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Milosevic Says Kosovo Massacre Staged by Rebels
Reuters ^
| 4/15/02
| Eric Onstad
Posted on 04/15/2002 12:30:01 PM PDT by joan
By THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic at his trial on Monday accused separatist Kosovo Albanian guerrillas of fabricating an alleged atrocity by Serb forces in 1999 in a bid to spur a shocked West into attacking Yugoslavia.
The killing of about 45 ethnic Albanians in Racak in January 1999 shocked the outside world and was widely credited with stiffening NATO's resolve to launch its 11-week campaign of air strikes against Yugoslavia two months later.
The former Serb strongman, accused of genocide and crimes against humanity in Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, could face life behind bars if convicted at the end of Europe's biggest international war crimes trial since World War Two.
The Hague tribunal heard last week from a Western observer that dozens of unarmed men dressed in slippers and rubber boots were found shot in the head at Racak in 1999 after Serb forces entered the village. Milosevic disputed the testimony.
Milosevic told the war crimes court that ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) guerrillas shifted corpses around Racak to an open mass grave as part of a ruse to convince Western observers that Serb forces had butchered villagers. He said Serb forces had only killed KLA guerrillas in gun battles.
"It may be, as Serb authorities claim, and many Europeans tended to believe, that the victims were in fact killed in the shoot-out reported by police and then aligned to give the appearance of a massacre," Milosevic said quoting from an Italian press report.
IN COLD BLOOD
The 60-year-old accused, who is conducting his own defense at the United Nations court against charges he has rejected as "false," vigorously challenged testimony that Racak's villagers had been gunned down.
Retired British general Karel Drewienkiewicz, who served in Kosovo with a mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), said he was convinced a massacre had taken place and had not been staged by the KLA.
"I know what I saw on the hillside and it was not manipulation...it was men who had been gunned down in cold blood," said Drewienkiewicz.
Drewienkiewicz acknowledged, however, that a fierce battle had taken place between KLA guerrillas and Serb forces at Racak and that there had been a "lapse" of some 15 hours overnight before Western observers viewed the scene.
Last week Drewienkiewicz told the court he saw men shot in the head at Racak. They had been dressed in carpet slippers and rubber boots.
Since his trial opened in February Milosevic has accuses the West and Islamic militant group al-Qaeda of supporting a "terrorist" campaign by the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army to destabilize the Balkans.
He declined to enter pleas to the charges against him. Not guilty pleas were entered on his behalf. The trial is expected to last at least two years.
TOPICS: Foreign Affairs
KEYWORDS: balkans; kosovo; racak
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Drewienkiewicz acknowledged, however, that a fierce battle had taken place between KLA guerrillas and Serb forces at Racak and that there had been a "lapse" of some 15 hours overnight before Western observers viewed the scene.
15 hours with the Serbian police absent from the town and the KLA already back in as soon as the police left. So the KLA had 15 hours alone in the town to...
1
posted on
04/15/2002 12:30:01 PM PDT
by
joan
To: *Balkans
index bump
To: joan
Sounds like a repeat of Bosnia.........made for TV lies and murders to ramp up public sentiment.
3
posted on
04/15/2002 1:09:37 PM PDT
by
OldFriend
To: joan;Hoplite;Fusion; vooch; wraith
Racak for the 1000th time
To: joan
It's quite incredible that there are so many thick heads when it comes to exposing the fact that
there was no massacre at Racak by Serbian forces!!!. It's like telling a child [in this case, children] over and over again of the truth, but, like spoiled brats, don't want to accept it.
The "OSCE LIED ABOUT RACAK," which was the headline of Il Manifesto, the Italian newspaper dated 9 April 2000. It reported "There was no massacre in Racak, says today the Italian daily Il Manifesto, citing the results of the inquiry recently launched by the German daily Berliner Zeitung. The evidence clearly shows what really happened: there was no mass murder in Racak. Those were probably the bodies of the KLA terrorists who died [in the battle] on January 15th."
Some people just can't hack the truth.
5
posted on
04/15/2002 1:36:17 PM PDT
by
Doctor13
Comment #6 Removed by Moderator
To: joan
Racak is still an unresolved question for me. There were 45 dead bodies, with lots of opportunity to fiddle with them by either side, and confirmation and conflicting stories of who they were and how they got there.
