THE HAGUE -- Tuesday November 23 2004 – Russian General Leonid Ivashov has taken the stand for the defence in the trial of Slobodan Milosevic before the Hague Tribunal.
The former commander of Russia’s international forces, told the court that the head of the 1998-99 Kosovo Verification Mission, William Walker, had said as early as February 12, 1999, that Serbs had no business in the province.
“Walker had already said on February 12, 1999, in answer to my question of what the chances looked for a peaceful resolution to the Kosovo crisis, that there would be an inevitable military intervention in the spring and that Serbs had no business in Kosovo,” said Ivashov.
The witness also told the court that former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had personally promised Kosovo Liberation Army leader Hashim Thaci that there would be a referendum on independence for Kosovo if the guerrilla organisation agreed to foreign troops being deployed in the province.
“The Russian General Staff Headquarters had information about 11 camps in Kosovo and northern Albanian were terrorists were being trained. We passed this information to General Wesley Clark with the intention of together putting an end to the Kosovo Liberation Army’s terrorist activities.
“Unfortunately General Clark said that NATO had no good intelligence reports to confirm this, which was simply not true,” said Ivashov.
The witness also told the court that Russian military leaders had spoken to the ambassadors of fifteen Islam countries about the training of terrorists and that the Iranian ambassador had confirmed the participation of Taliban and Al-Qaida members in Kosovo
So much of honest brokers.
It does certainly appear that William Walker and his team compromised themselves