damaged Nato's reputation for fairness and truth....
All this has left a dedicated forensic scientist such as Pujol, who had come to Kosovo to
help establish the truth, deeply irritated. In an interview with El Pais, he says: 'We had
been working with two parallel problems. One was the propaganda war. This allowed them to
lie, to fake photographs for the press, to publish pictures of mass graves, or whatever
they had to influence world opinion in favour or against Milosevic or in favour of the
Nato bombings....There never was a genocide in Kosovo. It was dishonest and wrong for
western leaders to adopt the term in the beginning to give moral authority to the
operation.'"
Lost in the Kosovo numbers game
Sunday Times, 31
October 1999
"In Milosevic's trial, German reporter
Franz Josef Hutsch testified that ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo had been harassing Serb
troops to provoke an 'excessive reaction' against Kosovo civilians and hasten
international intervention. Milosevic is accused of unleashing Serb troops who committed
atrocities while quashing a rebellion in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia dominated
by ethnic Albanians. Eventually NATO launched a 78-day bombing campaign to force the Serbs
to end the crackdown. Milosevic has described the Kosovo war as a defensive action against
terrorists. Hutsch said he spent months with the Kosovo Liberation Army, the KLA,
beginning in September 1998. He described it as a well-organized force, assisted by
officers from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco who had trained somewhere in
Turkey. To finance the purchase of increasingly sophisticated weapons, he said, the KLA
ran smuggling operations of drugs and women who were being forced into prostitution in
Europe. Hutsch testified that the KLA's tactics during the cease-fire in late 1998
included staging hit-and-run attacks on Serb patrols designed to ''force them into a trap
and try to provoke an excessive reaction.' He said they also tried to lure the Serbs into
attacking civilians in early 1999 so the images would be shown during peace negotiations
taking place in Rambouillet, France."
Milosevic returns to court, again seeking right to represent himself
Associated
Press, 12 October 2004
"... indiscriminate
mass murder, rape camps, crematoriums, mutilation of the dead -- haven't been borne out in
the six months since NATO troops entered Kosovo. Ethnic-Albanian militants,
humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each other to give genocide
rumors credibility. Now, a different picture is emerging.... British and American
officials still maintain that 10,000 or more ethnic-Albanian civilians died at Serb hands
during the fighting in Kosovo. The U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia has accused Serbs of covering up war crimes by moving bodies. It has begun its
own military analysis of the Serb offensive. But the number of bodies discovered so far is
much lower -- 2,108 as of November, and not all of them necessarily war-crimes victims.
While more than 300 reported grave sites remain to be investigated, the tribunal has
checked the largest reported sites first, and found most to contain no more than five
bodies, suggesting intimate acts of barbarity rather than mass murder. The KLA helped form
the West's wartime image of Kosovo.... Even more closely connected to the KLA was Radio
Free Kosova, set up in January as outsiders were cut off from Kosovo hot spots. A former
correspondent for the radio, Qemail Aliu, says he and five other journalists holed up with
the KLA in the central Kosovo mountains, using satellite phones to take reports from KLA
regional commanders. The radio broadcasts were just strong enough to reach the provincial
capital, Pristina, where a correspondent translated the reports into English for the KLA's
Kosova Press Internet site.... Kosovo would be easier to investigate if it had the huge
killing fields some investigators were led to expect. Instead, the pattern is of scattered
killings."
Daniel Pearl - Despite Tales, the War in Kosovo Was Savage, but Wasn't
Genocide
Wall St Journal, 31
December 1999
"As the war dragged on... NATO saw a
fatigued press corps drifting toward the contrarian story: civilians killed by NATO's
bombs. NATO stepped up its claims about Serb 'killing fields.'"
Despite Tales, the War in Kosovo Was Savage, but Wasn't Genocide
Wall St Journal, 31
December 1999
"The head of Belgrade’s Kosovo
Coordination Centre, Nebojsa Covic, said today that the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
was prompted by the 'deception' of US diplomat William Walker. The state and its citizens
were bombed because of Walker and his trickery,' said Covic, in a reference to the
killings in the village of Racak, which Walker described as a massacre by Serb security
forces, a description which international investigators have since described as rash.
'If Milosevic must answer for all the things he did, then so should Walker answer
for his deception, instead of showing off in Kosovo,' he said."
Kosovo bombing prompted by US diplomat’s 'deception'
B92,
(Serbia) 25 January 2004
"Walker, in
collaboration with the KLA, may have had a part to play in staging this incident [at
Racak]."
