• A picture that says more than 1000 words

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Twenty members of the Council of State (Greece's supreme
 administrative court) have issued a statement deploring the
 international crimes against Yugoslavia, which inaugurate a "period of lawlessness"
and bring us back to the "eras of the Holy Alliance and the Axis."
 NATO was found guilty of an unprecedented and barbaric attack
 against Yugoslavia in a statement signed by
20 high- ranking judges of the Greek Council of State,
headed by its most senior vice-president Michalis Dekleris. In this important statement, the judges condemn the
NATO bombardments, denounce the international crimes being
committed by the NATO countries through this armed attack,
  and warn that any law passed deciding to involve Greece in this
 war will constitute a gross violation of the Constitution.

 For the first time since the bombing began, Greek judges
have taken a stand and, citing legal arguments, point out that the NATO
offensive against  Yugoslavia has inaugurated a period of lawlessness in
international relations,  bringing us back to the eras of the Holy Alliance and the
Axis. In fact, they pointed out that "this attack is accompanied by the
revival of black propaganda  that attempts to exploit the misfortunes of the refugees
to draw public attention  away from the violation of international law."

   1. NATO's offensive against a sovereign European state,
unprecedented in the post-war years, is an affront not only to the ethical
principles of Greek and  European civilisation, but also to the fundamental
precepts of international law. This latter is a legal issue and should not be
overshadowed by the moral revulsion that is justly provoked by this cowardly and
barbaric attack. On the contrary, this issue is of primary importance and must be
clarified in particular by  those who have a competent opinion about the Law, since
their duty is to serve it.

    2. This inexcusable attack is taking place in flagrant
violation of articles 1 and 2  of the United Nations Charter, which expressly prohibits
the use of violence in  international relations, and designates the Security
Council (article 41 ff.) exclusively competent in international crises. According
to these provisions, but also to the generally recognised precepts of
international law, there is no room for self-appointed crisis managers, nor is it permitted,
on any pretext whatsoever, for third countries to intervene in the
internal affairs of a sovereign state.

   3. But this attack even violates the NATO Charter, the
exclusive purpose of which is collective defence of the area defined therein
that coincides with the  boundaries of its member states, and which has expressly
committed itself in its international relations to refrain from the threat or use
of violence in any way  whatsoever that is incompatible with the principles and
purposes of the UN  (article 1). That is, by its own Charter, NATO has been
placed under the rule of   the UN Charter. And it could not have been otherwise,
since no international  organisation or alliance can be placed above the United
Nations.

    4. In addition, both the United Nations Charter and all
generally recognised  precepts of international law safeguard the equality and
sovereignty of all  peoples, irrespective of their numbers and power, and do
not recognise any  jurisdiction on the part of powerful nations to intervene
in the internal affairs of  weaker nations or to dictate solutions to their own
liking. Consequently, however serious the crisis in Kosovo may be, it remains
an internal Yugoslav  affair and belongs to the exclusive jurisdiction of the
sovereign Yugoslav state.  Any humanitarian or other interest on the part of the UN,
other international organisations or third countries may be manifested only
in a peaceful way and by  diplomatic means within the context of the UN Charter.

   5. And, in this case, the United Nations, respecting
these restrictions, remained  within its jurisdiction, recommending to the lawful
government of Yugoslavia that  they fulfil their obligations (Security Council
resolutions No 1160/31.3.1998 and  1199/23.9.1998). But behind the scenes, the NATO military
alliance appeared  in a self-appointed role, and without having - nor could
it have had - any  competence to become involved in this matter, having
first dictated an insolent  ultimatum disputing the very sovereignty of Yugoslavia,
then launched an  aggressive war against this state, demanding that it
conform to NATO demands.  This attack is accompanied by the revival of dark
propaganda that attempts to  exploit the misery of the refugees to draw public
attention away from the violation of international law.

   6. The legal significance of these actions should not be
concealed nor  underestimated. By their armed attack, the NATO countries
are committing the  following international crimes, in accordance with the
charter being drafted for  the International Criminal Court, which refers to the
Geneva Conventions dated 12 August 1949 (UN Doc. A/CONF/183/9) and in particular:
a) the crime of   waging an offensive war, with the violent destruction of
human life, cultural  monuments and entire settlements, b) the crime of
genocide by the deliberate  destruction of the infrastructure of the Serbian
community and the creation in it of  conditions that lead to its physical annihilation, and c)
the crime of ecological  destruction by the use of military technology that causes
damage to people's  health and to the natural environment, a crime also
committed against third  countries to which deadly pollution is carried.

   7. During the recent Washington summit, the leadership of
the attacking NATO  countries tried to amend the provisions of its Charter to
make it autonomous in  continuing the attack on Yugoslavia, and also with regard
to its plans for the  future in carrying out so-called peace-making and
humanitarian interventions  under the pretext of "crisis management"! It tried in
vain. The only valid crisis  management, according to international law, remains as
ever the UN. And no other organisation that is by definition inferior to it
can remove or usurp this role.   NATO cannot abolish international law nor can it produce
new, generally  recognised precepts of international legality. Its new
Charter affects only the  governments that signed it. And even if it is ratified by
the national Parliaments of  its member states, it will declare the intentions of just
19 out of a total of 158  states on the planet. The remaining states will not
tolerate the falsification or  mockery of international law. They reject the theory that
might is right, whether  overt or disguised. And small states like Greece will be
in danger if they  relinquish rights which have been undisputed for
centuries. The truth is that  NATO's attack on Yugoslavia inaugurates a period of
lawlessness in  international relations. We are returning to the era of
the Holy Alliance and the  Axis, against which humanity, and the Greeks in
particular, fought with such great sacrifices.

   8. Having become involved in this crisis Greece has no
option other than to do  what its culture and Constitution dictate, namely to
follow the generally recognised precepts of international law, to seek the
consolidation of peace, and  to use its armed forces only for defensive purposes
(article 2 para 2 and article 4  para 6 of the Constitution). In the light of these
provisions of the Constitution of  the Hellenic State and the provisions of the United
Nations Charter, it is possible  to interpret the provisions of articles 27 para 2 and 28
para 3 of the Constitution, which after a special law is passed, make
it possible for foreign troops to sojourn in or travel across the Hellenic State
or for national sovereignty  to be restricted. These provisions could, however, be
implemented only with  respect to the participation of Greece in a defensive
war, and not to facilitate an  attack against a third state. Consequently, the
involvement of Greece in this on-going war against Yugoslavia cannot be decided upon
even by law because  such a law would be totally unconstitutional.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
  In addition to Mr. Dekleris, this statement was signed by
the following Council of State members: St. Sarivalasis, Ioanna Mari, Dim.
Kostopoulos, Evdoxia Galanou, Sot. Rizos, Pan. Pikrammenos, Nik. Sakellariou,
Th. Papaevangellou,  Nik. Rozos, Dion. Marinakis, St. Haralambos and associate
judges Maria  Karamanov, Ekaterini Christoforidou, I. Kapelousos, Dim.
Alexandris, Eleni Anagnostopoulou, Euth. Antonopoulos, Varvara Kapitsi,
Theo. Aravanis.

Belgrade -- Hats off to Lieutenant-General Michael C.
Short of the United States Air Force. Thanks to
Lt.-Gen. Short, NATO's claim that the air war in
Yugoslavia is not directed at civilians has been
stripped of its last shreds of credibility.

When he sat down for an interview with The Washington
Post last weekend, the general made it plain that the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization is trying to do
much more than just hurt the Yugoslav military when it
bombs bridges, power plants and water-pumping
stations. It is trying to break the will of the
Serbian people and foment an uprising against
President Slobodan Milosevic.

Here is what he said about how he hoped Serbs would
react to the devastation of their country. "If you
wake up in the morning and you have no power to your
house and no gas to your stove and the bridge you take
to work is down and will be lying in the Danube for
the next 20 years, I think you begin to ask, 'Hey,
Slobo, what's this all about? How much more of this do
we have to withstand?' And at some point, you make the
transition from applauding Serb machismo against the
world to thinking what your country is going to look
like if this continues."

There you have it, straight from the man in charge of
the air campaign. This is no longer a short-term air
strike against the Yugoslav government, as it began,
or even a long-term campaign against the Yugoslav
military, as it became.

It is a war of attrition against the whole Serbian
nation. The aim is to make ordinary people so
miserable, so afraid and so discouraged that they will
rise up in anger against Mr. Milosevic and force him
to pull out of Kosovo. If NATO's generals can't do the
job, the Serbs will do it for them.

You have to be here to understand how absurd that is.
People in Belgrade are simply amazed at the
boneheadedness of the NATO strategy, and when I ask
people what they think of it, they sputter with
outrage, frustration and incomprehension.

A good part of the population already opposes Mr.
Milosevic; so those people need no incentive to
dislike him. The idea that they might be bombed into
disliking him more is laughable. People here are so
angry at the bombing, and so involved with the daily
struggle to survive under a bombardment, that they
have little time or inclination for politics.

Even the fiercest critics of the government find the
bombing repugnant and ridiculous. After fighting Mr.
Milosevic for years, they feel they are being punished
for his crimes. While bombs fall all around them, he
is safe in a bunker somewhere, more powerful than
ever. "I am the mother of a son," one bright-eyed
young woman said yesterday as her three-year-old
played on the floor. "We are suffering, Milosevic
isn't. He has all the cards."

The bombing does seem to have strengthened Mr.
Milosevic, not necessarily by making him more popular
but by giving him a perfect excuse to crush dissent.
These days in Yugoslavia, anyone who opposes his
regime is called a traitor. The editor of a leading
independent newspaper was murdered last month -- a
reminder, everyone here assumes, that in wartime it is
best not to criticize.

The Belgrade headquarters of the opposition Democratic
Party has been repeatedly stoned and defaced by a
rent-a-mob. In such an atmosphere, a veteran
opposition figure told me in a darkened caf? during a
power outage, "to say the opposition should speak up
now is a call to suicide."

Yet that is just what the allies appear to be saying.
Newsweek magazine reported this week that U.S.
President Bill Clinton had authorized a plan to use
the Central Intelligence Agency to destabilize Mr.
Milosevic. As if the systematic destruction of
Yugoslavia's infrastructure were not enough, the plan
reportedly includes a scheme to train Albanian rebels
to carry out a campaign of sabotage in Serbia.

Asked about the plan, Connecticut Senator Joseph
Lieberman said, "I wouldn't be surprised if we were
using it here as part of an effort to bring the war in
Kosovo home to the people, the civilians in Belgrade,
so that they pressure Milosevic to break and make an
agreement with NATO."

Okay, so here is the plan. We rain bombs on their
heads for a couple more months. Then we send Albanian
terrorists to blow up what's left. Then we tell them
to rise up en masse against a man whose ruthlessness
we have compared with Hitler's.

Thank you, Senator Lieberman. Thank you, General
Short. Now we know what this war is really about.

To justify their assault on Serbia, the United States and its obedient NATO
allies claimed they had no choice. As the official story goes, Slobodan
Milosevic (suddenly the reincarnation of Hitler who has the power to make
all other citizens of Yugoslavia invisible to the Clinton administration)
refused to negotiate and rejected the Rambouillet peace agreement.
Therefore, there was nothing else to do but bomb Yugoslavia.

This preposterous lie is only one among countless others. In reality,
Belgrade never refused to negotiate. Rambouillet was never about
negotiations. It was about presenting the Serbs with an ultimatum precisely
designed to provide the pretext for NATO bombing. Rambouillet was a tragic
farce, a low point in the history of diplomacy, in which the United States
had to coax and cajole a band of well-armed criminals into signing the
death warrant of their adversary, the legitimate government of Yugoslavia.

The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) is scarcely the sort of outfit one might
expect to see invited to a famous French chateau to decide on the future of
war and peace in Europe. The connection between KLA gunmen and the ethnic
Albanians who dominate the heroin traffic through the Balkans from Turkey
to Switzerland and Germany has been widely reported. As for ideology,
violent ethnic Albanian irredentism has switched opportunistically from
fascism during World War II, to "Marxism-Leninism" in the days of Albanian
dictator Enver Hoxha, to today's enthusiasm for NATO. The constant factor
is hatred of Serbs in particular and Slavs in general.

The rise of the KLA was a challenge to the leadership of the ethnic
Albanian nationalists' nonviolent leadership, headed by Ibrahim Rugova. The
killing of Serbs in Kosovo began in April 1996, thanks to the arms glut
caused by the total collapse of law and order in Albania. Not only Yugoslav
police but also ethnic Albanians branded as "traitors" were targeted. Last
summer, by posing for news photographers with a KLA officer, Richard
Holbrooke publicly signaled that the United States was dropping Rugova in
favor of the KLA. The process was completed at Rambouillet with the Feb. 6
arrival of the official ethnic Albanian delegation of 16 members, five of
them from the KLA. Rugova and the older generation of leaders were suddenly
shoved onto the sidelines, as an unknown, 29-year-old KLA chieftain named
Hashim "The Snake" Thaqi was introduced to the world as the leader of the
delegation.

The KLA's irresistible rise was nurtured notably by Morton Abramowitz, a
prominent member of the U.S. foreign policy elite. Abramowitz served as
ambassador to Thailand when the CIA's Bangkok bureau was perpetrating the
"yellow rain" hoax that accused Vietnamese victims of U.S. chemical warfare
of using chemical agents in Laos. In 1986, as assistant secretary of state
in charge of intelligence and research in the Reagan administration,
Abramowitz and top CIA officials accompanied Sen. Orrin Hatch to Beijing to
work out a deal with China and Pakistan for providing Stinger missiles to
Islamic Afghan rebels.