What I'd like to see is the coroner's forensic reports or testimony by the coroners themselves. It is fairly easy to identify whether a gunshot to the back of the head was the cause of death [ie evidence of a massacre], or made sometime after death [ie evidence of a staged massacre], parrafin tests on the hands of the dead to see if they recently fired weapons [ie soldiers / rebels vs. civilians], time of death, cause of death, etc.
I also seem to recall that forensic reports were prepared but have never been released. Anyone know if that's true, and if so, why haven't the reports been available? I'm willing and I believe most right thinking Freepers would accept proven facts. I'm just still wating for them.
Also, does anyone know when, or if, the ICTY plans to call the coroners? They are usually one of the first witnesses in a murder trial - they tend to establish the date, time and cause of death and rule out a lot of defenses.
BTW, the general's testimony does not appear to establish the required command responsibility link to find Milosevic ordered a 'massacre', identity of the perpetrators [If Serbian soldiers, then which ones, or was it paramilitaries, the mafia, jealous lovers, etc.] or accepted NATO's interpretation of a 'massacre' to justify punishment of the unidentified perpetrators.
7
posted on
04/15/2002 3:36:05 PM PDT
by
LA-Lawyer
To: LA-Lawyer
Dr. Helena Ranta was the head of forensic team. She is forensic dentist, not forensic pathologist. She never visited the crime scene ( or, visited crime scene several motnths after the event for the first time). She did not possess the knowledge to evaluate the use of tests wether someone used firearms or not.
Besides, there is AP video footage of January 15 1999 that shows firefight between KLA and Serbian Police.
Ranta got hush money in the form of position of director, Helsinki Committefor Finland. (State Department stint)
She is disgrace for medical profession.
8
posted on
04/15/2002 8:58:51 PM PDT
by
DTA
To: joan,ABrit
Anyone have an idea how to prod the Hague to release transcripts, discontinued when the score was Milo 2, der Hague 0? After all, its' still being pouted as the 'biggest trial' of the century. People are interested in the 'ending'.
ABrit sounds like he has an inside track and could help out, and explain what's going on.
9
posted on
04/15/2002 10:44:37 PM PDT
by
duckln
To: joan
The Serbian police know better than to go into KLA territory at night, especially when they are returning to a scene of previous heavy fighting. Most of the actions happend by day as 'night time is the right time' for the KLA. I also wonder where the reports of nightime gunfire (which judging from the report was not exactly 'minimal') are, if they exist and by whom.
VRN
10
posted on
04/16/2002 3:43:03 AM PDT
by
Voronin
To: joan;Hoplite;Fusion; vooch; wraith;duckln
From the indictment:
a. On or about 15 January 1999, in the early morning hours, the village of Racak (Stimlje/Shtime municipality) was attacked by forces of the FRY and Serbia. After shelling, the forces of the FRY and Serbia entered the village later in the morning and began conducting house-to-house searches. Villagers, who attempted to flee from the forces of the FRY and Serbia, were shot throughout the village. A group of approximately 25 men attempted to hide in a building, but were discovered by the forces of the FRY and Serbia. They were beaten and then were removed to a nearby hill, where they were shot and killed. Altogether, the forces of the FRY and Serbia killed approximately 45 Kosovo Albanians in and around Racak. (Those persons killed who are known by name are set forth in Schedule A, which is attached as an appendix to this indictment.)
No, I don't have an inside track, these excerpts come straight from the ICTY website.
Looks like the ICTY have produced an independent eyewitness who says he saw men who had been shot in the head.
Milosevic disputes this, but he is not an eye witness.
What I don't think a lot of you understand is that this was the straw that broke the camels back.
No matter how small the straw, it was in fact the weight of what had gone before which did the damage.
11
posted on
04/16/2002 8:51:25 AM PDT
by
ABrit
To: duckln
ABrit sounds like he has an inside track and could help out, and explain what's going on.No disrespect, but are you kidding??? ABrit claims that s/he visited Yugoslavia at some point and yet apparently met no Serbs; calls everyone who was against the bombing of Serbia (regardless of their political stance) 'deniers of the holocaust'; and speaks about the murder of 'Kosovar Muslims'. Hmmm... I don't think so. Although s/he does have a collection of 'Bash Slobo' and general anti-Serbian headlines from during the bombing - that shows a real leaning towards 'deep' research and inside knowledge.