James Bisset, former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia
Speech to the Canadian
Hellenic Federation of Ontario, May 2000
"Even if they don't remember the village's
name, most Canadians will remember the pictures. The images of bodies piled
in a ravine in the
tiny Kosovo village of Racak in January 1999. That massacre of Albanian civilians by
Serbian forces provoked immediate anger and international condemnation against Yugoslav
leader Slobodan Milosevic. It became the galvanizing event that led to NATO's armed
intervention against Yugoslavia. In the year that has passed since NATO's bombing
campaign, there is mounting evidence the Racak massacre was not as gruesomely simple as it
first appeared. There are suggestions the massacre was allowed to happen to fuel sympathy
for Kosovo's Albanians, while strengthening demands for NATO's bombs. Over the past three
months, CBC Radio has sought to unravel the mystery of the Racak massacre: was it a
massacre or an act of manipulation by those interested in bringing NATO to war?... If the Serbs had been planning a bloody massacre that
day, why had they issued a press release in Pristina that morning, inviting journalists to
come to Racak to cover the police operation? They said they would be carrying out an
operation aimed at capturing Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers in the area responsible for
killing three Serb policemen in ambushes the week before... Had the KLA manipulated the
massacre scene to provoke condemnation against the Serbs? Were the dead men in the ditch
really innocent civilians, or possibly dead KLA soldiers who'd been taken out of
uniform?...The quest to determine what was going on in the days before the massacre has
unearthed disturbing new information about the conduct of both the Kosovo Liberation Army
and William Walker's observer mission. Much of that new information comes from the people
of Racak themselves. People like Sadije Ramadani say the first hints of what was to come
appeared on the weekend prior to the Friday massacre. The Yugoslav Army had always
maintained a small presence on the large hill overlooking Racak. But suddenly a
significant number of reinforcements arrived. They showed up a day after the KLA ambushed
and killed three Serb police officers. Canadian General Michel Maisonneuve admits the KLA
had to know how the Serbs were likely to react to that ambush... Dugi Gorani, a prominent
Kosovar Albanian, suggests the KLA was very aware of the consequences of their
actions.'The more civilians were killed,' he said, 'the chances of international
intervention became bigger, and the KLA of course realized that.'... Some KLA supporters
have conceded that a key unit was based in the hills above and around Racak. But, when the
Serbs finally attacked on January 15, eyewitnesses say the KLA fought back from high in
the hills and made no real attempt to defend or protect the village. By the next morning,
however, KLA soldiers were all over Racak to lead journalists into the ravine where the
bodies were piled. Le Figaro's Renaud Girard remembers asking the KLA where they'd been
the day before. But the actions of KLA commanders aren't the only actions that are now
coming under scrutiny. For every question being asked about their whereabouts on the day
of the massacre, an
equal number of questions are being aimed at William Walker's observer mission. OSCE
monitors knew about the KLA's ambush on police and the arrival of Serb reinforcements near
Racak the very next day. Burim Osmani says his father Sadik had always been in frequent
touch with the OSCE monitors responsible for Racak. He says that two or three weeks before
the massacre, his father pleaded with the monitors to establish a permanent presence in
the village. The OSCE refused... The world may no longer care to remember the massacre
that sparked NATO's bombing campaign and the subsequent occupation of Kosovo by tens of
thousands of NATO soldiers. But the people of Racak have found a way to thank and remember
the man they believe made it all possible. They've renamed the Road to Racak, William
Walker Road."
The Road to Racak
CBC (Canadian
Broadcasting Corporation) Radio News, 2000
"European diplomats then working for
the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made airstrikes inevitable. Some
have questioned the motives and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of
mission. 'The American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the CIA,
operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and the OSCE,' said a
European envoy... Several Americans who were directly involved in CIA activities or close
to them have spoken to the makers of Moral Combat, a documentary to be broadcast on BBC2
tonight, and to The Sunday Times about their clandestine roles. Walker dismissed
suggestions that he had wanted war in Kosovo, but admitted the CIA was almost certainly
involved in the countdown to airstrikes.... Ten years
earlier he [Walker] was the American ambassador
to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there to suppress leftist
rebels while supporting the contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government in
Nicaragua. Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, concluded from Walker's
background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the
continued separation of American 'diplomatic observers' from the mission. The CIA sources
who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected
to the agency.... The KLA has admitted its long-standing links with American and European
intelligence organisations. Shaban Shala, a KLA commander now involved in attempts to
destabilise majority Albanian villages beyond Kosovo's border in Serbia proper, claimed he
had met British, American and Swiss agents in northern Albania in 1996.""
CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army
Sunday Times, 12
March 2000
"Ambassador Walker was not just
working for the OSCE. He was part of the American diplomatic policy that was occurring
which had vilified Slobodan Milosevic, demonised the Serbian Administration and generally
was providing diplomatic support to the UCK or the KLA leadership."
Moral Combat - NATO at War
BBC 2, 12 March 2000
"I didn't
consult with anyone before [reporting the fact that I was holding a press conference on
the deaths at Racak]. I knew that it takes forever to get permission to do something like
that."
William Walker Interview
Public Broadcasting Service, USA, 2000
“Dick, you can kiss your Nobel Peace
Prize goodbye.”
William Walker to US special diplomatic envoy
to Bosnia and Kosovo, Richard Holbrooke, after Walker's visit to Racak
as reported by Walker's deputy, General Karol Drewienkiewicz
The Milosevic Trial: William Walker’s role as
provocateur
World Socialist
Web Site report, 20 July 2002
"The final toll of civilians confirmed
massacred by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo is likely to be under 3,000, far short of the
numbers claimed by Nato governments during last year's controversial air strikes on
Yugoslavia. When Yugoslav forces withdrew from Kosovo in
June last year, Nato spokesmen estimated that the Serbs had killed at least 10,000
civilians. While the bombing was under way William Cohen, the US defence secretary,
announced that 100,000 Kosovo Albanian men of military age were missing after being taken
from columns of families being deported to Albania and Macedonia. 'They may have been
murdered,' he said....The exhumation of less than 3,000 bodies is sure to add fuel to
those who say Nato's intervention against Yugoslavia was not 'humanitarian' and that it
had other motives ..."
Serb killings 'exaggerated' by west
Guardian, 18
August 2000
"For amid the present furore over
the no-show of Iraqi WMDs, let us remember that in Kosovo our humanitarian Prime Minister
dragged this country into an illegal, US-sponsored war on grounds which later proved to be
fraudulent. In 2003 Tony's Big Whopper was that Saddam's WMDs 'could be activated within
45 minutes'. In 1999 it was that Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia was 'set on a
Hitler-style genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during World War
Two'..... In fact, the Yugoslavs had by February 1999 already agreed to most of the
autonomy proposals and had assented to a UN (but not Nato) peacekeeping team entering
Kosovo..... It was the unwelcome prospect of Milosevic signing up to a peace deal and
thereby depriving the US of its casus belli that caused Secretary of State Albright, with
the connivance of Cook, to insert new terms into the Rambouillet accord purposely designed
to be rejected by Belgrade. Appendix B to
chapter seven of the document provided not only for the Nato occupation of Kosovo, but
also for 'ounrestricted access' for Nato aircraft, tanks and troops throughout Yugoslavia.
The full text of the Rambouillet document was kept secret from the public and came to
light only when published in Le Monde Diplomatique on 17 April. By this time, the war was
almost a month old...The Kosovan war was, we were repeatedly told, fought 'to stop a
humanitarian catastrophe'. 'It is no exaggeration to say that what is happening is racial
genocide' - claimed the British Prime Minister - 'something we had hoped we would never
again experience in Europe. Thousands have been murdered, 100,000 men are missing and
hundreds forced to flee their homes and the country.' The Serbs were, according to the US
State Department, 'conducting a campaign of forced population movement not seen in Europe
since WW2'....With public support for war faltering, and a Downing Street spokesman
talking of a 'public-relations meltdown', it was time for the Lie Machine to go into
overdrive.... To date, the total body count of civilians killed in Kosovo in the period
1997-99 is still fewer than 3,000, a figure that includes not only those killed in open
fighting and during Nato air strikes, but also an unidentified number of Serbs. Clearly it
was an exaggeration - of Munchausenian proportions - for the Prime Minister to describe
what happened in Kosovo as 'racial genocide'. In both Kosovo and Iraq, the government's
war strategy seems to have been threefold:
1. In order to whip up public support for war, tell lies so
outrageous that most people will believe that no one would have dared to make them up.
2. When the conflict is over, dismiss
questions about the continued lack of evidence as 'irrelevant' and stress alternative
'benefits' from the military action, e.g., 'liberation' of the people.
3. Much later on, when the truth is finally
revealed, rely on the fact that most people have lost interest and are now concentrating
on the threat posed by the next new Hitler.