He then passed, quite naturally, to the presidency of the Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace. Under the Clinton administration, he has
participated in a blue-ribbon panel on CIA reform--selected by the Council
on Foreign Relations--which recommended easing restrictions on covert
actions. More recently, Abramowitz has been a leading figure in the
high-level International Crisis Group, a leading designer of policy toward
Kosovo. There, he became an advocate of arming the KLA. At Rambouillet,
Abramowitz and another U.S. official, Paul Williams, led a team coaching
the KLA delegation.

Even so, at Rambouillet, 'The Snake" bit the hand that fed him and refused
to sign the document. To the fury and dismay of Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, it was not the Serbs but the Albanian KLA that balked,
depriving the United States of its pretext to launch a NATO war against the
Serbs. Rambouillet was adjourned. Former Sen. Bob Dole, recipient of
generous campaign contributions from the Albanian-American lobby during his
political career, was dispatched to the Balkans to urge the Albanians to
sign the treaty--not to make peace, but to "maintain pressure" on the
Serbs. KLA leaders were bribed with a promise of a "visit to Washington to
discuss matters of interest," notably the future of the KLA--veiled
language meaning that the United States would not insist on disarming the
KLA, but would find some formula for transforming what U.S. envoy Robert
Gelbard had described as a "terrorist" group into "liberated" Kosovo's
police force.

So it was that the Serbs and the Kosovar Albanians were summoned back to
Paris to sign, as is, an agreement that in effect would detach Kosovo from
Serbia and put it under the joint control of NATO and whichever ethnic
Albanians NATO chose--apparently, the KLA. There were no negotiations.
Instead, Serbia's Milan Milutinovic and his (multi-ethnic) delegation were
presented with an ultimatum: Either accept the "peace agreement" concocted
by Christopher Hill (Holbrooke's second at Dayton who is now posted as U.S.
ambassador to Macedonia) allowing NATO to take over Kosovo, or else be
bombed. This ultimatum in itself was a violation of international law,
which invalidates agreements obtained by the threat or use of force,
according to the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

And the terms were totally unacceptable. Kosovo's "self-government" was to
be run by a NATO official, with the title of Chief of the Implementation
Mission, or CIM. The CIM would have the final say over virtually everything
and everybody. Kosovo would be occupied by a NATO force called KFOR. No
ceiling was placed on the size of KFOR forces, which would have full
control of airspace over Kosovo, be immune to prosecution or liability
under local law, and have free access to the rest of Yugoslavia--a license
to invade the rest of the country on one pretext or another. The agreement
called for withdrawal of Serbian police and armed forces, but the fate of
"other forces" (no mention of the KLA, which thus escaped any commitment or
obligations) would be decided later by the KFOR commander.

Not only Milosevic, but any Serbian opposition party, was bound to reject
such terms. And yet compromise was not impossible. The Yugoslavs were ready
to make huge concessions, but not to welcome NATO. NATO was the sticking
point. A U.N. peacekeeping force might well have been acceptable. However,
the Clinton administration insisted on NATO or nothing.

The rise of the KLA, backed by the United States and Germany (German
intelligence reportedly played an important role in equipping the rebels),
made it extremely dangerous for any more moderate ethnic Albanian leaders
to negotiate with the Serbs. The KLA repeatedly announced what would happen
to such "traitors." By backing the KLA, the United States weakened the more
moderate forces on both sides.

On December 21, 1998, the State Department released information from the
Kosovo Diplomatic Observer Mission that "the KLA harass or kidnap anyone
who comes to the police," and that "representatives threatened to kill
villagers and burn their homes if they did not join the KLA." It added that
KLA harassment has reached such intensity that residents of six villages in
the Stimlje region are "ready to flee."

Kosovo's ethnic Albanian civilians have been trapped between devastating
NATO bombing raids, KLA thugs and Serbian police. That refugees would flee
from Kosovo in all directions (including northward into central Serbia, a
fact ignored by Western media) is scarcely surprising. Yet NATO exploited
the resulting misery and confusion on the borders to justify the very
bombing that triggered the exodus. The suffering of the refugees is genuine
and poignant. The interpretations by Western officials and media are not to
be trusted. (After Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, the United States "ethnically
cleansed" the West Coast of Japanese Americans, although Japan did not
announce that it was bombing the U.S. on behalf of armed Japanese-American
secessionists.)

Various compromise proposals have been made from the Serb side over the
years. They have been totally ignored by Western governments and media,
which have claimed to be in favor of "restoring Kosovo's autonomy" and
opposed to secession. This double language has been interpreted by both
sides as veiled support for the Albanian irredentism. Confident of Western
backing, Albanian nationalist leaders have held out for independence rather
than any form of living together with the Serbs in Serbia. Partition has
been dogmatically ruled out by the United States on the "domino-theory"
grounds that it would destabilize Macedonia. NATO bombing has done that
already. U.S. and NATO meddling so far have produced all of the disasters
they promised to prevent, and a few more. NATO is not waging peace. It is
waging war and must be stopped.

Diana Johnstone is a contributing editor of In These Times.

For more Kosovo coverage from Diana Johnstone, check out MoJo wire's Kosovo
forum at
http://www.motherjones.com/total_coverage/kosovo/forum/.

The following information is drawn from website files of Federal Election Commission ("FEC") political
campaign contribution records. It shows, in summary, the candidates who have received money from Albanian
American Political Action Committees ("PACs").

The Public Disclosure, Inc. Website where original records may be found is:

http://www.tray.com/fecinfo/

Other information is available at the FEC site: www.fec.gov;

and at The Center For Responsive Politics: www.opensecrets.org
 

The current file contains information dating from 1988-2000, but as archivists explore, more information will be
added, going further back in time, as it is necessary to test campaign records back to 1976, while website
archives date back to 1980.

The file also contains the names and addresses of 24 Congressmen who formed the Albanian Issues Caucus in
the 1997-1999 Session. Caucus member Charles Schumer has since been elected to the US Senate. This file is
posted by an Albanian American website "frosina" in Boston. See:

http://www.frosina.org/AlbCaucus.htm
 

Readers are encouraged to contribute to this and other archives.
 

Benjamin Works

* * * *

Campaign 2000

ELIZABETH DOLE FOR PRESIDENT EXPLORATORY COMMITTEE INC

Contributions From Individuals, DOLE, ELIZABETH

BERISHA, RAMIZ; 3/31/99 $1,000.00 NEW YORK, NY

BITICI, H MR , 3/31/99 $1,000.00 BERKLEY HEIGHTS, NJ 07922

HAJDARI, MEHDI MR 3/31/99 $2,000.00 GREENWICH, CT 06830

IBRAJ, RUSTEM MR 3/31/99 $1,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10028

UKAJ, BRAHIM MR 3/31/99 $1,000.00 BRONX, NY 10461

UKAJ, SHEFQET MRS 3/31/99 $1,000.00 BRONX, NY 10461

XHEMA, JIM 3/31/99 $1,000.00 GREENWICH, CT 06830

XHEMA, MRIKA MRS 3/31/99 $1,000.00 GREENWICH, CT 06830
 

Albanian American Public Affairs Committee- 1998

House:

Tom Lantos D-CA-12	$10,000

Pete King R-NY-03	 $3,000

J DioGuardi RTL-NY-19	 $8,000

James Traficant D-OH-17	 $2,600

Bob Dornan R-CA-46	 $500

Ben Gilman R-NY-20	$10,000

Dana Rohrbacher R-CA-45 $5,000

Chris Smith R-NJ-04	$10,000

Senate:

Al D'Amato (NY Sen)	 $1,000
 

AAPAC-98 List of Contributors:

Note the high incidence of Pizzaria entrepreneurs in this list disclosed to the FEC and available on-line.
--BCW

Contributions to the ALBANIAN AMERICAN PUBLIC AFFAIRS COMMITTEE '98

ABDIU, DESTAN 6/9/98 $5,000.00 REAL ESTATE OWNER/MANAGER

AHMETI, ISLAM 6/8/98 $500.00 ARLINGTON, TX 76018 RESTAURANTEUR

AJRO, REDZEP 6/8/98 $500.00 BEDFORD, TX 76021 RESTAURANTEUR

ALICKAJ, AGIM 4/1/98 $300.00 BRONX, NY 10468 KOSOVATOURS

ALILI, REDZEP 6/10/98 $200.00 MARGATE CITY, NJ 08402 RESTAURANTEUR

BALAJ, ZEF 4/24/98 $2,500.00 CHAPPAQUA, NY 10514 REALTOR

BARDHI, IMER 3/16/98 $1,000.00 FLOWERMOUND, TX 75028 BARIS PIZZA

BARDHI, SEBIAN 6/8/98 $1,000.00 FLOWER MOUND, TX 75028 RESTAURANTEUR

BARLAJ, ABE 3/25/98 $1,000.00 CHICAGO, IL 60610 LASALLE MGT

CEKA, BRUNO 6/8/98 $1,000.00 IRVING, TX 75063 RESTAURANTEUR

FERA, SABIT 6/8/98 $500.00 FLOWER MOUND, TX 75028 BARI'S PIZZA

GJONBALAJ, FERO 3/25/98 $5,000.00 MILLSTONE, NJ 07726 PERFECT BLDG MGT

HALILI, ADNAN 6/8/98 $500.00 FLOWER MOUND, TX 75028 RESTAURANTEUR

HOT, ALBER 3/25/98 $5,000.00 NEW YORK, NY 10001 FAST TRACK CONSTRUCTION -

HOTI, CHASIM 8/20/98 $200.00 ACHORAGE, AL 99510 CITY OF BARROW

ITIL, TURAN 11/7/97 $2,000.00 NYACK, NY 10960 NEUROCORP

KABA, NURI 3/25/98 $1,000.00 ARLINGTON, TX 76012 OB MCCART APTS

KABA, NURI 6/8/98 $500.00 ARLINGTON, TX 76012 OB MCCART APTS

KELMENDI, AGIM 12/16/97 $500.00 BROOKLYN, NY 11218 RED EAGLE CAR SERVICE

KELMENDI, AGIM; 3/25/98 $5,000.00; BROOKLYN, NY 11218; RED EAGLE CAR SERVICE

KELMENDI, AGIM 6/20/97 $500.00 BROOKLYN, NY 11218

KRASNIQI, FLORIM; 4/1/98 $5,000.00; BROOKLYN, NY 11218; TRIANGLE GENERAL CONTRACTING

KRASNIQI, ISMAIL 6/8/98 $500.00 GARLAND, TX 75040 RESTAURANTEUR

KUKA, MYSUM 12/16/97 $300.00 BEACON, NY 12508 REAL ESTATE DEVELOPER

LITA, FAIK 6/10/98 $200.00 STATEN ISLAND, NY 10314 DOUBLE DELIGHT DAIRY

MARKU, BEQIR 3/25/98 $5,000.00 BROOKLYN, NY BIG APPLE ROOFING

MARKU, TAHIBE 6/10/98 $300.00 BROOKLYN, NY 11229

MEHMETI, NICK 6/8/98 $500.00 DALLAS, TX 75243 RESTAURANTEUR

MEMETI, RIFAT 4/23/98 $1,000.00 STATEN ISLAND, NY 10305 NICK'S NOT RAY'S PIZZA

ODZA, NASIR 6/8/98 $500.00 ALLEN, TX 75002 RESTAURANTEUR

REDZEPI, SALAEDIN 6/10/98 $200.00 EGG HARBOR TOWNSHI, NJ 08221 SOUTH END PIZZA

REXHEPI, SALI 6/10/98 $500.00 BRONX, NY 10471 DORAL TUSCANY HOTEL

SALI, BEDRI 6/8/98 $200.00 FLOWER MOUND, TX 75028 RESTAURANTEUR

SALIU, AJREDIN 6/8/98 $1,000.00 LEWISVILLE, TX 75028 RESTAURANTEUR

SALIU, AZEM 6/8/98 $500.00 BROWNWOOD, TX 76801 RESTAURANTEUR -

SHARE, SADRI 5/27/98 $500.00 AURORA, IL 60506 TOOL & DYE

SMAJLI, ISMET 6/8/98 $500.00 FLOWER MOUND, TX 75028 RESTAURANTEUR

XHEMA, JIM 3/17/97 $2,000.00 GREENWICH, CT 06831

ZADRIMA, JOHN 5/4/98 $2,500.00 BRONX, NY 10469
 
 

DOLE For President, 1996

Selected Albanian Contributors to Bob Dole's 1996 Campaign Fund:
 

Note that a (-)sign indicates a refund, as in " -500"
 

These selected contributors from 29 Albanian American Contributors total about $25,500, but I
am looking through a list of some 33,670 individual contributors in Dole's 1996 Campaign, alone.
Albanian names are tricky, so I expect there are dozens more, each good for $1000 per capita,
buried in that list.
 