12
posted on
04/16/2002 10:05:34 AM PDT
by
Kate22
To: ABrit
No, I don't have an inside track, these excerpts come straight from the ICTY website.Not true! They come filtered by the Media and have been 'negatively bias', for the most part, against Serbian.
My question to you has been, why aren't the transcripts released ? They provide the information 'people' require, not political articles by rumdumb news outlets.
Looks like the ICTY have produced an independent eyewitness who says he saw men who had been shot in the head.
So what's the point? Who shot who? It's what the KLA does to 'fence sitters'. There are plenty of reports of 'decapitations' of 'infidels', and we know who's resposible for that.
13
posted on
04/16/2002 10:18:27 AM PDT
by
duckln
To: Kate22
ABrit claims that s/he visited Yugoslavia at some point and yet apparently met no Serbs;That's what Paddy Ashdown said almost verbatim in his testimony. He observed the shelling from the Albania side. As I recall, he saw a destoyed village but no Serbs.
He has the 'charges' at his figure tips and the same flawed accusations.
A 'johnny come late', March 2002, makes me think he's employed to support NATO.
14
posted on
04/16/2002 10:47:03 AM PDT
by
duckln
To: ABrit
Press Review from Diana Johnstone in Paris THE "RACAK MASSACRE" QUESTIONED BY FRENCH MEDIA Paris, 20 January 1999 French newspaper and television reports today feature evidence apparently ignored by U.S. media, suggesting that the "Racak massacre" so vigorously denounced by the U.S.-imposed head of the OSCE (Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe) "verifiers" mission to Kosovo, William Walker, was a setup. This coincides with reports in the German press indicating strong irritation with Walker among other OSCE members. Meanwhile, the ineffable State Department spokesman James Rubin appeared tonight on CNN for short glimpses between Clinton impeachment dronings, plodding forward amid questions from journalists even more gung-ho for NATO bombings than he and his bride Christiane Amanpour, whose love story apparently owes so much to the common anti-Serb cause. It seems the U.S. is clueless as to the doubts being cast elsewhere on the "massacre" story, and the only questions well-paid U.S. journalists could conjure up were variations on the theme, "why isnt cowardly NATO already bombing the Serbs?" RENAUD GIRARD has covered virtually all the Yugoslav wars of disintegration on the spot for the French daily "Le Figaro". Here is my rough but accurate translation of his lead article published on January 20, 1999: KOSOVO: OBSCURE AREAS OF A MASSACRE The images filmed during the attack on the village of Racak contradict the Albanians and the OSCEs version Racak. Did the American ambassador William Walker, chief of the OSCE cease-fire verification mission to Kosovo, show undue haste when, last Saturday, he publicly accused Sserbian security forces of having on the previous day executed in cold blood some forty Albanian peasants in the little village of Racak? The question deserves to be raised in the light of a series of disturbing facts. In order to understand, it is important to go through the events of the crucial day of Friday in chronological order. At dawn, intervention forces of the Serbian police encircled and then attacked the village of Racak, known as a bastion of UCK (Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA) separatist guerrillas. The police didnt seem to have anything to hide, since, at 8:30 a.m., they invited a television team (two journalists of AP TV) to film the operation. A warning was also given to the OSCE, which sent two cars with American diplomatic licenses to the scene. The observers spent the whole day posted on a hill where they could watch the village. At 3 p.m., a police communique reached the international press center in Pristina announcing that 15 UCK "terrorists" had been killed in combat in Racak and that a large stock of weapons had been seized. At 3:30 p.m., the police forces, followed by the AP TV team, left the village, carrying with them a heavy 12.7 mm machine gun, two automatic rifles, two rifles with telescopic sights and some thirty Chinese-made kalashnikovs. At 4:40 p.m., a French journalist drove through the village and met three orange OSCE vehicles. The international observers were chatting calmly with three middle-aged Albanians in civilian clothes. They were looking for eventual civilian casualties. Returning to the village at 6 p.m., the journalist saw the observers taking away two very slightly injured old men and two women. The observers, who did not seem particularly worried, did not mention anything in particular to the journalist. They simply said that they were "unable to evaluate the battle toll". The scene of Albanian corpses in civilian clothes lined up in a ditch which would shock the whole world was not discovered until the next morning, around 9 a.m., by journalists soon followed by OSCE observers. At that time, the village was once again taken over by armed UCK soldiers who led the foreign