An admission of the government's culpability for the Kosovan war only slipped out in July
2000, when Lord Gilbert, the ex-defence minister, told the House of Commons that the
Rambouillet terms offered to the Yugoslav delegation had been 'absolutely intolerable' and
expressly designed to provoke war. Gilbert's bombshell warranted scarcely a line in the
mainstream British media, which had been so keen to label the Yugoslavs the guilty party a
year before."
How the battle lies were drawn
Spectator, 14 June 2003
"A Serbian human rights activist on
Monday questioned whether USA Today reporter Jack Kelley, who resigned under scrutiny for
his reporting of the Kosovo conflict, actually saw a key document he cited as a source.
Kelley stepped down earlier this month amid questions over his claims that he was shown an
order by the army of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for a killing spree in a
Kosovo village. Kelley, according to news reports in the United States, claimed he saw a
typed order from army headquarters in Belgrade to 'cleanse' the village, printed on
official stationery as part of a black-bound notebook belonging to a Yugoslav officer. The
order, according to Kelley, was crucial evidence linking Milosevic to Kosovo atrocities.
Kelley alleged he saw the document during an interview with Natasa Kandic, of the
Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, after the fighting ended. The notebook was retrieved
by U.N. tribunal investigators in Kosovo. Kandic, however, said the notebook was only seen
by herself, U.N. investigators and ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army
who fought Milosevic's troops and initially discovered the notebook. It was a handwritten
notebook, bound in red, not black, and contained no printed documents, Kandic said."
Serb soldier's notebook on horrific killings at
center of controversy surrounding U.S. reporter
Associated
Press, 26 January 2004
"Where are the bodies? Was the other
big war of the last decade, Kosovo in 1999, triggered by bogus allegations as well?
Another case of mass deception? In Iraq, it's the missing mass weapons of destruction. In
Kosovo, it's the missing mass graves. In alleged ethnic cleansing exercises by Serbian
leader Slobodan Milosevic, as many as 100,000 to 200,000 civilians were said to have gone
missing or been killed in Kosovo, many of them buried in mass graves. Members of a
Canadian forensic team to the Serbian province have come forward to label the numbers
nonsense. No mass graves, they say, and, on both the Albanian and Serb sides, only a few
thousand dead. A mockery of the numbers used to justify the war.... The Kosovo story has
etchings of Iraq all over it. The United States (the Democrats this time) and Britain
(Tony Blair again) demonize an enemy with fraudulent accusations. They play the gullible
media, Canada's included, like a violin. The latest person to debunk the genocide numbers
is retired Vancouver homicide detective Brian Honeybourn, a member of the forensic team.
He told The Ottawa Citizen this week that his nine-member group found mainly single
graves, with a couple of exceptions being one of 20 bodies and another 11. He wonders how
genocide charges against Mr. Milosevic can stand up. 'It seems as though The Hague is
beginning to panic.' Garth Pritchard, a Canadian filmmaker, accompanied the forensic team
to Kosovo. 'This was a massacre that never happened.' He joined mission leader Brian
Strongman in lambasting Canadian Louise Arbour, the special prosecutor for the tribunal
that brought the charges against Mr. Milosevic. Ms. Arbour, now the United Nations High
Commissioner for Human Rights, was used as a pawn by war-hungry Washington and London,
they said. 'I was standing there when the forensic teams were telling Louise Arbour there
were no 200,000 bodies and she didn't want to know,' Mr. Pritchard told the Citizen. Ms.
Arbour's career path lit up after her war-crimes work. She was appointed to the Supreme
Court of Canada, then to her UN post. The findings, or non-findings, of the Canadian
forensic team are consistent with those of other teams of experts sent over since the war
ended. At the time of the conflict, James Bissett, a former Canadian ambassador to
Yugoslavia, and Lewis MacKenzie, a major-general with a wealth of experience in the Balkan
theatre, took issue with the tales being spun. But they, as well as some voices in the
media, were drowned out by the drumbeat of war. U.S. defence secretary William Cohen was
alleging that as many as 100,000 Albanian Kosovars had gone missing. Mr. Blair, in a
preview of his comportment on Iraq, was crying horror upon horror. President Bill Clinton
wanted to shift the focus off his domestic problems -- Monica Lewinsky etc. -- and was
gung-ho for a NATO invasion. Looking back a couple of years after the conflict, defence
minister Art Eggleton acknowledged that the propaganda coming out of the Pentagon was
extraordinary. But the Chrétien Liberals, on close terms with the Clinton Democrats,
weren't about to buck the White House on Kosovo, as they would on Iraq. The allies were
all on board for an attack, making it extremely unlikely that Canada would be the odd one
out. But having everybody in the wagon doesn't excuse what happened. If the forensic
teams' stories are correct, the missing dead in Kosovo is indeed a scandal comparable to
the absence of WMD in Iraq. In a five-year period, political leaders twice duped their
populations into going to war."