"ABAZI, CEMAL","4/26/95","1000.00","PHILADELPHIA","PA","19122", "LINDENMEYR
MUNROE","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC

"ABAZI, HAJRA
MRS","10/10/95","500.00","PHILADELPHIA","PA","19122","HOUSEWIFE","Contribution", "DOLE FOR
PRESIDENT INC"

"ABUMRAD, NADA A","7/24/95","1000.00","OLD FIELD","NY","11733","SUNY AT STONY
BROOK","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"ABUMRAD, NAJI N DR","7/24/95","1000.00","OLD FIELD","NY","11733","SUNY AT STONY
BROOK","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"BALIDEMAJ, RAMA MR","10/9/95","-500.00","BRONX","NY","10461","ALBA'S
RISTORANTE","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"BALIDEMAJ, RAME","4/26/95","1000.00","PORTCHESTER","NY","10573","ALBA'S
RISTORANTE","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"BALIDEMAJ, SELVIE MRS","10/9/95","500.00","BRONX","NY","10461","ALBA'S
RESTAURANT","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"BALIDEMIC, DEMA MR","12/30/95","1000.00","BROOKLYN","NY","11228","BALDE
CORPORATION","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC""BALIDEMIC, DEMA
MR","12/31/95","1000.00","BROOKLYN","NY","11228","BALDE CORPORATION","Contribution","DOLE
FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"BALIDEMIC, DEMA MR","12/30/95","1000.00","BROOKLYN","NY","11228","BALDE
CORPORATION","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"BALIDEMIC, JULIA","12/31/95","1000.00","BROOKLYN","NY","11228","DEBAL
RESTAURANT","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"BALIDEMIC, JULIA","12/30/95","1000.00","BROOKLYN","NY","11228","DEBAL
RESTAURANT","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"DIO GUARDI, JOSEPH J","10/10/95","1000.00","THORNWOOD","NY","10594","C P
A","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"DIOGUARDI, PAUL J","10/20/95","1000.00","FARMINGDALE","NY","11735","", "Contribution","DOLE
FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"GJOKAJ, ANGELINA","11/30/95","500.00","CLINTON TOWNSHIP","MI","48036", "PRUDENTIAL
SECURITIES", "Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"GJOKAJ, LUIGI","11/30/95","-500.00","CLINTON TOWNSHIP","MI","48036","CARS &
CARS","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"GJOKAJ, LUIGI","9/27/95","1000.00","CLINTON TOWNSHIP","MI","48036","CARS &
CARS","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"GJOKAJ, MARIA","11/30/95","500.00","WARREN","MI","48093","PEROT SYSTEMS
CORP","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"GJOKAJ, PRENK","9/27/95","1000.00","WARREN","MI","48093", "PAINTER", "Contribution","DOLE FOR
PRESIDENT INC"

"GJOKAJ, PRENK MR","11/30/95","- 500.00","WARREN","MI","48093","PAINTER/BUILDER",
"Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"GJOKAJ, TOM","4/26/95","1000.00","STERLING HEIGHTS","MI","48318","SUNSHINE PAINTING
CO","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"GJONAJ, CIN MR","1/23/96","250.00","BRONX","NY","10467","SELF EMPLOYED","Contribution","DOLE
FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"GJONBALAJ, FAZLI MR","10/6/95","-500.00","BRONX","NY","10467","F & G BOSTON RLTY
CORP","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC""GJONBALAJ, FAZLI
MR","4/26/95","1000.00","BRONX","NY","10467","F & G BOSTON RLTY CORP","Contribution","DOLE FOR
PRESIDENT INC"

"GJONBALAJ, GJYLSYME MRS","10/6/95","500.00","BRONX","NY","10467","F & G REALTY
CORP","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"GJONI, DAUT S DR","3/29/96","1000.00","GLOVERSVILLE", "NY","12078", "PHYSICIAN",
"Contribution","DOLE/KEMP '96 COMPLIANCE COMMITTEE INC"

"GJONI, DAUT S DR","4/26/95","1000.00","GLOVERSVILLE","NY","12078",
"PHYSICIAN","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

HAJDARI,
MEHDI","3/24/95","2000.00","GREENWICH","CT","06830","SELF-EMPLOYED","Contribution","DOLE FOR
PRESIDENT INC"

"HAJDARI, MEHDI
MR","5/22/95","-1000.00","GREENWICH","CT","06830","SELF-EMPLOYED","Contribution","DOLE FOR
PRESIDENT INC"

"HAJDARI, REBA MRS","5/22/95","1000.00","GREENWICH","CT","06830",
"HOMEMAKER","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"HAJDINI, DIJANA","10/6/95","500.00","MADISON","WI","53704","PRIME TABLE","Contribution","DOLE
FOR PRESIDENT INC""HAJDINI,
RAMAZAN","3/7/95","1000.00","MADISON","WI","53704","RESTRAUNT OWNER","Contribution","DOLE
FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"HAJDINI, RAMAZAN MR","10/6/95","-500.00","MADISON","WI","53704","PRIME
TABLE","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"KRASNIQI, ALBAN","4/26/95","1000.00","NEW YORK","NY","10033","HERMAN REALTY","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT
INC"

"KRASNIQI, JAKUP","4/26/95","1000.00","STATEN ISLAND","NY","10310","A & B HEATING
 
 

"XHAKLI, REXH","8/24/95","250.00","BRONX","NY","10468","","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT
INC"
 
 

"XHEMA, JIM","3/24/95","2000.00","GREENWICH","CT","06830","CONTRACTOR","Contribution","DOLE
FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"XHEMA, JIM, MR.","5/23/95", $1000.OO","GREENWICH","CT","06830","JACOBSEN,
INC..","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"

"XHEMA, MRIKA MRS","5/23/95", $1000.OO","GREENWICH","CT","06830", "JACOBSEN,
INC..","Contribution","DOLE FOR PRESIDENT INC"
 

Albanian American PAC- 1996 Contributions to Candidates

J DioGuardi 		 $7,500

B Gilman 		 $320
 

National Albanian American PAC-1994

S Molinari R-NY13	 $4,000

Pete King		 $2,000

Ben Gilman		 $2,000

Eliot Engel D-N-Y17	 $5,000

J. Lieberman D-CT-Sen 	$10,000
 
 

AAPAC-1994

Gary Franks R-CT-05	 $1,000

Duncan Hunter R-CA-52	 $9,000

Ewing R-IL-15		 $250

Jerry Weller R-IL-11	 $250

Joe DioGuardi		 $1,000

Ben Gilman		$14,000
 
 

AAPAC-1992

House:

Bill Zeliff R-NH-01	 $5,000

Dick Swett D-NH-02	$10,000

Joe DioGuardi		$12,000

Hamilton, D-IN-09	 $4,000

Ben Gilman		 $5,000

David Obey D-WI-07	 $4,000

Porter R-IL-10		 $2,000

E Engel			 $6,000
 
 

Senate:

Saiklin R-HI		 $1,263

Don Nickles R-OK	$10,000

Kasten R-WI		 $5,000

Paul Coverdell R-GA	 $5,000

R Thornburgh R-PA	 $5,000

Bob Dole-KS		$11,669

Nat. Alb-Am PAC-90

House:

Sheila Bair R-KS-05	 $5,000

Dick Swett		 $5,000

S. Molinari		 $1,200

Ben Gilman		 $1,000

Porter R-IL-10		 $5,000

Eliot Engel		 $2,500
 
 

Senate:

Hank Brown R-CO	$10,000

Saiklin R-HI		$10,000

Tauke R-LA		 $5,000

Lynn Martin R-IL	 $1,500

Al D'Amato R-NY	$10,000

Paul Simon D-IL		 $1,000

C. Pell D-RI		$14.971

Jesse Helms R-NC	 $6,000

M. Hatfield R-OR	 $5,000

L Pressler R-SD		 $9,000
 
 

Nat. Alb-Am PAC-88

House:

Tom Lantos		 $2,000

Joe DioGuardi		$10,000

Bob Dornan		 $1,000

Dante Fascell D-FL-12	 $2,000

Broomfield R-MI-18	 $1,000

Yatron D-PA-06		 $1,000

Chris Shays R-CT-04	 $500
 
 

Senate:

Pete Wilson, R-CA	$1,000

Bob Dole R-KS		$1,000

F Danforth R-MO $1,500

Connie Mack R-FL	$1,000

Larry Pressler R-SD	$1,000

Jim Jeffords R-VT	 $1,000
 

* * * *

X-URL: http://www.frosina.org/AlbCaucus.htm

A FROSINA INFORMATION NETWORK ADVISORY / IN 911

Albanian Issues Caucus Members in the U. S. Congress
 
 

Statement of Purpose

The Albanian Issues Caucus promotes six primary goals:

(1) The peaceful evolution of democratic institutions in Albania, Kosova, FYR Macedonia, and other areas in
the Balkans with Albanian populations;

(2) Alleviation of human suffering in Albania, Kosova, FYR Macedonia, and other areas of the Balkans with
ethnic Albanian populations;

(3) Expansion of cultural exchange between Albania, Kosova, FYR Macedonia, and other ethnic Albanian
populated regions;

(4) Respect for human rights, including the rights of minority groups in Kosova, Albania, FYR Macedonia, and
other ethnic Albanian populated regions;

(5) Establishment of free market economies throughout the Balkans; and

(6) Promote contact between Albanian Americans and their ancestral homelands in the Balkans, the U.S.
government, and other ethnic communities.

Albanian-Americans and others should feel free to contact any of the members of the Albanian Issues Caucus
in the U.S. Congress listed below to express their thoughts and feelings about various aspects of
American-Albanian relations including immigration matters, US Embassy procedures, cultural exchange
programs, tourist, student and work visas, etc.
 
 

`Members:

1. Congressman Eliot Engel (D-NY), Co-chair

2303 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-2464

Fax: (202) 225-5513

Internet: [1]www.house.gov/engel/

Contact: Jason Steinbaum
 
 

2. Congressman Peter T. King (R-NY), Co-Chair

403 Cannon HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-7896

Fax: (202) 226-2279

Internet: [2]www.house.gov/king/

Contact: Robert O'Connor
 
 

3. Congresswoman Eva Clayton (D-NC)

2440 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-3101

Fax: (202)225-3354

Internet: [3]www.house.gov/clayton/

Contact: Johnnie Barnes
 
 

4. Congressman Martin Frost (D-TX)

2256 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-3605

Fax: (202) 225-4951

E-mail: [4][email protected]

Internet: [5]www.house.gov/frost/

Contact: Justin Kasmir
 
 

5. Congressman Benjamin Gilman (R-NY)

2449 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-3776

Fax: (202) 225-2541

Internet: [6]www.house.gov/gilman/

Contact: John Herzburg
 
 

6. Congresswoman Sue Kelly (R-NY)

1222 Longworth HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-5441

Fax: (202) 225-3289

Internet: [7]www.house.gov/suekelly/

Contact: Dan Boston & Dennis Lambert
 
 

7. Congressman Steven R. Rothman (D-NJ)

1607 Longworth HOB

Washington, D.C. 20515

Tel: (202) 225-5061

Fax: (202) 225-5851

Internet: [8]www.house.gov/rothman/

Contact: Raffi Hanparian
 
 

8. Congressman Tom Lantos (D-CA)

2217 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-3531

Fax: (202) 225-7900

Internet: [9]www.house.gov/lantos/

Contact: Dr. Kay King
 
 

9. Congressman John J. LaFalce (D-NY)

2310 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-3231

Fax: (202) 225-8693

Internet: [10]www.house.gov/lafalce/

Contact: Patricia Hennesey
 
 

10. Congressman Sander Levin (D-MI)

2209 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-4961

Fax: (202) 226-1033

E-mail: [email protected]

Internet: [11]www.house.gov/levin/

Contact: Drew Setter
 
 

11. Congresswoman Nita Melnikoff Lowey (D-NY)

Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-6506

Fax: (202) 225-0546

Internet: [12]www.house.gov/lowey/

Contact: Matt Traub
 
 

12. Congressman James P. McGovern (D-MA)

512 Cannon HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-6101

Fax: (202) 225-5759

Internet: [13]www.house.gov/mcgovern/

Contact: Cindy Buhl
 

13. Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA)

1214 Longworth HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-4376

Fax: (202) 225-0017

E-mail: [14][email protected]

Internet: [15]www.house.gov/moran/

Contact: Michael Eastman
 
 

14. Congressman John Olver (D-MA)

1027 Longworth HOB

Washington, D.C. 20515

Tel: (202) 225-5335

Fax: (202) 226-1224

E-mail: [16][email protected]

Internet: [17]www.house.gov/olver/

Contact: Kelly Bovio
 
 

15. Congressman Bill Paxon (R-NY)

2412 Rayburn HOB

Washington, D.C. 20515

Tel: (202) 225-5265

Fax: (202) 225-5910

E-mail: [18][email protected].

Internet: [19]www.house.gov/paxon/

Contact: Chris Downing
 
 

16. Congressman Donald M. Payne (D-NJ)

2244 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-3436

Fax: (202) 225-4160

Internet: [20]www.house.gov/payne/

Contact: Charrise Espy

17. Congressman John Porter (R-IL)

2373 Rayburn HOB

Washington, D.C. 20515

Tel: (202) 225-4835

Fax: (202) 225-0837

Internet: [21]www.house.gov/porter/

Contact: Kelly Curry

18. Congressman Dana Rochrabacher (R-CA)

2338 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515-0545

Tel: (202) 225-2415

Fax: (202) 225-0145

Internet: [22]www.house.gov/rohrabacher/

Contact: Paul Behrends & Al Santoli
 
 

19. Congressman Charles Schumer (D-NY)

2211 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-6616

Fax: (202) 225-4183

Contact: Brett DiResta
 
 

20. Congressman Jose Serrano (D-NY)

2342 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-4361

Fax: (202) 225-6001

E-mail: [23][email protected]

Internet: [24]www.house.gov/serrano/

Contact: Nadine Burg
 
 

21. Congressman Edolphus Towns (D-NY)

2232 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202)-225-5936

Fax: (202)-225-1018

Internet: [25]www.house.gov/towns/

Contact: Alexander Beckles
 
 

22. Congressman David Bonior (D-MI)

2207 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-2106

Fax: (202) 226-1169

Internet: [26]www.davidbonier.house.gov/

Contact: Scott Paul
 
 

23. Congressman Michael R. McNulty (D-NY)

2161 Rayburn HOB

Washington, DC 20515-3221

Tel: (202) 225-5076

Fax: (202) 225-5077

Internet: [27]www.house.gov/mcnulty/

Contact: Charles Segal
 
 

24. Congressman James H. Maloney (D-CT)

1213 Longworth HOB

Washington, DC 20515

Tel: (202) 225-3822

Fax: (202) 225-5746

Internet: [28]www.house.gov/jimmaloney/

Contact: Bryan Miller
 
 

And for those who want to go right to the "top", write or phone:

President Bill Clinton

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington, DC 20500

--Tel: (202) 456-1414
 
 

Madeleine Albright, Secretary of State

Department of State

2201 C Street, NW

Washington, DC 20520

--Tel: (202) 647-4000
 
 

Frosina wishes to thank Cindy Buhl of Congressman McGovern's office, Bob Godfried,

Tom Coonan, and, especially, Dritan Zela, for their assistance in compiling the list.

