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Remember Kosovo? By Cliff Kincaid | December 28, 2004 Clinton's policy was not to bomb those terrorists but to support them and bomb the Christian Serbs. AIM put together a list of the most underreported or buried stories of 2004, and one of them was the resurgence of anti-Serb, anti-Christian violence in Kosovo. Dozens were killed and more Christian churches were destroyed there. Kosovo got some attention near the end of the year when newspapers covered the fact that a former leader of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the KLA, became prime minister in a new Kosovo-based government. A story in...

PRISTINA, Kosovo - Blaga Stevic doesn't have a problem with his ethnic Albanian neighbors, and they don't have a problem with him. Stevic, a Serb who was born here, fled with his family to Serbia after NATO went to war in 1999 on behalf of Kosovo's ethnic Albanian majority. He was afraid of revenge-minded extremists, he said, not the Albanian residents of his tiny hilltop village of Stara Kolonija. So when the United Nations offered to restore his damaged home last year, he decided it was time to return. "We're all in good relations here," Stevic said, drawing a nod...

For the last two days the Prosecution was busy with 3 new witnesses and few technical/legal debates in open court. This all was just quantity and their case further caved in. First, they invited our Government representative to discuss documents needed for this 'trial'. I saw a piece of this argument, read reports of it in our press and heard bits on TV, and I also read a JCI article on that. It is always far more significant what JCI omits to report than what it actually reports. In her last piece, titled 'Trial Chamber Declines to Order Serbia-Montenegro to...

The story of Dragan Vasiljkovic, alias Captain Dragan, is a very simple one: he went twice to Krajina, first time in April 1991 when he was under the command of the Krajina Police; in August he was expelled by Babic. The second time he went there after the Croats attacked UNPA zones (Miljevac Plateau), in a car with two other men and they put themselves at the disposal of the Krajina Army, because he 'couldn't calmly walk about the Belgrade streets while all that was happening'. His mission both times was to help train volunteers and to participate in combat...

There was another witness, who testified yesterday and today: C-025. This was another protected Serb from CRO, a former policeman, but from a region first time introduced - Baranja. For those unfamiliar, it's a rich flat triangle between rivers Drava and Danube, almost at the far east of CRO, not far from Vukovar. What is interesting about this particular piece of Serb-inhabited territory, it didn't exactly have too many clashes, actually hardly any. Thus, any potential witness living there has very little to testify, and C-025 couldn't and didn't meet the Prosecution's needs. Why they called him to the stand...

To get the idea of the flimsiness of Babic's testimony (or better, the enormity of the Prosecution's despair), see what they consider as valid evidence. One of the accusations made by Babic (and gladly used and exploited by the Prosecution) was the alleged existence of a sinister plan of Milosevic to use the human material of the Krajina refugees to people Kosmet with the Serbs. A bolder version of this accusation was that he let Krajina perish precisely for that purpose. In order to give meat to that ghost, the Prosecution instructed Babic to dwell endlessly upon the 1995 exodus,...

It's not polite to gloat, but let me just say - I told you so. C-061 is Milan Babic. He decided to act brave and remove the protection, but alas - only the last day of his testimony, after hampering the cross-examination by closed sessions for days. Though all transcripts are to become public now, we heard at the very end that the Trial Chamber is to deliberate whether to keep some of the investigation tapes secret after all. What is this? Those tapes are crucial (according to both Milosevic and Tapuskovic) in proving Babic guilty of perjury. Will the...

Kosovo Investment Conference October 18, 2002, 08:30 - 18:00 October 19, 2002, 09:30 - 12:30 On October 18-19th, 2002 the Provisional Institutions of Self-Government will sponsor the Kosovo Investment Conference (KICO) at the New York Hilton Hotel. KICO will bring together officials from Kosovo and interested members of the U.S. business community, particularly Kosovo-Albanian non-residents, to explore possibilities in investment and privatization in Kosovo. The conference will feature senior UNMIK officials; Prime Minister Bajram Rexhepi; Mr. Behxhet Brajshori, Minister of Youth, Sports & Non-Residential Affairs; Mr. Ali Sadriu, Minister of Economy and Finance; and Mr. Ali Jakupi, Minister of Trade...

THE HAGUE, Oct 2 (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic slammed the credibility of evidence from Croatia's president on Wednesday, saying Stjepan Mesic had Serb villages torched in the Balkan conflicts of the early 1990s. The two repeatedly clashed as former Yugoslav president Milosevic cross-examined Mesic. "I see you have a real hang-up about Milosevic. You mentioned me in every other sentence yesterday," said Milosevic, charged with committing genocide in Bosnia and crimes against humanity in Croatia. "According to your instructions Serb villages (in Croatia) were destroyed," Milosevic, who is conducting his own defence, told Mesic. "That has nothing to do with...

Published on September 20, 2002 Kosovo Over Baghdad Subjective Objectivity by Paul Reyfman In 1999, most Americans supported President Clinton in his fight to oust Yugoslavian dictator Slobodan Milosevic. At the time, few liberals said things about Milosevic like Milton Viorst did in a Sept. 12 New York Times opinion piece about Saddam Hussein: "The Soviet Union's ultimate fall with barely a whimper vindicated America's patience, and in time Saddam Hussein too will vanish." Why was it not sufficient to wait for Milosevic's regime to fall apart? The case against Yugoslavia was simple: genocide. In a statement to Congress on...

If This Man is a War Criminal Where is All the Evidence?As the prosecution's star witness gives testimony, how Milosevic is making fools of Blair and the Westby John LaughlandThe Sunday Mail 8/27/02 In the great film with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton, the "Witness for the Prosecution" appears in court and gives exactly the opposite testimony from what was expected. You would not know it from our media – which passed over the event in silence – but the same thing happened at The Hague recently, in the most important war crimes trial since Nuremberg, that of the...

Front Page World UK UK Politics Business Sci/Tech Health Education Sport Entertainment Talking Point In Depth On Air Archive FeedbackLow GraphicsHelp Tuesday, May 18, 1999 Published at 21:23 GMT 22:23 UK World: EuropeThe refugees who remainedAn ethnic Albanian walks past Yugoslav soldiers in KosovoBy Jacky Rowland in Pristina, Kosovo Many displaced Kosovo Albanian refugees have settled in other parts of Kosovo, reportedly without harassment from the Serbian security forces. These examples stand in stark contrast to persistent reports from refugees arriving in Macedonia and Albania of serious human rights abuses committed in Kosovo. In the village of Svetlje in...

Milosevic master spy says no expulsion from Kosovo THE HAGUE, The Netherlands (Reuters) - The man who led Serbia's police during the Kosovo conflict denied Friday that Yugoslav forces engaged in a scheme to clear the province of ethnic Albanians during the 1998-1999 campaign. Prosecutors accuse former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic of overseeing a Serbian "ethnic cleansing" campaign to clear Kosovo of its majority ethnic Albanians. They had hoped insider witnesses who held top positions under Milosevic, would verify his ultimate responsibility for events in Kosovo. But Rade Markovic, one of the highest-ranking insider prosecution witnesses to take the stand...