Another Case of Mass Deception?
Globe and Mail, 2 September 2004
"For the past four years, the
Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been
finding what multiple international forensic teams have found--that claims of
Serb 'atrocities' were exaggerated and
often invented. It turns out we confused an attempt to create an Islamic 'Greater Albania' with one to create a 'Greater
Serbia.' Surely if the latter were Slobodan Milosevic’s goal,
he would have started by ethnically cleansing the nearly 300,000 Muslims of
Serbia. Though he built his career in whatever dirty ways Tito's Yugoslavia allowed,
he was the least of the Balkans' villains. For most Serbs, he was not a
hero until he was called upon to defend an entire nation at the Hague. Now that Milosevic is dead, we are spared the worldwide
riots that would have ensued had the tribunal mustered the courage to issue a verdict
based on the evidence. And we can all sleep comfortably as the disproved charges
are accepted as history.... In early 2001, German TV broadcast a report titled 'It Began
with a Lie,' which publicized the findings of the observer force Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) that no genocide had taken place in Kosovo. The revelations set off a huge public debate in Germany, a
member of the NATO coalition, after the
public realized their country had been party to a hoax, and they held the responsible politicians’ feet to the
fire. It’s long past time that we also set the record straight on what
we 'achieved' in the Balkans -- and change course. As the world closes in on
the Serbs again this year, we must stop bin Laden from establishing a terror
state in Europe. We know from Madrid and London that we’ll pay for it with our
own blood. In fact, we already have."
A Balkan Base For Al Qaeda?
FrontPageMagazine,
20 March 2006
"The chief prosecutor for war crimes
in former Yugoslavia yesterday voiced
admiration for and fascination with her most formidable opponent, Slobodan Milosevic.
Carla Del Ponte, whose mission is to bring the worst criminals from the Yugoslav wars to
justice and who spent more than four years trying Milosevic, paid tribute to the late
Serbian leader, declaring him superior to the dozens of other suspects who have been in
the dock at the tribunal in The Hague. 'The way he questioned certain witnesses was
fascinating,' she told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 'He really knew how to
deal with people. I admired that. He was the only accused who mounted his own defence
alone ... Milosevic always spoke out. He had been the president of Yugoslavia. He was head
and shoulders above the rest'" Milosevic died in custody in his cell outside The
Hague earlier this year, almost five years after being flown there following his overthrow
in Belgrade. The death was a major blow to the tribunal, as it deprived the former
Yugoslavia of a verdict in the biggest and longest trial before the court. The death
spawned multiple conspiracy theories and also triggered strong criticism of the manner in
which the tribunal operates."
Del Ponte tells of admiration for Milosevic
Guardian, 29 July 2006
"Veterans of Kosovo’s 1998-99
guerrilla war said they were prepared to take up arms again if deadlock between the West
and Russia continued to block the province’s independence from Serbia. The ethnic
Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army veterans warned the international bodies running the
territory, primarily the United Nations, not to block the process. A statement said that
if their demand for independence was not met they would be 'forced to act as KLA soldiers
to fulfill the oath of our national heroes'. Talks between Serbs and Albanians ended in
stalemate in March."
KLA threaten fresh fighting in Kosovo
London Times, 9
July 2007
"Just as we are escaping the last and
bloodiest of Tony Blair's wars, so the consequences of the first of his wars may be coming
back to haunt us. I mean Kosovo. On March 24, 1999, Nato started dropping bombs on Serbia,
which it blamed for a series of atrocities in Kosovo in which thousands of Albanians had
supposedly died.... After 11 weeks and 23,614 bombs and the deaths of about 500 of its
civilians, Serbia withdrew. Tony Blair was triumphant. Much more than Iraq three years
later, this had been his war, not the Americans'. He had made the running, and now he
received the plaudits....For nine years Nato forces in Kosovo have managed to keep the lid
on the ethnic cleansing of Serbs by Kosovar Albanians, though there have been nasty
periodic outbreaks. Much worse is likely to follow as a result of the emergence in last
month's elections of Hashim Thaci as the leader of Kosovo's largest political party.