 The war in Kosovo is not a refugee crisis, not a civil war, not a "humanitarian
action" taken against a "troublesome small time tyrant," but, more accurately, is one of "Yugoslavia vs. the New World Order."

 And the bout began long before March 24, 1999 and it's one of pricey
agency spin, popularity ratings and precious viewer "time slots," as well as of
planes, troops, tanks and missiles.

 In 1994-95 some 300,000 and possibly many more Serbs had been summarily
 expelled from their ancestral homes in Croatia and the mainstream news
media’s silence was deafening. CNN had repeatedly misidentified massacred Serb
villagers as Croat or Moslem. Next, in the late summer of 1995, NATO relentlessly
bombed these same refugees and ethnic Bosnian Serbs as they fled from armed
Bosnian Moslems and the German-backed Croat Army, suffering some 14,000 dead.
All reportedly done in retaliation for the Serbs' mortaring an open-air
marketplace in Sarajevo that August 28th, killing 37, which turned out to be untrue--
the blast was caused by a bomb planted by the Bosnian Muslims.

 Now, many of those same Serb refugees who managed to escape alive from
Bosnia and Croatia and get into Serbia are meeting another hail of
NATO-sponsored destruction. Yet the world still weeps over the Albanian Kosovans and
for no others in the Balkans amid numerous unconfirmed reports of atrocities and even in
the presence of solid evidence of faked "massacres of Kosovo Albanians by
Serb police.
 "And yet NATO had still made a threat (later withdrawn) to destroy Serb
 telecommunications facilities if it did not give "equal time" to
Western news agencies on the war in the Balkans.

 Where was all of the compassion and the "need to do something" for the
Serbs then and now? Could it have something to do with the fact the Croats and
Bosnian Muslims
 (and now the Albanians) have spent millions of dollars hiring major New
York public relations firms, most notably Ruder & Finn, to "shape the weapon of
public opinion" into relentlessly demonizing the Serbs, whose forces have invaded no
foreign country and who were staunchly pro-Allied and suffered horribly in both World
Wars?

 What about the slaughters of the Tamils in Sri Lanka, the genocides in
Burma, Sierra Leone, Rwanda and Turkish Kurdistan, the horrifying atrocities
committed against the black Sudanese Christians? Where is the prepackaged, technicolor
"compassion" for them? Why aren't "we doing something" to relieve their sufferings?

 Why not indeed?

 Maybe because they couldn't afford a good ad agency. But, there is
more. There is always more. The hostility toward the Serbs stems not from the latest
agency/media ad campaign of "Serb genocide" but mainly because their behavior
displeases the various vocal avatars of what some call "one world government." This
worldview has been inferred by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's statement that
nations need "to give up some sovereignty" for the "good" of the world. And it has
been epitomized in former Carter Administration national security adviser Zbigniew
Brzenzski’s disturbing "global code of conduct," one which respects no
boundaries--be they cultural, legal, economic, linguistic, national--of any kind.

 Moreover, there is Kosovo's millions of dollars worth of vital mineral resources
whetting the appetites of our global loansharks, the IMF and the World Bank.

 Although Serb President Slobodan Milosevich and several of his
confederates are duly elected but thoroughly despicable folks, Serbia has come to
represent what German sociologist Max Weber called an "archetype," a sort of social
example, for many traditionalists and conservatives here in the US and overseas.

 The Serbs have a proverb, "It is better to lose your head than to lose
your soul."
 Serbia’s longstanding resilience and individuality, strong Christian
faith, long cultural and familial/clan traditions, and ferocious, well-armed nationalism
strikes a deep chord in the USA.

 It strikes most deeply among those who are deeply concerned and angry
that the ideals of personal freedom, religious faith, rule of constitutional law
and personal responsibility upon which the USA was founded are being systematically
and openly trashed, ridiculed, perverted and twisted. And the poignant memories of
the bravery and ultimate sacrifices that were made by earlier generations to
preserve these ideals for their descendants are being tossed into the dustbin of
cultural collateral damage.

 The NATO-launched missiles "collaterally damaging" ancient Serb Orthodox
 monasteries, monuments and graveyards show the Medusa-like ugliness,
insufferable Janusian arrogance, and shocking Dionysian sordidness of our zealous
apostles of "global citizenship," their sickeningly sweet and ferociously
spin-doctored antinomies of "diversity," "compassion" and "humanitarianism" notwithstanding.

 Cambridge University historian R.G.D. Laffan called the Serbs in his
1917 book of the same title, "the guardians of the gate," and commented that "despite
this often misunderstood people's incredible suffering...their spirit remains
unconquerable."

 Could it be that the "unconquerable spirits" throughout the world who
don't accept the "global code of conduct" could soon end up being "Serbs" receiving the
"NATO treatment" if they don't "go along?" Could the tragic televised
slaughter of the Branch Davidians by heavily armed federal agents at Waco, Texas in 1993 have
been a shocking opening act of a practice that is chillingly becoming ever
more routine? Are Waco and the Serbs' NATO-inflicted suffering previews to fates soon to
be ours here in the USA and in other places?

 A young Serb woman, Vladislava Gorich, e-mailing from the embattled
town of Novi Sad, north of Belgrade, told me, "(Romance novelist) John Webster comes
to my mind. His Duchess of Malfi said that the manner of death makes no
difference. For her, being strangled by a piece of cord and being shot with pearls is
the same."

 And, if such comes to pass in the final round, where the manner of
death makes no difference, will we be able to keep our spirits from being conquered,
and be willing to lose our heads and keep our souls trying?

 Even if the NWO Agency no longer wants us as "clients?" After all, one
Ruder & Finn executive was reportedly quoted as saying, in reference to his firm's
public relations work for the Croats and Bosnian Muslims, that "we aren't paid to be
moral."

 Neither are our presumed Western "leaders," or so it seems.
 
 

 Michael E. Kreca lives in San Diego and has been a financial reporter
for Business Week, Knight-Ridder and the Financial Times of London. He can be
reached at [email protected]

 [The website http://www.emperors-clothes.com encourages everyone
 to reproduce the following report in full including this note.]

 The following article from El Pais (The Country), a mainstream
 Spanish magazine, is most important. For months we've been
 barraged with stories claiming Serbs killed thousands of ethnic
 Albanians and dumped them in mass graves in Kosovo. Recently I
 did an internet search for newspaper articles, appearing in the past
 90 days, and including the words 'Kosovo' and 'mass grave.' The
 report came back: 'More than 1000 - too many to list.' I had to limit
 the search to articles in the NY Times and even then came up with
 80, nearly one a day.

 It has been a giant air balloon of anti-Serbian publicity, but now
 comes the pin: Spanish forensic experts, just back from Northern
 Kosovo where, they were told, they would have to inspect the worst
 Serbian atrocities, found no mass graves and no evidence of torture.

 We received this article at 11 PM on 9/23 and had a translation the
 next morning thanks to Herb Foerstal in the U.S. The translation was
 then checked for accuracy, again on no notice and within a few hours,
 thanks to Julio Fern?ndez Baraiba in Argentina.

 Below is the article from El Pais, followed by a commentary.

 El Pais
 23 septiembre 1999 - N? 1238

 by PABLO ORDAZ in Madrid

 Spanish police and forensic experts have not found proof of
 Genocide in the North of Kosovo. Prisoners [in the prison in] Istok
 were shot after the bombardment of NATO.

 Crimes of War - yes, Genocide - no. This was definitely shown
 yesterday by the group of Spanish experts formed by officials from
 the Scientific Police and Civilian Forensics that has just returned
 from Istok, the Zone in the North of Kosovo under the control of the
 Legion. {Spanish Legion? - EC} 187 cadavers found and analyzed in
 9 villages were buried in individual graves, oriented for the most part
 toward Mecca out of respect for the religious beliefs of the Albanian
 Kosovars and without sign of torture. "There were no mass graves.
 For the most part the Serbs are not as bad as they have been
 painted," reflected the forensic official Emilio P?rez Pujo.

 That was not the only irony. Also questioned were the successive
 counts that are being offered by the "allies" on the tragedy of
 Kosovo. "I have been reading the data from UN said P?rez Pujol,
 Director of the Forensic Anatomical Institute of Cartagena. "And
 they began with 44,000 deaths. Then they lowered it to 22,000. And
 now they're going with 11,000. I look forward to seeing what the final
 count will really be." The Spanish Mission which should now submit
 a report to the International War Crimes Tribunal in The Hague, left
 from Madrid in the beginning of the month of the August with the
 feeling that they were going on a road to hell. "They told us that we
 were going to the worst zone of Kosovo. That we should prepare
 ourselves to perform more than 2000 autopsies. That we would have
 to work until the end of November. The result is very different. We
 only found 187 cadavers and now we are going to return," explained
 the chief inspector, Juan L?pez Palafox, responsible for the Office of
 Anthropology and Scientific Police.

 The forensic people, as well as the police, applied their experience in
 Rwanda in order to determine what occurred in Kosovo at least in
 that section assigned to the Spanish detachment and they were not
 able to find evidence of genocide.

 "In the former Yugoslavia," said L?pez Palafox, "crimes were
 committed, some no doubt horrible, but they derived from the war. In
 Rwanda we saw 450 corpses of women and children, one on top of
 another, all with their heads broken open." The Chief Inspector
 added that in Kosovo, on the contrary, they had found many isolated
 corpses. "It gives the impression that the Serbs gave a choice to the
 families to leave their homes. If some member of the clan, for
 whatever reason, decided to remain, upon returning they were found
 dead from a shot or by whatever other method." {our emphasis}

 One of the members of the Spanish mission shed light on events in
 the Istok prison, bombed at the end of May by NATO planes. The
 work, directed by L?pez Palafox and P?rez Pujol was aimed at
 solving the following mystery: who killed the more than 100
 prisoners - the bombs of NATO or the bullets of Serbian soldiers?
 The answer, according to the preliminary studies, is clear. Some of
 the cadavers analyzed had shrapnel wounds and therefore clearly
 appeared to have been killed by the bombardment. But others died
 of clear clean bullet wounds, perhaps from the bullets of machine
 guns. The most likely thesis is that after the bombardment, the
 prison inmates tried to flee and were shot by Serbian guards.

                               ***

 Commentary
 by Jared Israel

 I've been reading mass grave stories in the New York Times for
 most of a day. I hope to do a detailed analysis soon. Meanwhile, here
 are a few observations:

 * You would expect these stories to be horrifying. What is surprising
 is that they are so repetitious - using the same phrases - that reading
 them is exhausting.

 * The articles are often written in semi-fictional style, as in "A cap
 lay on the ground, stained bright red. 'Who would believe the Serbs
 would do this?' asked the gaunt Albanian. A tear trickled down the
 old man's cheek." This kind of writing encourages the reader to
 suspend disbelief, as one does when reading a short story, to accept
 emotionally charged statements as true.

 * Evidence, if any, is anecdotal; sources are vague.

 * The discovery or even the rumor of a grave is cited (often in a
 press conference by some authority figure) as proof of Serbian
 atrocities.

 These 'atrocities' are discussed in great, though entirely speculative,
 detail. Trial by media. It is enough to make you gaga, especially
 when you read such 'news' for hours at a time. The mental equivalent
 of smog.

 * Arguments are circular. A supposed mass grave is discovered.
 Assumptions are (publicly and loudly) made about the unopened
 grave: the dead bodies will be Albanians; they will be civilians; they
 will turn out to have been killed by Serbs; the Serbs will have been
 soldiers or policemen. There is no systematic follow-up, no testing of
 these predictions against fact. Rather, such speculations, once
 uttered, become part of the record, to be cited in later articles as if
 proven.

 The Spanish experts were told they would find 2000 bodies. They
 found 187. That is about 10%. Many of the 187 died when NATO
 bombed a prison or, apparently. afterwards, trying to escape. The
 war crime involved here is NATO's: it is a crime of war to bomb any
 nonmilitary target, let alone a prison, the ultimate sitting duck.

 Let me dwell on this point for a moment. NATO of course knew that
 the U.S. Air Force had bombed the prison at Istok; it was publicly
 reported at the time and anyway, the U.S. Air Force leads NATO, so,
 as a teenage American would say, 'like, du-uh.' It was also no
 mystery that these bombs killed people, prisoners and guards - that's
 what bombs do. Obviously if the term 'war crime' has any meaning,
 bombing a prison is a war crime.

 Then why, may I ask, were the Spanish forensic scientists told to
 look for evidence of Serbian war crimes at Istok? Given that a
 massive war crime (the bombing of a prison) was publicly known to
 have been committed by the U.S. Air Force, why weren't the forensic
 scientists instructed to look for a U.S. war crime? Why is it
 necessary for them now to give a press conference to reveal the
 STARTLING news that when the U.S. Air Force bombs a prison to
 smithereens - it is not an act of Serbian genocide??

 The Spanish scientists and policemen are correctly perceived as
 heroic for standing up and saying: the bombing of a prison by the
 U.S. Air Force is not a Serbian war crime. Doesn't the fact that this is
 indeed an act of heroism tell us something about the present
 international climate?

                          Down to 5%

 The Spanish forensic scientists speculate that the remaining
 cadavers were Albanian civilians killed by Serbian troops or police.
 If these speculations are correct, these people could be victims of
 Serbian war crimes. That's about 100 people, 5% of the promised
 2000.

 In considering this 5%, I suggest we adopt a cautious approach.