visitors, as soon as they arrived, toward the supposed massacre site. Around noon, William Walker in person arrived and expressed his indignation. All the Albanian witnesses gave the same version: at midday, the policemen forced their way into homes and separated the women from the men, whom they led to the hilltops to execute them without more ado. The most disturbing fact is that the pictures filmed by the AP TV journalistswhich Le Figaro was shown yesterdayradically contradict that version. It was in fact an empty village that the police entered in the morning, sticking close to the walls. The shooting was intense, as they were fired on from UCK trenches dug into the hillside. The fighting intensified sharply on the hilltops above the village. Watching from below, next to the mosque, the AP journalists understood that the UCK guerrillas, encircled, were trying desperately to break out. A score of them in fact succeeded, as the police themselves admitted. What really happened? During the night, could the UCK have gathered the bodies, in fact killed by Serb bullets, to set up a scene of cold-blooded massacre? A disturbing fact: Saturday morning the journalists found only very few cartridges around the ditch where the massacre supposedly took place. Intelligently, did the UCK seek to turn a military defeat into a political victory? Only a credible international inquiry would make it possible to resolve these doubts. The reluctance of the Belgrade government, which has consistently denied the massacre, thus seems incomprehensible. END Short comment: Not entirely incomprehensible, since Belgrade is convinced that the U.S.-led "international community" is determined to frame the Serb side in order to justify NATO bombing. The hasty and virulent William Walker condemnation of the Serbs for "the most horrendous" massacre he had ever seen (and that after four years in El Salvador!), not to mention the latest in a series of fatal "captures" of Bosnian Serbs accused of war crimes, has only confirmed the view of most Serbs that they can expect only unfair condemnation, not justice, from such "investigators". Doubts are cast on the reality of the "Racak massacre" even by LE MONDE, which for years has led the crusade against the Serbs. But Le Mondes own correspondent, Christophe Chatelot, sent the following report from Pristina: WERE THE RACAK DEAD REALLY COLDLY MASSACRED? The version of the facts spread by the Kosovars leaves several questions unanswered. Belgrade says that the forty-five victims were UCK "terrorst, fallen during combat, but rejects any international investigation. Isnt the Racak massacre just too perfect? New eye witness accounts gathered on Monday, January 18, by Le Monde, throw doubt on the reality of the horrible spectacle of dozens of piled up bodies of Albanians supposedly summarily executed by Serb security forces last Friday. Were the victims executed in cold blood, as UCK says, or killed in combat, as the Serbs say? According to the version gathered and broadcast by the press and the Kosovo verification mission (KVM) observers from the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the massacre took place on January 15 in the early after-noon. "Masked" Serbian police entered the village of Racak which had been shelled all morning by Yugoslav army tanks. The broke down the doors and entered peoples homes, ordering the women to stay there while they pushed the men to the edge of the village to calmly execute them with a bullet through the head, not without first having tortured and mutilated several. Some witnesses even said that the Serbs sang as they did their dirty work, before leaving the village around 3:30 p.m. The account by two journalists of Associated Press TV television (AP TV) who filmed the police operation in Racak contradicts this tale. When at 10 a.m. they entered the village in the wake of a police armored vehicle, the village was nearly deserted. They advanced through the streets under the fire of the Kosovo Liberation Army (UCK) fighters lying in ambush in the woods above the village. The exchange of fire continued throughout the operation, with more or less intensity. The main fighting took place in the woods. The Albanians who had fled the village when the first Serb shells were fired at dawn tried to escape. There they ran into Serbian police who had surrounded the village. The UCK was trapped in between. The object of the violent police attack on Friday was a stronghold of UCK Albanian independence fighters. Virtually all the inhabitants had fled Racak during the frightful Serb offensive of the summer of 1998. With few exceptions, they had not come back. "Smoke came from only two chimneys", noted one of the two AP TV reporters. The Serb operation was thus no surprise, nor was it a secret. On the morning of the attack, a police source tipped off AP TV: "Come to Racak, something is happening". At 10 a.m., the team was on the spot alongside the police; it filmed from a peak overlooking the village and then through the streets in the wake of an armored