Thaci, a former Kosovar Albanian guerrilla leader who is lucky not to be on trial for war
crimes, has declared that Kosovo will unilaterally declare independence from Serbia.
America backs him; the EU and Britain are in a flap; Russia and, of course, Serbia, are
adamantly opposed. Diplomatic efforts to persuade him to stay his hand failed last week.
We are on the verge of an independent Kosovo. Nearly nine years later, Mr Blair's victory
is looking distinctly tarnished. In fact, things began to go wrong in Kosovo immediately
after the end of the war....This was a war that could have probably been avoided. In February 1999, western diplomats nearly agreed a settlement
with Slobodan Milosevic's Serbia at Rambouillet near Paris that would have led to a
semi-autonomous Kosovo. Only an unreasonable insistence by the West that Nato troops
should be allowed to roam about Serbia at will, and that there should be a referendum on
independence for Kosovo within three years, scuppered a deal. It was almost as though Nato, and Britain and America in particular, were
spoiling for a fight. Tony Blair was building up a head of righteous
anger. In an article written for an American
magazine shortly after the beginning of the bombing, he called for a 'new
internationalism' which would not tolerate dictators who 'visit horrific punishments on
their own people to stay in power'. He was thinking of Slobodan Milosevic, whom he
implicitly - and ridiculously - compared to Hitler. Three years later it would be Saddam
Hussein's turn. Milosevic was undoubtedly a nasty dictator but largely of the tinpot
variety and far less lethal than Saddam. Nor did he
present any conceivable threat to the West. Mr Blair
claimed Milosevic was guilty of killing at least 10,000 Kosovar Albanians before the war,
but human rights groups have never been able to justify a
number anywhere close to this.... If Mr Blair's division of Kosovar Albanians and
Serbs into goodies and baddies was simplistic before the war, it has turned out to be
wildly wrong since hostilities ended, with the Serb minority often being the victims of
ethnic cleansing by the Kosovar Albanians..... the outcome of the war seems certain to
lead to the Greater Albania which western policy makers always said they did not want.
Even now they insist that an independent Kosovo must not join forces with their ethnic
brothers in Albania to create one large state that might destabilise the Balkans. How on
earth can it be stopped? It does not seem very intelligent statecraft to end up with the
very thing - a Greater Albania - which the West has opposed. For Tony Blair Kosovo was a
dry run for Iraq. There was the same messianic
conviction, and the same slipperiness with facts, so
that the Serbs were portrayed as being more heinous then they were, and the Kosovar
Albanians as being more virtuous. There was also the same disregard for practicalities. As
Mr Blair gave very little thought to the consequences of invading Iraq in terms of social
disorder, so he evidently did not foresee that the Serbs would become victims of ethnic
cleansing, nor that western victory in the war would inevitably lead to an independent
Kosovo that would in turn probably form a Muslim Greater Albania at odds with Christian
Serbia. The apparent success of the war against
Serbia redoubled his absurdly inflated belief that he was a visionary leader of world
stature who could, and should, intervene with America at his side, to right every wrong,
regardless of the niceties of international law. And
yet whereas he was opposed at every stage over Iraq and was ultimately driven out of
office because of it, the outcry over Kosovo was always much less. Mr Blair was still in
his halcyon days when he bombed Serbia, and many on the Left and Right were inclined to
trust him.....Kosovo is a mess, Iraq is a bigger mess, and, I fear, Afghanistan will
become a mess. Surely Gordon Brown and the Government have learned the lesson that it is a
dangerous business going around invading other people's countries."
Just as we try to escape from Blair's last and bloodiest war, so his first one is coming
back to haunt us
Daily
Mail, 11 December 2007
"Kosovo's unilateral declaration of
independence [February 2008] should not be recognized by Canada. It has not been
authorized by the United Nations and is therefore in violation of international law, the
United Nations Charter and the Helsinki Final Accords. In addition, UN resolution 1244,
which ended the bombing of Serbia, reaffirms Serbia's sovereignty over Kosovo. The basic
principles of territorial integrity and state sovereignty have governed the relations
between states since the treaty of Westphalia in 1648. While they have been violated many
times in the intervening years, usually by acts of aggression by dictators, they remain
the essential components of international law.... The Helsinki Final Act of 1975
reinforced these principles by adding to them the principle of the inviolability of
borders. These are fundamental principles and they have universal application. They cannot
be set aside because of special cases or because they present an obstacle to the policy
objectives of a powerful nation. Their message is simple and clear --borders cannot be
changed without the consent of the state involved..... In the spring of 1999 the U.S.-led
NATO countries intervened militarily in Kosovo and, in violation of the UN Charter, bombed
Serbia. The bombing was justified on allegations that
genocide and ethnic cleansing were taking place in Kosovo. We now know these allegations
were completely unfounded. In the three years of
armed conflict in Kosovo leading up to the bombing by NATO the UN estimates there were a
total of 4,600 people killed during the fighting and this figure includes both Serbs and
Albanians. In fact, so far there have been only a little over 2,000 bodies discovered.