                        "Impressions"

 Every official in a NATO country is under pressure to parrot the
 NATO line. Nevertheless these Spanish experts aired their
 reservations publicly. Note that when they discussed the individuals
 with bullet wounds they made clear they were speculating:

      "It gives the IMPRESSION that the Serbs gave a
      choice to the families to leave their homes. If some
      member of the clan, for whatever reason, decided to
      remain, upon returning they were found dead."

 Of course, one can only get the "impression" that these people were
 shot by "the Serbs" for refusing to leave their homes if one accepts
 that they were members of families whom "the Serbs" had ordered
 to leave. But how could the scientists know this? They could only
 'know it' from witnesses.

 The El Pais story says nothing about witnesses, so now we must
 speculate; fortunately we do know a few things.

 First, Kosovo is under a reign of terror by the Kosovo Liberation
 Army, with NATO's blessing. At the end of this commentary we list a
 few articles documenting that reign of terror, including first hand
 accounts. (See note 1 at end)

 Second, both NATO and the KLA have a strong interest in proving
 that the Serbian government had a policy of genocide against
 Albanians. NATO needs to prove this because the existence of
 Serbian genocide was NATO's justification for bombing Yugoslavia
 for 78 days. The KLA needs to prove it because Serbian genocide is
 the KLA's justification for driving Serbs and "Gypsies" out of
 Kosovo. As Clinton adviser Sandy Berger put it, speaking for NATO
 and the KLA:

      "All across Kosovo, we see reminders that America and our
      allies did the right thing in taking a stand against ethnic
      cleansing…. The Serb forces responsible for the violence are
      gone…But there is also tremendous sadness -- from the pain
      of remembering and the devastation left behind by Milosevic's
      campaign of hate. And in many victims there is rage, a desire
      for justice, and sometimes revenge." (Foreign Policy Adviser
      Sandy Berger, "Remarks to Council on Foreign Relations",
      July 26, 1999)

 In this remarkable speech Mr. Berger a) gives the KLA the green
 light to attack Serbs because it's all quite understandable
 considering the "tremendous sadness" and "victims" consumed with
 "rage" and b) makes the purpose of the war crimes investigations
 perfectly clear. That purpose is NOT to discover the truth.
 Discovery is unnecessary; Mr. Berger has discovered the truth in
 advance. Rather the purpose of investigation is to provide
 "reminders that America and our allies did the right thing."

 Thus the investigation is controlled by two highly interested parties,
 NATO and the KLA. Their control includes not only the handling of
 evidence but the recruitment and preparation of witnesses.
 Obviously such witnesses can be either agents of the KLA or under
 KLA domination. Any witness providing testimony disliked by the
 KLA would be risking his or her life. And as a recent story in the
 mainstream media suggests, the KLA considers lying a perfectly
 legitimate weapon in winning international support. (See note 2 at
 end) So much for the witnesses.

                     Bigots with a heart

 And then there is the problem of the graves. The Spanish experts
 say the cadavers were found in individual graves, not mass graves.
 That is thoughtful of the Serbs. And even more thoughtful: the
 graves were "oriented for the most part toward Mecca out of respect
 for the religious beliefs of the Albanian Kosovars…"

 This is curious. I have read many newspaper articles which argue
 that Serbs are hostile to Albanians because the Albanians are
 (mostly) Muslims. This supposed hostility was supposedly the
 motivation for alleged anti-Albanian atrocities. The Serbs say they
 don't hate anybody, that they have been fighting to preserve a
 multiethnic society against a terrorist assault by a racist faction
 among ethnic Albanians - a faction backed by the U.S. and Germany.

 Let's assume the newspapers are right and the Serbs are mistaken.
 So first Serbian troops murdered these 100 Albanians out of religious
 hatred - and then they buried the Albanians facing Mecca out of
 religious respect. Isn't this rather strange behavior?

 Perhaps the Spanish experts were lied to. Perhaps they were shown
 the bodies of KLA troops who died fighting the Yugoslav army;
 hence the bullet wounds (inflicted in battle) and the respectful burial
 (performed by the KLA army). That at least would make sense.

 There are many graves in Kosovo, too many. For a year and a half a
 fierce war raged between KLA terrorists and the Yugoslav Army and
 police. Aside from those who died in the fighting, we have credible
 evidence that the KLA executed many pro-Yugoslav Albanians, as
 well as non-Albanians (who do not necessarily differ from Albanians
 in appearance) not to mention Yugoslav soldiers and policemen.

 So, thousands of people died and were buried. The KLA has had a
 free hand in Kosovo since early June, plenty of time to move bodies
 around, to dress dead soldiers as civilians and to tutor 'grieving
 relatives' until their stories sound believable. And despite all that the
 Spanish scientists, sent to the zone of the worst Serbian atrocities,
 came back virtually empty-handed.

               Investigation? or Inquisition?

 Some people ask: are you saying Serbs are incapable of committing
 atrocities? No, as with all populations, some Serbian people are
 probably capable of committing atrocities. But to go from this
 general possibility to the charge that the Serbian armed forces
 systematically killed Albanian civilians (while publicly arguing for
 multi-ethnic unity and indeed arming many Albanians against the
 KLA) is to go quite a distance. Traversing it requires something:
 proof.

 American legal theory says a person is innocent until proven guilty.
 Implicit in this approach is the notion that criminal investigation
 should be conducted by disinterested parties with a goal of finding
 out if there has been a crime and discovering the truth, not in
 proving a case to destroy some enemy.

 Aside from whether this standard is actually applied in the U.S. legal
 system (a highly debatable point) shouldn't we insist it be applied
 when dealing with alleged mass crimes possibly implicating a
 government and an entire people? Or should such investigations be
 launched only as needed to justify NATO policy? Should guilt then
 be decided by a hostile US press with government officials making
 prejudicial statements before the fact? Should the evidence be the
 testimony of 'witnesses' supplied by the US side in a vicious war,
 'witnesses' who testify in secret, 'witnesses' who are never
 cross-examined by the accused?

 The use of these Inquisitorial methods of proof rebounds, proving
 that NATO (that is, the US government) and the media are trying to
 railroad the Serbian people.

 Every time an accusation is made, two parties go on trial: the
 accused and the accuser. For if an accusation can be shown to be
 false, then the question must be asked: was it made with malicious
 intent? Was it perhaps cooked up to divert attention from and/or
 justify some other crime, some greater crime? Some crime, perhaps,
 committed by the accuser? (see note 4 at end)

 The Spanish forensic scientists and policemen quoted in El Pais have
 done us all a service. By denying NATO's charges they have
 indicted NATO. In doing so they have risked NATO's wrath - and
 their careers - to tell the truth. Their decency gives one hope.

 (See note 3 for analyses of questionable NATO/US government
 'mass graves' claims)
 

 NOTES

              Note 1: First hand reports of KLA terror

 * For an interview with the leader of the Jewish community in
 Pristina, Kosovo, (Driven from Kosovo: Jewish Leader
 Sees NATO Complicity) go to:
 http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/ceda.htm

 *For an eye-opening report on a recent 2 week trip through Kosovo,
 go to:
 http://www.emperors-clothes.com/Articles/zoran/&back.htm

 * For an interview with Kosovo Albanians who led opposition to the
 KLA and have been forced out of Kosovo by threat of death, go to:
 http://www.emperors-clothes.com/interviews/alban.htm

            Note 2: KLA Woman's Story Exposed as Lie

 Go to:
 * http://www.emperors-clothes.com/news/cbclie.htm

        Note 3: Analyses of NATO 'mass grave' and 'atrocity'
                              claims

 * For 'Racak - The Impossible Massacre,' by Diana
 Johnstone go to:
 http://www.emperors-clothes.com/analysis/racak.htm

 * For 'Were NATO's mass grave pictures faked?' by
 Jared Israel go to:
 http://www.emperors-clothes.com/misc/graves.htm

 For a detailed look at (and refutation of) NATO's most important
 massacre story  go to:
 http://www.emperors-clothes.com/Articles/george%20pumphrey/Srebrenica.htm

Summary:

During its four-month war against Yugoslavia, NATO argued that
Kosovo was a land wracked by mass murder; official estimates
indicated that some 10,000 ethnic Albanians were killed in a Serb
rampage of ethnic cleansing. Yet four months into an international
investigation bodies numbering only in the hundreds have been
exhumed. The FBI has found fewer than 200. Piecing together the
evidence, it appears that the number of civilian ethnic Albanians
killed is far less than was claimed. While new findings could
invalidate this view, evidence of mass murder has not yet
materialized on the scale used to justify the war. This could have
serious foreign policy and political implications for NATO and
alliance governments.

Analysis:

On Oct. 11, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Republic of Yugoslavia (ICTY) reported that the Trepca mines in
Kosovo, where 700 murdered ethnic Albanians were reportedly hidden,
in fact contained no bodies whatsoever. Three days later, the U.S.
Defense Department released its review of the Kosovo conflict,
saying that NATO's war was a reaction to the ethnic cleansing
campaign by Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic. His campaign was
"a brutal means to end the crisis on his terms by expelling and
killing ethnic Albanians, overtaxing bordering nations'
infrastructures, and fracturing the NATO alliance."

The finding by The Hague's investigators and the assertion by the
Pentagon raise an important question.  Four months after the war
and the introduction of forensic teams from many countries,
precisely how many bodies of murdered ethnic Albanians have been
found? This is not an exercise in the macabre, but a reasonable
question, given the explicit aims of NATO in the war, and the
claims the alliance made on the magnitude of Serbian war crimes.
Indeed, the central justification for war was that only
intervention would prevent the slaughter of Kosovo's ethnic
Albanian population.

On March 22, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of
Commons, "We must act to save thousands of innocent men, women and
children from humanitarian catastrophe, from death, barbarism and
ethnic cleansing by a brutal dictatorship."  The next day, as the
air war began, President Clinton stated: "What we are trying to do
is to limit his (Milosevic's) ability to win a military victory and
engage in ethnic cleansing and slaughter innocent people and to do
everything we can to induce him to take this peace agreement."

As NATO's first intervention in a sovereign nation, the war in
Kosovo required considerable justification. Throughout the
year, NATO officials built their case, first calling the situation
in Kosovo "ethnic cleansing," and then "genocide."  In March, State
Department spokesman James Rubin told reporters that NATO did not
need to prove that the Serbs were carrying out a policy of genocide
because it was clear that crimes against humanity were being
committed. But just after the war in June, President Bill Clinton
again invoked the term, saying, "NATO stopped deliberate,
systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."

Indeed, as the months progressed, the estimates of those killed by
a concerted Serb campaign, dubbed Operation Horseshoe, have
swollen. Early on, experts systematically generated what appeared
to be sober and conservative estimates of the dead.  For example,
prior to the outbreak of war, independent experts reported that
approximately 2,500 Kosovar Albanians had been killed in the
Serbian ethnic cleansing campaign.

That number grew during and after the war. Early in the campaign,
huge claims arose about the number of ethnic Albanian men feared
missing and presumed dead. The fog and passion of war can explain
this. But by June 17, just before the end of the war, British
Foreign Office Minister Geoff Hoon reportedly said: "According to
the reports we have gathered, mostly from the refugees, it appears
that around 10,000 people have been killed in more than 100
massacres." He further clarified that these 10,000 were ethnic
Albanians killed by Serbs.

On Aug. 2, the number jumped up by another 1,000 when Bernard
Kouchner, the United Nations' chief administrator in Kosovo, said
that about 11,000 bodies had already been found in common graves
throughout Kosovo. He said his source for this information was the
ICTY. But the ICTY said that it had not provided this information.
To this day, the source of Kouchner's estimates remains unclear.
However, that number of about 10,000 ethnic Albanians dead at the
hands of the Serbs remains the basic, accepted number, or at least
the last official word on the scope of the atrocities.

Regardless of the precise genesis of the numbers, there is no
question that NATO leaders argued that the war was not merely
justified, but morally obligatory.  If the Serbs were not
committing genocide in the technical sense, they were certainly
guilty of mass murder on an order of magnitude not seen in Europe
since Nazi Germany.  The Yugoslav government consistently denied
that mass murder was taking place, arguing that the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) was fabricating claims of mass murder in
order to justify NATO intervention and the secession of Kosovo from
Serbia.  NATO rejected Belgrade's argument out of hand.

Thus, the question of the truth or falsehood of the claims of mass
murder is much more than a matter of merely historical interest. It
cuts to the heart of the war - and NATO's current peacekeeping
mission in Kosovo.  Certainly, there was a massive movement of
Albanian refugees, but that alone was not the alliance's
justification for war. The justification was that the Yugoslav army
and paramilitaries were carrying out Operation Horseshoe, and that
the war would cut short this operation.

But the aftermath of the war has brought precious little evidence,
despite the entry of Western forensics teams searching for evidence
of war crimes.  Mass murder is difficult to hide. One need only
think of the entry of outsiders into Nazi Germany, Cambodia or
Rwanda to understand that the death of thousands of people leaves
massive and undeniable evidence. Given that many NATO leaders were
under attack at home - particularly in Europe - for having waged
the war, the alliance could have seized upon continual and graphic
evidence of the killing fields of Kosovo to demonstrate the
necessity of the war and undercut critics.  Indeed, such evidence
would help the alliance undermine Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic, by helping to destroying his domestic support and
energizing his opponents.

As important, no one appears to really be trying to recover all of
the Kosovo war's reported victims. Of the eight human rights
organizations most prominent in Kosovo, none is specifically tasked
with recovering victims and determining the cause of death. These
groups instead are interviewing refugees and survivors to obtain
testimony on human rights violations, sanitizing wells and
providing mental health services to survivors. All of this is
important work.  But it is not the recovery and counting of bodies.