vehicle. The OSCE was also warned of the action. At least two teams of international observers watched the fighting from a hill where they could see part of the village. They entered Racak shortly after the police left. They then questioned a few Albanians about the situation, trying to find out whether there were wounded civilians. Around 6 p.m., they took four personstwo women and two old menwho were very slightly wounded toward the dispensary of the neighboring town of Stimje. The verifiers said at that time that they were "incapable of establishing the number of casualties of that day of fighting". The publicity given by the Serbian police to that operation was intense. At 10:30 a.m., it gave out its first press release. It announced that the police had "encircled the village of Racak with the aim of arresting the members of a terrorist group who killed a policeman" the previous Sunday. At 3 p.m., a first bulletin announced fifteen Albanians killed in fighting. The next day, Saturday, it welcomed the success of the operation which, it said, had resulted in the death of dozens of UCK "terrorists" and the capture of a large stock of weapons. The attempt to arrest an Albanian presumed to have murdered a Serb policemen turned into a massacre. At 5:30 p.m., the police evacuated the site under the sporadic fire of a handful of UCK fighters who continued to hold out thanks to the steep and rough terrain. In no time, the first of the Albanians who had got away come back down into the village, those who had managed to hide came out in the open and three KVM vehicles drove into the village. One hour after the police left, night fell. The next morning, the press and the KVM came to see the damage caused by the fighting. It was at this moment that, guided by the armed UCK fighters who had recaptured the village, they discovered the ditch where a score of bodies were piled up, almost exclusively men. At midday, the chief of the KVM in person, the American diplomat William Walker, arrived on the spot and declared his indignation at the atrocities committed by "the Serb police forces and the Yugoslav army". The condemnation was total, irrevocable. And yet questions remain. How could the Serb police have gathered a group of men and led them calmly toward the execution site while they were constantly under fire from UCK fighters? How could the ditch located on the edge of Racak have escaped notice by local inhabitants familiar with the surroundings who were present before nightfall? Or by the observers who were present for over two hours in this tiny village? Why so few cartridges around the corpses, so little blood in the hollow road where twenty three people are supposed to have been shot at close range with several bullets in the head? Rather, werent the bodies of the Albanians killed in combat by the Serb police gathered into the ditch to create a horror scene which was sure to have an appalling effect on public opinion? Dont the violence and rapidity of Belgrades reaction, which gave the chief of the KVM forty-eight hours to leave Yugoslavia, show that the Yugoslavs are sure of what they are saying? Only an international inquiry above all suspicion will make it possible to clarify these obscure points. Finnish and Belurussian legal doctors were expected to arrive in Pristina on Wednesday to attend the autopsies being carried out by Yugoslav doctors. The problem is that the Belgrade authorities have never been cooperative in this matter. Why? Whatever the conclusions of the investigators, the Racak massacre shows that the hope of soon reaching a settlement of the Kosovo crisis seems quite illusory. END Report by Christophe Chatelot, Le Monde, dated 21 January 1999. WARHAWK BEHIND U.S. KOSOVO POLICY/ AMB. WALKER COVERED UP REAL MASSACRES IN EL SALVADOR By Gary Wilson When the U.S. news media began to report that a massacre had taken place on Jan. 15 in Yugoslavias Kosovo province, most relied for their information on statements by U.S. Ambassador William Walker. On Walkers say-so, U.S.-NATO warplanes could begin bombing this small country, which has already had large pieces torn out of it in recent years. Its important that the world know who Walker is: a U.S. State Department veteran who directed the dirty war against El Salvador and Nicaragua in the 1980s and lied about every aspect of it. Walker, now the head of a NATO-imposed inspection team in Kosovo, said he had visited the site of the alleged massacre and declared that he knew all the facts. He was the judge, jury and executioner all in one. Not even a district attorney in any United States city could so boldly make such a declaration. Guilty first. Evidence later. The Yugoslav government ordered Walkers expulsion. The U.S. media all said this was in order to cover up what had really happened. But thats turning reality on its head. It was Walker who spoke out before the facts could be known. He thus guaranteed that Washingtons version of what happened became the official version. Thats a real cover-up. WHO IS WALKER? Who is Ambassador