Just being provocative.
Posted on 02/15/2002 11:11:17 AM PST by Spar
osevic: U.S. Was Ally of Al Qaeda in Kosovo
Fri Feb 15, 1:08 PM ET
By Andrew Roche
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) told his war crimes trial on Friday "genocidal" U.S. forces had been the unwitting ally of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) in Kosovo, and demanded Bill Clinton and other Western leaders come to testify.
Bin Laden's al Qaeda was "one of the fundamentalist groups which sent a unit to fight in Kosovo" alongside Muslim Kosovo Albanians aided by the United States against Serb forces in 1998-9, the fallen Yugoslav leader told The Hague (news - web sites) tribunal.
"The attacks on New York and Washington show what the terrorism you sponsored looks like when it turns against you," he said in a speech that ranged across centuries of history and much of the globe, and exhausted court interpreters.
Milosevic, 60, was extradited from Belgrade seven months ago to a jail cell in The Hague. On Tuesday his trial began for crimes against humanity in Kosovo in 1999 and in Croatia in 1991-2, and for genocide in the 1992-5 Bosnian war.
Prosecutors have this week portrayed him as prime mover in a decade of massacres, torture, mass rape and expulsions by Serbs.
In a second day of reply to prosecutors' opening addresses, he blamed the carnage entirely on his Balkan enemies and NATO (news - web sites). Echoing the language of his indictment, he said the West itself had committed "genocide and crimes against humanity."
"I'm asking what kind of tribunal this is, if you refuse to try people for these crimes by the leaders and armies of NATO countries," a coolly pugnacious Milosevic told judges.
On the fourth day of what is forecast to be a marathon case, he insisted the hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo in 1999 during the NATO air war against Yugoslavia had been driven out not by Serbs but by their fellow Albanians.
The guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) "referred to all Albanians who did not flee Kosovo as traitors," he said, creating an "illusion of exodus." "There were hundreds of cameras waiting at the borders to show alleged Serb misdeeds."
The motive was to justify NATO's attack, said Milosevic, showing the court pictures of carbonized bodies of civilians killed by NATO bombs in Kosovo and the rest of Serbia in 1999.
CHINESE EMBASSY BOMBING
NATO missiles destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, in what Washington insisted was a mistake by Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites) target planners using an outdated map.
"It is quite clear that (former U.S. president) Clinton wanted to go down in history as the first man to bomb Chinese territory by bombing the Chinese embassy," Milosevic said. "This was no accident."
Milosevic accused Germany of setting out to destroy old communist Yugoslavia by its support for Slovenian and Croatian independence, and by secret backing of Albanian "terrorists."
"The German intelligence service rallied up criminals from all over Europe. They were pushed to Kosovo," he said.
Bin Laden, meanwhile, used anarchic Albania as a launchpad for violence in the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe, he said.
Some Muslim "terrorists" in Kosovo, had they not been jailed by Serbia, would now be "going in chains to Guantanamo Bay" from Afghanistan (news - web sites) instead, the white-haired Milosevic insisted.
"While Americans transport al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo...at the same time they demand all Albanian terrorists be freed from prisons in Yugoslavia," he added.
The involvement in the Balkans of Mujahideen guerrillas from Arab states and Afghanistan is well-documented, and U.S. agents followed the trail of bin Laden and his followers in Albania and Kosovo itself, before the September 11 attacks.
Accusing NATO of the use of especially lethal cluster bombs, he showed the court a photograph of a Serb woman killed while plowing her field and corpses of children in pajamas.
"This is an example of bestiality, targeting people in this way," he said, adding NATO bombed at night to maximize deaths among sleeping civilians. He showed pictures of shattered hospitals, an old people's home, buses, houses and workplaces, some strewn with charred and bloodied bodies.
After NATO occupied Kosovo in June 1999, they allowed Serbs to be killed or forced out by Albanian "terrorists" and "savages." More than 100 Serb Orthodox churches were razed in a campaign he likened to Taliban destruction of Buddhist statues.
Kosovo, seen by Serbs as a historic heartland, was now run by an "Albanian drug mafia" and the sex-slave trade, he said.
CALLS CLINTON, ALBRIGHT, BLAIR, SCHROEDER
"I am going to call witnesses here and I want it to be possible to question Clinton and Albright and Kinkel and Schroeder and Kohl and Dini... Kofi Annan (news - web sites)... Blair," he said, listing Western and U.N. leaders involved in Balkan peace talks.
Milosevic wants them to testify that the West used him as a peacemaker in the Bosnian war before turning against him.
Under the tribunal's procedures Milosevic is expected to produce a list of witnesses he wants called. The three judges have the final say on whether witnesses are subpoenaed.
The reformist Yugoslav government, which handed Milosevic to The Hague, on Friday called his testimony "disgusting." But the Russian parliament branded the tribunal a "political" court which had failed to charge NATO states for atrocities.
During his afternoon speech, Milosevic compared Clinton's strategy in fighting the Kosovo war to that of Adolf Hitler's: to establish a strategic base from which to attack Russia. He described the policy the Austro-Hungarian empire had adopted toward the territories of the crumbling Ottoman empire in the 19th and 20th centuries, that of keeping Serbia weak and the Balkans divided, he said. Presiding Judge Richard May urged Milosevic to slow down so interpreters could keep up.
Dressed in a navy suit and a tie in the red, blue and white Serbian colors, Milosevic sits flanked by seated guards in a courtroom sealed off from the public gallery by a bullet-proof glass wall and equipped with computer screens and cameras.