It is important to note that a sizable number of people who resided
in Kosovo before the war are now said to be unaccounted for - 17,
000, according to U.S. officials. However, the methodology for
arriving at this number is unclear.  According to NATO, many
records were destroyed by the Serbs. Certainly, no census has been
conducted in Kosovo since the end of the war.  Thus, it is
completely unclear where the specific number of 17,000 comes from.
There are undoubtedly many missing, but it is unclear whether these
people are dead, in Serbian prisons - official estimates vary
widely - or whether they have taken refuge in other countries.

The dead, however, have not turned up in the way that the West
anticipated, at least not yet. The massive Trepca mines have so far
yielded nothing.  Most of the dead have turned up in small numbers
in the most rural parts of Kosovo, often in wells. News reports say
that the largest grave sites have contained a few dozen victims;
some officials say the largest site contained far more,
approximately 100 bodies. But the bodies are generally being found
in very small numbers - far smaller than encountered after the
Bosnian war.

Only one effort now underway may shed light on just how many ethnic
Albanian civilians were - or weren't - killed by Serb forces. The
ICTY is coordinating efforts to investigate war crimes in Kosovo.
Like human rights organizations, the tribunal's primary aim is not
to find all the reported dead. Instead, its investigators are
gathering evidence to prosecute war criminals for four offenses:
grave breaches of the Geneva Convention, violations of the laws of
war, and genocide and crimes against humanity. The tribunal
believes that it will, however, be able to produce an accurate
death count in the future, although it will not say when. A
progress report may be released in late October, according to
tribunal spokesman Paul Risley.

Under the tribunal's guidance, police and medical forensic teams
from most NATO countries and some neutral nations are assigned to
investigate certain sites.  The teams have come from 15 nations:
Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany,
Iceland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the
United Kingdom and the United States. The United States has sent
the largest team, with 62 members. Belgium, Germany and the United
Kingdom have each sent teams of approximately 20. Most countries
dispatched teams of fewer than 10 members.

So far, investigators are a little more than one quarter of the way
through their field work, having examined about 150 of 400
suspected sites. The investigative process is as follows: ICTY
investigators follow up on reports from refugees or KFOR troops to
confirm the existence of sites. Then the tribunal deploys each team
to a certain region and indicates the sites to be investigated.
Sites are either mass graves - which according to the tribunal
means more than one body is in the grave - or crime scenes, which
contain other evidence. The teams exhume the bodies, count them,
and perform autopsies to determine age, gender, cause of death and
time of death all for the purpose of compiling evidence for future
war crimes trials. The by-product of this work, then, is the actual
number of bodies recovered. The investigations will continue next
year when the weather allows further exhumations.

In the absence of an official tally of bodies found by the teams,
we are forced to piece together anecdotal evidence to get a picture
of what actually happened in Kosovo. From this evidence, it is
clear that the teams are not finding large numbers of dead, nothing
to substantiate claims of "genocide."

The FBI's work is a good example. With the biggest effort, the
bureau has conducted two separate investigations, one in June and
one in August, and will probably be called back again. In its most
recent visit, the FBI found 124 bodies in the British sector of
Kosovo, according to FBI spokesman Dave Miller. Almost all the
victims were killed by a gunshot wound to the head or blunt force
trauma to the head. The victims' ages were between 4 and 94. Most
of the victims appeared to have been killed in March and April. In
its two trips to Kosovo since the war's end, the FBI has found a
total of 30 sites containing almost 200 bodies.

The Spanish team was told to prepare for the worst, as it was going
into Kosovo's real killing fields. It was told to prepare for over
2000 autopsies. But the team's findings fell far short of those
expectations. It found no mass graves and only 187 bodies, all
buried in individual graves. The Spanish team's chief inspector
compared Kosovo to Rwanda.  "In the former Yugoslavia crimes were
committed, some no doubt horrible, but they derived from the war,"
Juan Lopez Palafox was quoted as saying in the newspaper El Pais.
"In Rwanda we saw 450 corpses [at one site] of women and children,
one on top of another, all with their heads broken open."

Bodies are simply not where they were reported to be. For example,
in July a mass grave believed to contain some 350 bodies in
Ljubenic, near Pec - an area of concerted fighting - reportedly
contained only seven bodies after the exhumation was complete.
There have been similar cases on a smaller scale, with initial
claims of 10 to 50 buried bodies proven false.

Investigators have frequently gone to reported killing sites
only to find no bodies. In Djacovica, town officials claimed that
100 ethnic Albanians had been murdered but reportedly alleged that
Serbs had returned in the middle of the night, dug up the bodies,
and carried them away. In Pusto Selo, villagers reported that 106
men were captured and killed by Serbs at the end of March. NATO
even released satellite imagery of what appeared to be numerous
graves, but again no bodies were found at the site. Villagers
claimed that Serbian forces came back and removed the bodies. In
Izbica, refugees reported that 150 ethnic Albanians were killed in
March. Again, their bodies are nowhere to be found. Ninety-six men
from Klina vanished in April; their bodies have yet to be located.
Eighty-two men were reportedly killed in Kraljan, but investigators
have yet to find one of their bodies.

Killings and brutality certainly took place, and it is possible
that massive new findings will someday be uncovered. Without being
privy to the details of each investigation on the ground in Kosovo,
it is possible only to voice suspicion and not conclusive proof.
However, our own research and survey of officials indicates that
the numbers of dead so far are in the hundreds, not the thousands.
It is possible that huge, new graves await to be discovered. But
ethnic Albanians in Kosovo are presumably quick to reveal the
biggest sites in the hope of recovering family members or at least
finding out what happened. In addition, large sites would have the
most witnesses, evidence and visibility for inspection teams. Given
progress to date, it seems difficult to believe that the 10,000
claimed at the end of the war will be found. The killing of ethnic
Albanian civilians appears to be orders of magnitude below the
claims of NATO, alliance governments and early media reports.

How could this have occurred?  It appears that both governments and
outside observers relied on sources controlled by the KLA, both
before and during the war. During the war this reliance was
heightened; governments relied heavily on the accounts of refugees
arriving in Albania and Macedonia, where the KLA was an important
conduit of information. The sophisticated public relations machine
of the KLA and the fog of war may have generated a perception that
is now proving dubious.

What is clear is that no one is systematically collecting the
numbers of the dead in Kosovo even though such work would only help
NATO in its efforts to remain in Kosovo and could possibly topple
Milosevic. What can be learned of the investigations to date
indicates deaths far below expectations.  Finally, all of this
suspicion can be easily dispelled by a comprehensive report by
NATO, the United Nations, or the United States and other
responsible governments detailing the findings of the forensic
teams, and giving timeframes for completion and results. It is
unclear that, even if the ICTY releases a report soon, it will
address all these issues. The lack of an interim report indicating
the discovery of thousands of Albanian victims strikes us as
decidedly odd.  One would think that Clinton, Blair and the other
leaders would be eager to demonstrate that the war was not only
justified, but morally obligatory.

It really does matter how many were killed in Kosovo. The foreign
policy and political implications are substantial. There is a line
between oppression and mass murder. It is not a bright, shining
one, but the distinction between hundreds of dead and tens of
thousands is clear. The blurring of that line has serious
implications not merely for NATO's integrity, but for the notion of
sovereignty. If a handful - or a few dozen - people are killed in
labor unrest, does the international community have the right to
intervene by force? By the very rules that NATO has set up, the
magnitude of slaughter is critical.

Politically, the alliance depended heavily on the United States for
information about the war. If the United States and NATO were
mistaken, then alliance governments that withstood heavy criticism,
such as the Italian and German governments, may be in trouble.
Confidence in both U.S. intelligence and leadership could decline
sharply. Stung by scandal and questions about its foreign policy,
the Clinton administration is already having difficulty influencing
world events. That influence could fall further. There are many
consequences if it turns out that NATO's claims about Serb
atrocities were substantially false.

http://www.ireland.com/newspaper/world/2000/0322/wor7.htm

"It was about us creating in and around Kosovo a new
frontier, a cornerstone of the new Europe...." "Kosovo
is, and will always be, about containment. It is about
the Americans controlling Macedonia and holding down
Albanian expansionism and building themselves a huge
tactical military base out of which they can operate
in the Balkans."...On its fiftieth anniversary last
year, NATO wanted to show it was capable of successful
humanitarian military intervention, as well as proving
that the military structures of the U.S. and the EU
could co-operate efficiently. "Kosovo was where we
were going to make this work," said one senior NATO
official.
========================
The
Irish Times
Wednesday, March 22, 2000

Colonel optimistic but Kosovo no bed of roses

While NATO said its campaign was about supporting
peace, multi-ethnicity and democracy, many senior
officials claim Kosovo was, and always will be, about
containment. Christian Jennings reports from Pristina.

YUGOSLAVIA: In a snowstorm on the streets of the
Kosovan capital, the forest-green berets of the Royal
Green Jackets are being replaced by the red and white
hackles on the blue berets of the Royal Regiment of
Fusiliers, the British army battalion who succeed them
for the next six-month tour.

"I leave this city feeling more optimistic about it
than when I arrived", says Lieut Col Nick Carter, the
outgoing Green Jackets commander.

"The murder rate is down to one a month, there are
more Serbs living here than in October, and people
feel more confident about walking around the streets.
That said, it is no bed of roses."

Nor is the rest of Kosovo, say a variety of
international officials, looking back to the start of
NATO's 78-day bombing campaign, which began on March
24th last year. In the middle of the campaign, on
April 23rd, NATO said at a summit in Washington that
"the action against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia
is aimed at supporting political objectives - peace,
multi-ethnicity and democracy."

A year on, many senior officials from NATO and the UN
Mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) see much more pragmatic
reasons behind NATO's decision to intervene militarily
on behalf of the Albanian population of Kosovo.

"Up front", says a senior official from the UN refugee
agency, UNHCR, "it was about returning Kosovar
Albanians to their homes, and bluntly speaking
stopping them being killed by the Serbs.

"But it was about more than that. It was about us
creating in and around Kosovo a new frontier, a
cornerstone of the new Europe."

"Kosovo was, and always will be, about containment",
said one former official from the International
Committee of the Red Cross who worked in Kosovo,
Albania and Serbia before, during and after the
bombing. "It is about the Americans controlling
Macedonia and holding down Albanian expansionism, and
building themselves a huge tactical military base out
of which they can operate in the Balkans."

The 39,000 NATO troops from 29 countries, known as
Kfor, or Kosovo Force, are deployed across the tiny
province. The largest US military base since the
Vietnam War has been built at Camp Bondsteel, 30 km
southeast of Pristina.

For the German, Austrian, Italian, Dutch and Swiss
governments, Kosovo is the fledgling UN protectorate
to which they can repatriate the hundreds of thousands
of Kosovar Albanians and other Yugoslavians.

The German Interior Minister, Mr Otto Schilly, signed
an agreement with the UN Mission in Kosovo and with
the Macedonian government to repatriate up to 180,000
Kosovar Albanians living in Germany before the end of
2000. He announced last month that "forceful measures"
could be used.

On its 50th anniversary last year, NATO wanted to show
it was capable of successful humanitarian military
intervention, as well as proving that the military
structures of the US and the EU could co-operate
efficiently.

"Kosovo was where we were going to make this work",
says one senior NATO official. "It was our exercise in
multinational peacekeeping that was to decide how
military humanitarian intervention is going to work
for the next 50 years."

And what of peace, democracy and multi-ethnicity? More
than 240,000 non-Albanians have fled since NATO
arrived last June, and as a result of daily violence
and harassment by Albanians, the remaining Serb, Roma
gypsy and Montenegrin populations of Kosovo are
increasingly obliged to live in ethnic enclaves, under
heavy NATO protection.

"They do not have to make love to each other every
day", says NATO's senior commander in Kosovo, Gen
Klaus Reinhardt of Germany. "They just have to live
together without killing each other." One aide close
to UN Civil Administrator Dr Bernard Kouchner says
oppression of Serbs by Albanians has made communal
life "impossible in the short term".

Peace is a comparative term too. Serbs are forced to
travel around Kosovo in buses protec ted by NATO
armoured vehicles. It is effectively impossible to
speak Serbian - once the national language - on the
streets of Pristina without risk of attack.

The recent backlash between Albanians and Serbs since
the beginning of February in the ethnically divided
city of Mitrovica has left 12 Albanians and Serbs
killed, and more than 120 people, including Kfor
peacekeepers and journalists, injured.

Every day Kfor reports numerous incidents of murders
of Serbs, arson attacks on their homes, intimidation
and harassment, as well as escalating levels of
criminal violence within the Albanian community.

Despite the announcement this month by Dr Kouchner
that municipal elections will be held in Kosovo before
the end of the year, the US Assistant Secretary of
State, Mr James Rubin, criticised Albanian political
leaders, saying the US was "deeply disappointed with
the failures of Kosovar Albanian leaders".

Satish Nambiar

It should have been obvious to anyone who had been associated with events in
the Balkans since the early 1990s that Kosovo was a powder keg waiting to
explode--particularly after the fighting that resulted in the emergence of
Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of
Macedonia (FYROM) as independent nations. It is therefore inexcusable that
the Western powers failed to address the Kosovo issue in 1995 when, led by
the United States, they secured what even by their own rather dubious
standard was a superficial, fragile, and artificial arrangement at Dayton.
Although Kosovo was not directly connected with the events in
Bosnia-Herzegovina, the imminence of the current conflict was clear. Was the
oversight a deliberate sop to President Milosevic for what the Western
powers secured from him in terms of assistance with the Bosnian Serbs? Was
it yet another instance of the incompetence of those who seek to run the
international system? Or was it sheer indifference induced by the euphoria
of having secured an agreement of some sort in an environment that promised
none?