This in itself is a tragic figure, but it is not genocide. As for ethnic cleansing it is
now generally acknowledged that the mass expulsion of the Albanians took place after the
bombing started. While there were thousands of Albanians displaced within Kosovo as a
result of two years of armed conflict there was not a deliberate policy of ethnic
cleansing taking place. Although the western media continue to justify the independence of
Kosovo on the grounds of ethnic cleansing and atrocities committed by Slobodan Milosevic's
security forces the facts do not support these allegations. They do stand, however, as
testimony to the success of NATO's propaganda machine. The intervention in Kosovo had
nothing to do with humanitarian reasons but was deliberately designed to justify the
continued existence of NATO and to fundamentally change its role from a purely defensive
organization acting in accordance with the UN Charter into one that could intervene
wherever or whenever it decided to do so, and with or without UN approval. There have been
numerous reports that western security agencies trained, equipped and armed members of the
Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) and sent them back into Kosovo to assassinate Serbian mayors,
police officials and Albanians who did not support their cause. It was a highly successful
operation and it fuelled the armed rebellion by the KLA. In August 1998 - seven months before the NATO bombing - the U.S. Senate
Republican Policy Committee reported that, 'planning for a U.S.-led NATO intervention in
Kosovo is largely in place. ... The only missing element seems to be an event with
suitably vivid media coverage that could make the intervention politically saleable. ... That the
administration is waiting for a 'trigger' is increasingly obvious.' That trigger was soon to be pulled. It was the highly suspicious 'Racak'
massacre that, as Madeleine Albright said, was the galvanizing incident that led to the
bombing. The bombing of Serbia by NATO without UN approval was a historical turning point.
The precedent had been set. The UN Charter could be subverted if the military intervention
could be cloaked and justified in terms of humanitarianism. The intervention in Iraq was
to follow but this time not all of the NATO countries went along with the American
initiative."
James Bissett (former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia) - Canada And Kosovo
The
Ottawa Citizen, 19 February 2008
And Bosnia?
There Was A Genocide In Bosnia
But The Serbian Government Was Not Responsible For It
"The UN's highest court has
cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide during the 1990s Bosnian war. But the
International Court of Justice did rule that Belgrade had violated international law by
failing to prevent the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica..... The case, Bosnia and Herzegovina
versus Serbia and Montenegro, began a year ago and a panel of judges has been deliberating
since hearings ended in May 2006. Bosnia argued that Belgrade incited ethnic hatred, armed
Bosnian Serbs and was an active participant in the killings. Belgrade said the conflict
was an internal war between Bosnia's ethnic groups and denied any state role in genocide.
In the ruling, the president of the court, Judge Rosalyn Higgins, said: 'The court finds
that the acts of genocide at Srebrenica cannot be attributed to the respondent's (Serbia)
state organs.'... The war crimes tribunal in The Hague has already found individuals
guilty of genocide in Bosnia and established the Srebrenica massacre as genocide."
Court clears Serbia of genocide
BBC Online, 26 February 2007
"Slobodan Milosevic was
posthumously exonerated on Monday when the international court of justice ruled that
Serbia was not responsible for the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. The former president of
Serbia had always argued that neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia had command of the Bosnian
Serb army, and this has now been upheld by the world court in The Hague. By implication,
Serbia cannot be held responsible for any other war crimes attributed to the Bosnian
Serbs.The allegations against Milosevic over Bosnia and Croatia were cooked up in 2001,
two years after an earlier indictment had been issued against him by the separate
international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the height of Nato's
attack on Yugoslavia in 1999. Notwithstanding the atrocities on all sides in Kosovo, Nato
claims that Serbia was pursuing genocide turned out to be war propaganda, so the ICTY
prosecutor decided to bolster a weak case by trying to 'get' Milosevic for Bosnia as well.