Walker? Is he the Richard Butler of Kosovo, as many in the Balkans now believe? Butler, an Australian acting as the head of the United Nations inspection force in Iraq, has secretly worked for U.S. military and intelligence services. Members of the UN Security Council have even charged him with fabricating his last report to fit the needs of Washington in order to justify the Pentagons December bombing campaign against Iraq. Walker heads up a NATO inspection team in Kosovo. Who makes up the team? "Sizable numbers have military backgrounds; a lesser number, but also a sizable number, have police backgrounds," Walker said at a State Department news conference Jan. 8 (official transcript, U.S. Information Service). When asked if the Kosovo team was a spy team like the UNSCOM group in Iraq, Walker replied, "I hope everyone on my mission is trying to gather as much intelligence as they possibly can." Questioned again, "Are you reporting it back to Washington?" Walker replied, "A lot of it comes back to Washington, but it goes to all the capitals [of the NATO powers]." Sounds a lot like whats been happening in Iraq. Is Walker someone who can be trusted to tell the truth about what is happening in Kosovo? Or does his past history show that he is the master of the political lie and cover-up? Walker is commonly portrayed in the U.S. media as a career diplomat now caught in the Balkan quagmire. But thats not quite the reality. Walker does have a long career in the U.S. State Department. It is how he spent that career that sheds some light on what he is doing today. AN AIDE TO ELIOT ABRAMS AND OLIVER NORTH Walker began his diplomatic career in 1961 in Peru. In 1985 he was made deputy assistant secretary of state for Central America. He was a key operator in the Reagan White Houses operation to overthrow the Nicaraguan government, run by Lt. Col. Oliver North and Assistant Secretary of State Eliot Abrams. Walker was a special assistant to Abrams, according to charges filed in U.S. District Court by Independent Counsel Lawrence Walsh. According to the court record, Walker was responsible for setting up a phony humanitarian operation at an airbase in Ilopango, El Salvador. It was secretly used to run guns, ammunition and supplies to the contra mercenaries attacking Nicaragua. Independent Counsel Walsh believed that Walker was one of the key players in Oliver Norths operations, according to court records. Later, from 1988 to 1992, Walker was the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador. That was the period when military death squads reigned. Many in these death squads were trained at the U.S. militarys School of the Americas at Ft. Benning near Columbus, Ga. SILENT PARTICIPANT IN KILLING OF JESUITS A document presented last Nov. 16 by anti-war activists at a protest outside the School of the Americas gave details of one of the massacres:"On Nov. 16, 1989, an armed group of men from El Salvadors U.S.-trained Atlacatl military battalion, most of them SOA graduates, entered a dormitory of the Jos, Simecn Caas University of Central America at 2:30 to 3 a.m. They dragged six priests from their beds and then shot them in the head. Then they killed the priests cook and her 15-year-old daughter." The priests were believed to be sympathetic to the liberation army fighting against the U.S.-backed government. The Jesuits have charged that Walker was a "silent participant" in the massacre. Years later, on May 6, 1996, Walker headed a ceremony in Washington to honor 5,000 U.S. soldiers who had secretly fought in El Salvador. At the time Walker was ambassador, the official story was that there were only 50 U.S. military "advisers" in El Salvador. (Washington Post, May 6, 1996) AN EXPERIENCED LIAR So Walker is not someone used to telling the truth. He could not honestly be characterized as an independent observer or a human rights advocate. He is probably up to his old tricks in Kosovo. This time, his actions give backing to a different contra army, the contra "Kosovo Liberation Army." Some European newspapers have begun to refer to NATO as the KLA Air Force. Walkers actions are clearly meant to destabilize the Yugoslav government. His statements could be used to justify a NATO military attack, if the U.S. government decides to do that. On Jan. 12, three top Yugoslav officials, including a prominent opponent of the government of Slobodan Milosevic, held a news conference to show a top-secret CIA document on U.S. plans to oust Milosevic. The document said that $35 million was to be funneled to opposition groups in Yugoslavia. The U.S. Senate has passed a bill calling for the overthrow of Milosevic. A war is being waged against the government of Yugoslavia. The so-called Kosovo Liberation Army, which has adopted the uniform of the fascist occupiers of the region during World War II, has backing from the United States, Germany and Israel. On news of the alleged massacre, right-wing Israeli Arial Sharon wrote a statement that was passed by parliament condemning the Yugoslav government and calling for its