Whatever the answer, there can be no gainsaying the fact that someone is
answerable for the lapse. The tragedy, of course, is that when matters came
to their present head, a scapegoat needed to be found. And who better to
fill that role than the evil Serb community (so effectively demonized by the
electronic and print media of the West during the conflict in
Bosnia-Herzegovina), [End Page 15] as personified by Milosevic. All the
arrangements made when the Kosovo crisis first assumed serious proportions
in 1998 fell apart because of military attacks and counterattacks of growing
intensity and strength. The Yugoslav government indicated preparedness to
abide by provisions of an agreement that called for such actions as
implementing a cease-fire, granting greater autonomy to the Kosovar
Albanians, and so on, but they insisted that the status of Kosovo as part of
Serbia was not negotiable, and they would not agree to the stationing of
North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces on the soil of Yugoslavia.

Ultimatums were issued to Yugoslavia to the effect that unless it adhered to
the terms of an agreement drawn up at Rambouillet, NATO would undertake
bombing. To make the decision easier for NATO, the radical Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA) leadership, which was also reluctant to sign anything that did
not grant the Albanians of Kosovo independence, were coaxed, cajoled, and
possibly coerced into putting their signatures to a document. With this
concurrence, NATO apparently had all the legal and moral authority it felt
necessary to undertake military operations against a country that had, at
worst, been harsh on its own people.

With the authority of the signature of the KLA on a document drafted by the
Western alliance, on 24 March 1999 NATO launched attacks with cruise
missiles and bombs on Yugoslavia, a sovereign state, a founding member of
the United Nations and the Non-Aligned Movement, and the home of a people
who had been at the forefront of the fight against Nazi Germany and other
fascist forces during World War II. The Yugoslav armed forces have not
attacked or threatened to attack any other country, yet Yugoslavia has been
attacked in a most vicious and devastating manner by a group of nineteen
countries with some of the best military capabilities in the world and led
by the world's sole superpower. A developing country of about 10 million
people emerging from a traumatic vivisection, Yugoslavia has been attacked
by a group representing a combined population of about half a billion. These
attacks continued with a one-sided aerial bombardment, the ruthlessness of
which was matched only by the apparent indifference of the political
leadership of the NATO countries to the fate of the innocent civilians being
killed, maimed, and rendered homeless and the general destruction of a
nation and its society [End Page 16] .

Having completed a one-year tenure as the force commander and head of
mission of the United Nations forces in the former Yugoslavia from 3 March
1992 to 2 March 1993, I declined an offer of extension in the assignment by
the UN secretary-general and returned to the Indian army, primarily because
I had become cynical about the machinations of the international community
(much of which I was privy to, but none of which could I halt or contain)
and was quite disgusted by the unabashed bias of the Western media. However,
the main reason for not accepting an extension of my assignment was my
assessment (later proved correct) that NATO would assume an increasingly
intrusive and substantive role in the running of the UN operations in the
region.

As things turned out, NATO (led by the United States) used the UN as a front
and a shield for as long as it suited its purpose and then unceremoniously
dumped the UN into the cesspool of history. Just as there is much that some
UN monitors in Iraq (other than the Americans) and some Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe monitors in Kosovo (according to press
reports) have to say about the manner in which their missions were usurped
by the compulsions of pursuing an agenda of the sole superpower, there is a
great deal that could be said of the manipulations and pressures that were
brought to bear on UN activities in the former Yugoslavia.

The ongoing NATO operations against Yugoslavia raise a number of issues that
need objective understanding and analysis to assess the direction in which
we are headed in terms of the establishment of a just and equitable world
order. I cannot resist making the point, however, that if what is being done
by the NATO forces to the people of Yugoslavia reflects the combined will
and understanding of the "civilized world" (which is what the developed
world unfailingly calls itself), I would much prefer to remain in
"uncivilized" societies like India, where we at least continue to have some
traditional values and genuine respect for human life and dignity. Where are
the voices of sanity that we thought existed in France, Scandinavia, and
Greece?

Instead of holding our breath for too long while seeking an answer to that
question, let us try and examine the main issues raised by NATO's actions.
First, it is appropriate to touch on the humanitarian dimension, which, to
say the least, is sad and depressing and becoming worse by the day. It is
the [End Page 17] innocent who are being subjected to displacement, pain,
and misery. Unfortunately, this is the tragic and inevitable outcome of all
civil wars, insurgencies, rebel movements, and terrorist activities. History
is replete with examples of such suffering, whether they be in the United
States during its Civil War, in Spain as a result of the Basque movement, or
in Northern Ireland, Chechnya, Angola, Cambodia, and so many other places.
European civilian centers were bombed indiscriminately during World War II;
Hiroshima and Nagasaki were decimated; and the people of Vietnam were
victimized. The list is endless.

Personally, I have no doubt that, notwithstanding what one hears and sees on
CNN, the BBC, and other Western agencies and in the daily briefings of the
NATO authorities, the blame for the humanitarian crisis that has arisen
cannot be placed at the door of the Yugoslavian authorities alone. In fact,
if I am to go by my own experiences handling operations in Croatia,
Bosnia-Herzegovina, and FYROM, I would say that the reporting in the
electronic media is largely unreliable, because they invariably broadcast
establishment policy, information conveyed by the propaganda machinery of
the belligerents, or stories designed to result in maximum viewership. Fair
enough, they have to survive, but we do not have to treat what they portray
as gospel.

Those of us who have had the opportunity to see such situations firsthand do
not fool ourselves into really believing that there is true freedom of the
media in the world's greatest democracy, or in the lesser ones. Whether the
people of Kosovo are fleeing their homes and hearths because of NATO bombs,
Serbian authorities, the KLA, or all three can be debated by those who think
such debate is necessary. To an objective analyst there can be no doubt that
the ongoing human catastrophe has been provoked by NATO's actions in the
form of bombing and air strikes. While we sympathize with the unfortunate
Albanians who are displaced, the world is as yet unaware of the sufferings
of equally innocent Serbs, probably because they are less than human in the
eyes of the dispensers of justice in the Western world.

The responsibility for the humanitarian crisis rests at NATO's doors, and no
amount of meaningless rhetoric can erase that truth. But the rest of the
international community shares responsibility for its incapacity to raise
its voice against such unilateral, one-sided armed action. [End Page 18]

All this brings one to the most serious aspect of the ethics of NATO's
actions. They run directly counter to the charter of the UN. Does the
Western world care for what appears to be an increasingly impotent
organization? The intervention is also against NATO's own charter, which
declared that the alliance can take military action only when one of its own
members is attacked. (This is apparently being revised to allow NATO
operations in other parts of the world; what will then happen to the rest of
the world is not a pleasant thought.) NATO cannot take action under the
umbrella of Chapter 8 of the UN Charter, because it is not a regional
organization as envisaged by that provision but a military alliance. The
attempts to coerce Yugoslavia by threats of bombing to sign on to what was
drafted at Rambouillet are in violation of the Vienna Convention on the Law
of International Treaties.

One hears of the total endorsement of the action by all NATO countries, but
one has to be really naive to believe that U.S. arm-twisting is reserved
only for countries like India. The other members of NATO, as also those
governments that opposed the Russian resolution in the UN Security Council,
know that they have no option other than to fall in line. It would also be
interesting to analyze the modus operandi of the alliance in the execution
of what it calls Operation Allied Force. As a military man, I cannot
convince myself that the methods being adopted in the conduct of present
operations are the preferred option of NATO's military planners; I know they
are a professional lot.

What is being undertaken under the garb of a military operation is the
unprofessional enterprise of some politicians and diplomats, who quite
obviously made a serious miscalculation in assessing the capacity of the
Yugoslav leadership and its people to stand up to such outrageously
unacceptable international behavior. The prime movers of this utterly futile
operation have apparently drawn all the wrong lessons from what transpired
during the conflict in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, particularly in
bringing hostilities to a close in 1995.

The assumption that it was the NATO bombing of the Bosnian Serbs alone that
forced them to the negotiating table is basically flawed. President
Milosevic and the Bosnian Serbs went to Dayton and eventually signed the
agreement not solely because of the aerial action then undertaken by [End
Page 19] NATO forces, which in itself had a degree of justification in
international norms, because the Bosnian Serbs had attacked a UN-declared
safe area, Srebrenica. This was an attack on the will of the international
community represented by UN forces, exaggerations of so-called atrocities
and mass murders notwithstanding.

Having been part of the international system for so many years and having
participated effectively in all the activities of the UN in the past, the
Yugoslav political leadership was fully aware of the transgression of
accepted international norms. It is another matter altogether that the
international community represented by the Security Council was not
sufficiently exercised by a similar breach of norms when the Croatian armed
forces attacked UN protected areas in Croatia in January 1993 and again in
1995, when they put to flight the Serb population of the Krajina, estimated
at approximately three hundred thousand.

Another reason for Serbian agreement at Dayton was that the Bosnian Serb
leadership had by then become convinced that its main demand (voiced as
early as November or December 1992, when I was still in command of the UN
operations in the region), that it be recognized as a separate entity (the
Republika Srbska) in control of Serb-majority areas in Bosnia-Herzegovina,
was to be conceded. The Dayton agreement did in fact concede such an
arrangement, rhetorical postures notwithstanding, and the arrangement
continues to this day. It is another matter altogether that, had this
request been conceded at the end of 1992, much loss of life and destruction
of property could have been avoided.

Another reason why the Dayton scenario could never be the model for actions
relating to Kosovo is that the Bosnian Serb political and military
leadership would have been well aware in 1995 that NATO aerial bombardment
of their positions could be exploited on the ground by the significant
numbers of troops available to the Bosnian Muslims and to the Croats, both
of whom had by then been well trained and equipped by the Americans. There
was no compulsion then for the introduction of U.S. and Western European
ground troops; there were others to do the dirty work. Hence, the Western
powers would have no inhibitions in pursuing the aerial attacks. In Kosovo,
notwithstanding all the assistance that has been provided to the [End Page
20] KLA, it does not yet appear to be in a position to take on the Yugoslav
armed forces effectively.

What are the possibilities that we can, in mid-May 1999, try to forecast?
One possibility is that under the intensity of the aerial bombardment and
destruction of the Yugoslav population and its national assets, President
Milosevic capitulates and agrees to all the conditions set out by NATO. The
second is that opposition to Milosevic succeeds in replacing him and his
cohorts and the country agrees to the conditions set out by NATO. This would
be a desirable response to the message that the United States and its
Western allies have been conveying to the people of the world through the
punishment inflicted on the Yugoslav population--that you will do well to
select representatives who are acceptable to us politically and who are
amenable to our dictates, otherwise you leave yourselves open to bombing and
air strikes. This is an unlikely scenario, with an even more frightening
prospect for the Yugoslav people and the Balkans, since the regime that
replaces Milosevic could well be a radical one that plunges the region into
even greater chaos.

A third possibility is that the American people shake off their self-induced
stupor, awaken to the realities other than what CNN feeds them, and through
their elected representatives force the U.S. administration to call a halt
to the aerial bombardment and strikes. I discount the possibility that the
United States would run out of missiles and bombs. A fourth possibility is
that some saner elements in the NATO framework would feel compelled to
respond to the dictates of their individual and collective consciences and
would be able to stop the hitherto officially condoned genocide.

A fifth possibility is that the United States and the rest of NATO accept a
face-saving arrangement worked out by the Russians; this is not altogether
unlikely, given the sense of desperation creeping in after two months of
aerial bombardment and strikes, and it is the most probable possibility in
my view. What happens after a halt to the unilateral military action then
becomes the paramount question.

Here a very brief look into the recent history of the region may be
appropriate, so that events are placed in proper perspective. An aspect of
significance is that FYROM has a significant Albanian population and that
Kosovo, [End Page 21] Montenegro, and FYROM have common borders with
Albania, from which country, among others, the KLA, the militant Albanian
element seeking independence for Kosovo from Serbia, draws support.

Of relevance also is the history of conflict in the region, particularly
since World War II. Memories of the atrocities committed by the various
communities during that war era are still fresh in the minds of people of
the region. The Serbs particularly are obsessed with what transpired during
the war years, apparently because they suffered more than the others. This
feeling affects all Serbs--those of Serbia, Montenegro, Croatia, and
Bosnia-Herzegovina. The trauma of the fighting in Croatia and
Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1991 to 1995 is even more significant. The animosity
that the momentous events of this period generated between the Serbs and the
Croats, both in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina; their common animosity
toward the Muslims in Bosnia-Herzegovina; and the fighting from 1992 onward,
in which many Albanian Muslims from Kosovo apparently participated, are
things that will not be forgotten for a long while. Add to this explosive
mix the animosities and sufferings induced by recent events in Yugoslavia in
general, and Kosovo in particular, and one has a recipe for continuing
disaster.

Any optimistic prognosis would therefore be subject to much skepticism.
Nevertheless, it is useful to try and enumerate the solutions that could be
looked at should there be a halt to NATO bombardment and air strikes. The
solutions that can emerge, depending on which of the scenarios for the halt
of NATO armed actions takes place, include the following:

Kosovo becomes an independent entity or nation; Kosovo is partitioned, with
those areas having religious and historical significance remaining with
Serbia and the other part becoming an independent Albanian entity; and
Kosovo remains part of Serbia but with greater autonomy for the Albanian
majority, duly monitored for some time at least under UN auspices.

It is almost inevitable, given the recent history of the region, that an
independent Kosovo has very dangerous implications for the Balkans and
Europe. The emergence of Kosovo as an independent entity would almost
certainly lead sooner rather than later to a movement for a greater Albania,
with consequent adverse fallout on FYROM and possibly some spillover [End
Page 22] effects in due course on Greece and later on Bulgaria. Then Turkey
might be drawn in to the conflict. Such a progression may well lead to a
similar movement for a greater Serbia and perhaps to a greater Croatia to
include Croat-majority areas of Bosnia-Herzegovina. The seeds for the growth
of a degree of Islamic fundamentalism would then have been sown; there are
some indications that such a trend is already taking root.