Milosevic is conducting his own defense, after refusing to appoint counsel or enter a formal plea on the grounds the court has no right to judge him, but is advised by Belgrade lawyers.
Judges have entered not guilty pleas on his behalf and appointed three lawyers as "friends of the court" to ensure he gets a fair trial. The "friends" on Friday appealed for judges to give him leeway in the length of his address, and he was allowed to continue on Monday until 1 p.m.
Milosevic could face life in prison if convicted at the end of an epic trial some expect to last at least two years.
What does it matter what they "can do" when they won't do it? Eventually the American press did report the errors found in NATO's numbers - but not until well after the bombing had stopped and the damage was done and it was too late to protest. What U.S. war correspondent will advance his career by saying, "Wait a minute! We shouldn't be here - we're on the wrong side - our President and Pentagon officials and NATO spokesmen are LYING"?
The fact is George Soros funded anti-Milosevic publications like the newspaper Danas and Vreme published freely while Milosevic was in power. These publications not only published anti-Milosevic propaganda, but anti-Serb propaganda. They are still there publishing anti-Serb propaganda now that Milosevic's gone.
In fact, there is actually less freedom of press today in Serbia. There is little criticism of the foreign-sponsored government, and there is no criticism of the West. Which is exactly what NWO Nazis mean by "freedom of the press".
Yeah, with allies like the west it was a very tough decision to make. They probably should have fought, but again. If your "western allies" dump you once, why not twice and if beaten the whole nation gets killed.
Good to see some discussion of how the present can come to influence our evaluation, or re-evaluation of our past.
It's hard to be critical of the Czechs for choosing to stay alive instead of making a futile resistance against a much more powerful army. It's true Czechoslovakia, at the time, was no slouch as far as military and industrial capacity goes, but they knew full well fighting alone would only mean heavy casualties on their side. In all likeliehood, the Czechs saw what the Serbs refused to see: their resistance would only benefit the other powers such as the Soviet Union and the United States, and not the people of Czechoslovakia or Serbia, especially those who died in the onslaught.
Perhaps the Czechs could argue they were only being good Americans, because as you might care to recall, German aggression and expansionism did not at all concern the United States at the time, so why should it have bothered any Czech?
If you look at the map of Europe today, there is no longer any state called Czechoslovakia. Instead there is a Czech Republic and Slovakia, exactly as in Hitler's time. The dissolution of the once multi-ethnic state is now seen as "democratic" because it was carried out with the blessing of the United States, like the dissolution of Yugoslavia, another country carved up by German aggression.
The experience of the last 64 years in Europe, has inspired a certain breed of genetic mutant to come to power in the once independent states now preparing themselves for dissolution into a "European Union": what we should call the Blair-Havel. The Blair-Havel is immediately distinguishable by its political behavior; travelling the world, hand raised in salute to Washington, preferably with a champagne glass in hand (although hardly necessary) while vocalizing the most fawning platitudes in tribute to the new Reich. The Blair-Havel watches the Emperor closely, pleading for the opportunity to refill his glass, build up his ego, or merely amuse his press corps by getting down on one's knees and panting like a dog.
To be fair to Bush, Clinton and the U.N., throughout history it's always been next to impossible to keep the peace in the Balkans.
Exactly. So why then doesn't Bush say "we don't need this Balkan jerk-off, we have bigger fish to fry elsewhere" and bring all the Americans home -- as Clinton promised from Bosnia after six months?
I was in Europe for all of it. My news came mainly from German and British media plus a little CNN. Their pictures of the events were pretty much the same, but often with a more critical slant. How much was the major Serbian media reaching most of the population deviating from the party line?
Serbia had functioning democratic system.
Kind of like how we have a functioning democratic system, where the Republicrat Party has the only chance of winning an election, except they had only one party run by him. But at least our party has two faces, and our sitting presidents don't try to stay in office when voted out by a clear margin, only leaving after massive protests in the streets.
Only after West poured huge number of money into financing subversive groups like Otpor the anti-democratic coup took place.
Subversive only to Milosovic's party. The west giving the opposition parties money was probably the only way they could win a contest rigged against them, and overcome the massive advantage Milosovic had in controlling the mass media.
It is true. Check out the links:
Al Qaeda trained terrorists for Kashmir: Documents (got anti-aircraft rockets from Albanians - more)
Afghans Selling Abandoned Al Qaeda Terrorist Material Including Albanian Passports (My Title)
Journey to the heart of darkness (Aussie al-Qaeda Islam convert fought in Kosovo with Albanian KLA)
OKLAHOMA BOMBING LINKED TO BIN LADEN (Captured Chemical Notes Say in Bosnian ‘Was used in Oklahoma’)
Kind of like how we have a functioning democratic system, where the Republicrat Party has the only chance of winning an election, except they had only one party run by him. But at least our party has two faces, and our sitting presidents don't try to stay in office when voted out by a clear margin, only leaving after massive protests in the streets
You mean like what happened with Gore in Florida, Quila???
Only after West poured huge number of money into financing subversive groups like Otpor the anti-democratic coup took place.
Subversive only to Milosovic's party. The west giving the opposition parties money was probably the only way they could win a contest rigged against them, and overcome the massive advantage Milosovic had in controlling the mass media.
Gee Quila, if it's illegal and subversive for the Chinese to contribute in our American political system it seems only fair that the Yugoslavs would feel the same about Clinton money.
Just being provocative.
BTW, I should change my Balkans bump list from an alias that used to start with "P" to "Spar" right?
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