It took two years and 300 witnesses, but the prosecution never managed to produce
conclusive evidence against its star defendant.....The international court of justice
(ICJ) did condemn Serbia on Monday for failing to act to prevent Srebrenica, on the basis
that Belgrade failed to use its influence over the Bosnian Serb army. But this is small
beer compared to the original allegations.... Yugoslavia had no troops in Bosnia and
greater guilt over the killings surely lies with those countries that did, notably the
Dutch battalion in Srebrenica itself.....However, Monday's ruling is about far more than
Milosevic. Ever since the end of the cold war, the US and its allies have acted like
vigilantes, claiming the right to bomb other countries in the name of humanity. The Kosovo
war was the most important action taken on this basis and, as such, the curtain-raiser for
Iraq. Fought, like the Iraq war, without UN approval, it was waged partly because the
international community felt it should have intervened more robustly against Yugoslavia
over Bosnia. It now turns out that Serbia was not in control in Bosnia after all. The
ruling therefore punctures a decade-and-a-half of lies in support of the doctrine of
military and judicial interventionism."
Lies of the vigilantes
Guardian, 28 February
2007
| US Backed
Islamic Terrorism in the Balkans Press Reports Click here for access to sections below |
| 1. Oil and US Geopolitical Objectives in the Balkans |
| 2. US backed terrorism in Croatia |
| 3. US backed terrorism in Bosnia |
| 4. US backed terrorism in Kosovo |
| 5. US backed terrorism in Macedonia |
| 6. The human cost of US backed terrorism in the Balkans |
July 2004
US And UK Face Embarrassment At The Hague
Why The West
Doesn't Want Milosevic
To Speak For Himself
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATMilosevictrial.htm
Western Powers
Covertly Used
Islamic Terrorists To Break Up Yugoslavia
Click Here
"Peter Brock's devastating portrayal
of the role played by western journalists in distorting the truth about what was really
happening during the break up of Yugoslavia is a major accomplishment. The book underlines
the terrible power of the media in influencing governments to make unwise policy decisions
affecting the very course of history. It also exposes the close affinity that exists
between media and government. Both are capable of telling lies and both are unwilling to
admit mistakes. This is a 'must read' book. It is a sad and shameful story but one that
should be mandatory reading by every politician and by every practicing and aspiring
journalist."
James Bissett, former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia (1990-1992)
On Peter Brock's Book 'Media
Cleansing: Dirty Reporting - Journalism and Tragedy In Yugoslavia'
"Peter Brock has done a masterful job
- through patient and unbiased documentation and cool, logical reporting - of highlighting
the great failure of the media in fairly and accurately covering the break-up of the
former Yugoslavia and the subsequent wars in its constituent parts. As someone intimately
involved in covering the wars of the 1990s in the Balkans, I can attest that Brock's
writing is restrained and, if anything, understated, and the indictment of the media for
its bias and the resultant contribution to the start and ongoing conduct of the war is
valid. That there were genuine initial misunderstandings on the part of the world's media
with regard to the Balkan situation is clear. But the fact that the media - on whose
judgments governments made policies - allowed itself
to be duped by propagandists, and that editors then
refused to recant when their errors became obvious: there lies the essence of Brock's
indictment. The free press of the world fought to be recognized as the guardian of truth
and as a pillar of good governance. It cannot now deny culpability and reject criticism,
or avoid the growing sentiment that it - as with all aspects of public life - requires
constant review, and reform. It is evident from Brock's vital and eminently readable book
that for freedom to perish, all it takes is for the media to exempt itself from its
ethical responsibility toward impartiality. If Watergate was the modern starting point for
agenda-based reporting, then the Balkan wars showed that, unchecked, the media could,
without accountability, bring about the downfall of nations. The
resultant emergence of terrorist coordinating centers in the Balkans, intimately involved
in the 9/11, Madrid, and London attacks, can be laid directly at the door of the editors
who allowed bias to rule their coverage of the Balkan wars. We have yet to see the full consequences of the media's shameful
unprofessionalism in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. But to start to remedy the problem it
is essential that Brock's Media
Cleansing: Dirty Reporting be widely read, and its message taken to heart.
Peter Brock's book should be the basis for both Congressional and independent media
enquiries."
Gregory R. Copley, President of the International Strategic Studies Association, and
Editor of Defense & Foreign
Affairs publications
On
Peter Brock's Book 'Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting - Journalism and Tragedy In
Yugoslavia'
Audio Interview with Peter Brock author of 'Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting - Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia'
Not for the people in the Middle East,
the Caucasus
or the Balkans
Not for freedom and democracy
Why They Are Really Doing It
GLOBAL ENERGY CRISIS LOOMING
NLPWESSEX,
natural law publishing |