ouster. No one should get caught up in the media hysteria of the moment. The truth of what happened in the Kosovo village of Racak may never be fully known. Yugoslav forensic teams were prevented by the KLA from visiting the site or examining the bodies before Walker made his statements. The story given out to the world has come through Walker and his team of military "experts." A READER RESPONDS TO ARTICLE Stephanie Niketic wrote: Gary Wilsons article "Warhawk behind U.S. Kosovo policy" is truly excellent. However, Mr. Wilson makes three errors I know of regarding the Kosovo situation which can undermine the entire piece if left uncorrected: One, the Racak "massacre" is said to have taken place on Jan. 15, not Jan. 14. Two, the document which upset the Yugoslavian government was not "a top-secret CIA" document, as claimed by Milosevic. It was a report written by the "U.S. Institute for Peace," available on their web site (www.usip.org ) for about a month. It does call for U.S. funding of "democracy" in Yugoslavia to increase from the current $15 million to $35 million. But who is the USIP? It is funded by Congress and run by presidential appointees, including the State Department Under Secretary for Intelligence and someone from the Department of Defense. If it quacks like a duck and walks like a duck...? Three, I follow this pretty closely and I know of no Senate bill passed calling for the overthrow of Milosevic. The Senate did pass a non-binding resolution last summer calling for his indictment by the International War Crimes Tribunal. If Im wrong on this, I would really like to know about it! Stephanie Niketic Gary Wilson replies: Thanks for your remarks. Youve give me a chance to elaborate on some points that space limitations kept me from doing in the original article. The date of the alleged massacre was Jan. 15, and the typographical error has been fixed on the web version of the article. On the second point, I reported what was said at the news conference in Belgradethat the papers came from the CIA. Since I had space limitations I did not elaborate more fully. I felt that since the CIA is often used generically to refer to all spy operations by Washington, it could stand. As youve noted, the documents they presented were actually prepared by the United States Institute for Peace, an agency set up and funded by the U.S. Congress. The USIP is like many Cold War organizations funded by the U.S. government and secretly tied to the CIA. As youve noted, this looks like a duck. The head of the USIP is Chester Crocker. Under him is Max Kampelman. Crocker was a Reagan administration official whose policy of "constructive engagement" strengthened and emboldened the racist apartheid government of South Africa. Kampelman was also a Reagan administration official who has spent much of the 1990s advocating the breakup of Yugoslavia and a NATO military occupation of the Balkans. Finally, the term overthrow was inaccurate. An overthrow might imply a popular uprising. The Senate knows thats not about to happen and doesnt want to take such a chance. A better choice of terms might have been to say that the Senate has called for a foreign military takeover of the Yugoslav government much like the U.S. military takeover of the Panamanian government of Manuel Noriega in 1989. The Senate resolution you refer toSenate Concurrent Resolution 105does more than call Milosevic a criminal. It lays the groundwork for justifying a foreign invasion of Yugoslavia by U.S.-led NATO forces for the purposes of dismantling the Milosevic government. The resolution says that "the United States should engage with other members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and other interested states in a discussion of measures to be taken to apprehend" Milosevic and members of his government.
15
posted on
04/16/2002 12:32:37 PM PDT
by
akbsz
To: OldFriend
When are we going to apologizes to Serbia, and pay them for the undeserved destruction? Let Slobo go, and give the Serbians arms to fight the Moslem infiltrators from Iran/Saudi Arabia!
To: philosofy123
Recently heard slick willie bragging about how we supported the islamic fundamentalists in Bosnia and Albania.
Albania was on the list of terror nations and our navy was ordered NOT to enter their port...........that is, until Albania became slick willie's new best friends.
What a sad day in our history when we allowed the media in general and christianne amanpour of CNN in particular to foist this lie on America.
Comment #18 Removed by Moderator
Comment #19 Removed by Moderator
To: ABrit
Don't worry about this thread - Milosevic's defence in this matter (the bodies were moved) was one of the first lies, and has already been disproven.
The rest is just the usual smokescreen of BS. Milosevic doesn't have the luxury of all his henchmen of ascribing his crimes to his superiors or to simply following orders, and he's going to get his ass handed to him on this one.
20
posted on
04/16/2002 2:55:48 PM PDT
by
Hoplite
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