Partition of Kosovo probably appears the most practical solution under the
circumstances but suffers from all the disadvantages of producing an
independent entity with the added adverse connotation of probably not being
to the liking of either the Kosovar Albanians or the Serbs. The third model,
enhanced autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia with international monitoring,
appears to have little possibility of acceptance by the KLA and a sizable
section of the Albanian population.

But if the United States and the European powers are genuine about their
protestations that they do not wish to be party to a further breakup of
Yugoslavia, they must bring to bear the requisite pressure for a resolution
of the crisis within this framework. The real danger is that, the West
having taken sides so obviously in treating the Serbs as the villains of the
piece and subjected them to attack, the KLA and its sympathizers will feel
encouraged to provoke the Serbs at every opportunity. Given the persecution
complex the Serbs are steeped in (probably not altogether without cause),
they can be expected to respond heavy-handedly, thereby drawing the wrath of
the United States and some others upon them again, to the satisfaction of
the KLA.

Any UN force deployed to monitor such arrangements must therefore have the
wherewithal and the composition to satisfy both belligerents. It must also
have the capacity to deal sternly and impartially with any violations of
agreements. Finally, where does all this leave the international community?
The portents for the future, at least in the short term, are bleak indeed.
The UN has been made redundant, ineffective, and impotent. The Western
world, led by the United States, will lay down the moral values that the
rest of the world must adhere to; it does not matter that they themselves do
not adhere to the same values when it does not suit them. National
sovereignty and territorial integrity have no sanctity. And tragically,
secessionist movements, which often start with terrorist activity, will get
greater encouragement. [End Page 23] One can only hope that good sense will
prevail, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Postscript

As this essay was being finished, in June 1999, news came of the agreement
for an end to the immediate conflict crafted with Yugoslavia by the European
Union and the Russian president's envoy, Viktor Chernomyrdin. There is, of
course, much rhetoric in the statements subsequently emanating from the
leaders of some NATO countries and in some sections of the Western media
that air power succeeded in bringing Milosevic to heel. The fact of the
matter appears to be that an arrangement providing NATO a way out of the
morass it got itself into has been found. From what has been made public, it
seems that the main issues that Yugoslavia could not agree to at Rambouillet
have now been addressed in some acceptable form.

How tragic that there had to be so much loss of life and property and
large-scale displacement of the unfortunate people of the region before some
sense of understanding and accommodation was displayed. I cannot help but
recall the similarities with the situation in Bosnia-Herzegovina. In
October-November 1992, the Bosnian Serbs had asked for recognition as a
separate entity, to be allowed to continue to administer an area under their
control, as a solution to the problem. The idea was rejected out of hand at
the time by the Western powers, led by the United States, because they had
decided that Bosnia-Herzegovina must remain a single unit. After three years
of fighting, destruction, and misery for the people of that republic, the
significant terms of the Dayton agreement in November 1995 more or less
conformed to what the Bosnian Serbs had asked for in 1992; they were allowed
control over 49 percent or so of the land.
=====================
Satish Nambiar is director of the United Services Institution of India. A
retired Indian army lieutenant general, he previously served as deputy chief
of staff of the Indian army and as the first commander and head of mission
of the United Nations Forces in the former Yugoslavia, 1992-93.

 A REPORT purporting to show that Belgrade planned the
 systematic ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's entire Albanian
 population was faked, a German general has claimed.

 The plan, known as Operation Horseshoe, was revealed by
 Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, on April 6 last
 year, almost two weeks after Nato started bombing Serbia.
 German public opinion about the Luftwaffe's participation in
 the airstrikes was divided at the time.

 Horseshoe - or "Potkova", as the Germans said it was
 known in Belgrade - became a staple of Nato briefings. It
 was presented as proof that President Slobodan Milosevic
 of Yugoslavia had long planned the expulsion of Albanians.
 James Rubin, the American state department spokesman,
 cited it only last week to justify Nato's bombardment.

 However, Heinz Loquai, a retired brigadier general, has
 claimed in a new book on the war that the plan was
 fabricated from run-of-the-mill Bulgarian intelligence reports.

 Loquai, who now works for the Organisation for Security
 and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has accused Rudolf
 Scharping, the German defence minister, of obscuring the
 origins of Operation Horseshoe.

 "The facts to support its existence are at best terribly
 meagre," he told The Sunday Times. "I have come to the
 conclusion that no such operation ever existed. The criticism
 of the war, which had grown into a fire that was almost out
 of control, was completely extinguished by Operation
 Horseshoe."

 Scharping reported in his wartime diary that he had received
 the intelligence report on Horseshoe from Fischer. But
 according to Die Woche, the German news weekly, the
 report was a general analysis by a Bulgarian intelligence
 agency of Serbian behaviour in the war.

 Loquai has claimed that the German defence ministry turned
 a vague report from Sofia into a "plan", and even coined the
 name Horseshoe. Die Woche has reported that maps
 broadcast around the world as proof of Nato's information
 were drawn up at the German defence headquarters in
 Hardth?he.

 The Bulgarian report concluded that the goal of the Serbian
 military was to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army, and
 not to expel the entire Albanian population, as was later
 argued by Scharping and the Nato leadership. Loquai also
 pointed to a fundamental flaw in the German account: it
 named the operation Potkova, which is the Croatian word
 for horseshoe. The Serbian for horseshoe is Potkovica. "A
 state prosecutor would never think of going to trial with the
 amount of evidence available to the German defence
 ministry," said Loquai.

 Nato sources rejected Loquai's claims, but admitted it was
 impossible to prove the origins of the Horseshoe story.
 "There's never any absolute certainty about these things,"
 said one source. "But the idea that there was nothing
 pre-arranged is counter-intuitive.

 "Look at the speed with which the Serbs moved. It was
 systematic. Until we get into Belgrade and start tearing the
 files apart, we will never be certain - and that's never going
 to happen."

 In Belgrade, government sources said several Yugoslav army
 officers had dismissed Operation Horseshoe as part of
 Nato's propaganda war.

Spiegel: :"Horseshoe" Plan comes from the poisonous kitchen of the
Bulgarian Secret Services."
Frankfuhrter Rundshaw announced last week  that Bulgarian Secret
Services had been the origin of the information for that Serb plan, used
as a justification for NATO strikes on Yugoslavia (My God! Why havent
they written Milosevic?!!?).
Folker Pele (?) the German Foreign Affairs Ministry speaker did not
answer if Bulgaria had been asked to release additional data for the
West to clear out the doubts in connection with the source and
reliability of the information received by secret agency service.

The German Foreign Minister has confirmed the German press releases
about the existance of a Bulgarian secret analysis from our information
services for Kosovo.
On April 1, 1999 Minister Mihailova had given Joshka Fisher the Serb
plan "Podkova" (=Horseshoe) for pending ethnic cleansing of Kosovo
Albanians. Fisher gave it to Rudolph Scharping, the German Minister of
Defence.
Only Bulgarians and Germans had discussed that plan last year.
"Horseshoe" Plan was mentioned openly on April 8, 1999 for the first
time.
Bulgarian Telegraph Agency (BTA) quotes the General Bundesweher
Inspector Hans-Peter von Kierhbach (?), who explained the plan on a
press-conference. According to him, the Serb plan "Horseshoe" aimed at
liquidating KLA even if that would mean extermination of all the
Albanians in Kosovo. Its essence was the Albanians to be expelled from
the country stage by stage to be achieved demographic change in the
province.
These explanations were necessary because two weeks after the March 24
there were already civilian victims and the refugees were increasing.
The apprehensions for the war end were increasing too.
A week later the "horseshoe" plan was mentioned in an articleby Wiliam
Pfaff (?) in "International Herald Tribune". The aim was to convince the
public that  there was no moral justification to stop the bombing.
"According to the German government sources that program  for Kosovo
Albanians ethnic cleansing  had been worked out at the end of 1998 under
the code name "Horseshoe".. In fact, it had been under implementation
before the the Rambouillet Negotiations in February", Pfaff writes.
According to him Milosevic (i.e.,Yugoslavia) should receive a lesson.
On April 24 Kostov (the Bulgarian Premier) also quotes the operation
"Horseshoe" to justify the pending Bulgarian coroboration  and war
interference. He underlined that Albanians had fled from Kosovo in great
numbers long before the bombing start. " Who has made 400,000 (?!?)
Albanians flee out of Kosovo before March 24?.. Operation "Horseshoe
began at February 26 and aimed at two things: to exterminate KLA and to
turn Kosovo into a desert. What can explain the flows of refugees to the
countries from the region when there were no bombings? And now, when
there are bombings, why only Albanians flee from Kosovo? And how it
happened so that those people have been deliberately loaded on buses,
trains, etc., and in an organised manner had been deported to
Macedonia?  We witness a quite deliberate deportation carried out by and
army of 40000 soldiers, police and paramilitary formations", Kostov
said.  In the same interview he declares also that Milosevics aim
(i.e., Yugoslavians government - translator's note) was to destabilise
Macedonia. "Bulgaria is the last country , which should close the ring
around Milosevic (i.e., Yugoslavia - translators note). All the
countries have given their consent to support the peacekeeping
operations.. If we do not close the ring, we in fact help destabilising
Macedonia."
"Horseshoe" is not mentiond in any of the thousands Reuter informations
for the the Kosovo conflict.
The former US Ambassador in Bulgaria Avis Bowlen (?) declared in an
interview on Radio "Darik"(shamelessly pro UDF radio!) that she knew
nothing about that plan.

   Text of report in English by the Bulgarian news agency BTA
   Sofia, 29th March: Bulgarian Foreign Ministry spokesman Radko Vlaykov
   denied reports that Bulgarian Foreign Minister Nadezhda Mikhaylova has
   handed over to her German counterpart Joschka Fischer materials
   collected by the Bulgarian secret services.

   Mikhaylova did not hand over to Fischer any materials collected by the
   secret services during their 1st April 1999 meeting at the Petersburg
   residence near Bonn, Vlaykov told journalists [on] Wednesday [29th
   March] in connection with information that appeared in the German and
   Bulgarian press, and was aired on the BBC. According to the reports,
   Mikhaylova handed over to Fischer an analysis drafted by the Bulgarian
   secret services of the Serbs' Podkova plan for ethnic cleansing of
   Kosovo, which later prompted the launch of NATO air strikes against
   Yugoslavia.

   At the 1st April meeting, a week after the launch of the air strikes,
   the two foreign ministers discussed with concern the situation in
   Kosovo, Vlaykov said. They ascertained that the Yugoslav regime had
   been carrying out purposeful preparations for an ethnic cleansing
   quite some time before the air strikes. Mikhaylova and Fischer
   described as unreasonable the Yugoslav propaganda at the time, which
   claimed that the refugees were fleeing because of the NATO air strikes
   and not because of the campaign purposefully mounted against them.
   No materials collected by secret services were handed over during the
   meeting, Vlaykov said, noting that the task of foreign ministers is to
   set the political framework for the overall development of interstate
   relations and not to correspond with the secret services nor to act as
   their couriers.
   According to Vlaykov, this is a case of annoying misinterpretation on
   the part of BBC's Bulgarian desk and of a domestic daily when citing
   the spokesperson of the German Foreign Ministry. When he said that
   Mikhaylova handed over to Fischer materials collected by the Bulgarian
   secret services, the cited German Foreign Ministry official, Volker
   Pele, was quoting an interpretation of the events in the German press
   and not factual data, Vlaykov said.
   During his Wednesday talks with German Foreign Ministry spokesman
   Andreas Michaelis and with the German ambassador to Bulgaria, Ursula
   Seiler-Albring, Vlaykov's conviction that this is a case of a
   misunderstanding was confirmed.
   Cooperation between the two countries' secret services goes back way
   before the Kosovo conflict; it existed during the conflict, continues
   to exist today and will go on in the future, Vlaykov said. This
   cooperation is assessed in very positive terms and is part of the
   normal partnership between secret services, he said.
   Unfortunately, this is not the first occasion on which groundless
   allegations are made against this country. It is obvious that the
   image that the country created for itself during the past decades
   gives some journalists the right to think that there is nothing they
   are not allowed to do, Vlaykov said.
   He announced that the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry is drafting a letter
   that is to be forwarded to the editorial staff of the German 'Spiegel'
   magazine which wrote something to the effect that the materials for
   the Podkova plan originated from the poisonous kitchen of the
   Bulgarian secret services and were transferred to Fischer. In addition
   to a refutal of this report, the Bulgarian Foreign Ministry will
   propose to 'Spiegel' to run also a piece on the exemplary
   Bulgarian-German cooperation in the field of security.

 Blood for oil, drugs for arms - are the two lasting legacies of the 20th century, by far
 the deadliest 100 years in human history. The so-called “American Century” turned into
 a disaster for mankind, with nearly 200 million people killed by governments alone,
 according to research by Prof. R.J. Rummell of the University of Hawaii. If western
 consumers ever realized how much human blood they were pouring into their cars’
 when they fill their gasoline tanks, heat their homes or light their barbecues; chances
 are, the conscientious among them may prefer to go back to the horse and buggy days
 and use wood-burning stoves.

 Of course, the terrible death toll wasn’t all because of oil. But much of it was,
 especially in the last two decades of the century. When the U.S. President, Jimmy
 Carter, declared in the late 1970s the oil fields of the Middle East a vital U.S. interest,
 the so-called Carter Doctrine opened the floodgates to future wars.

 Carter’s line in the sand vis-?-vis the then U.S. Cold War opponent, the Soviet Union,
 coupled with some Bush-Baker State Department trickery, drew Iraq into invading
 Kuwait in the summer of 1990, and lead to the subsequent Gulf War. Which was the
 first major shedding of human blood for New World Order oil, in which hundreds of
 thousands of Iraqis perished

 The Gulf War was also a blueprint for future oil and geopolitical wars of the 1990s. The
 world’s most powerful countries would gang up together against small nations that
 didn’t want to surrender their freedom and sovereignty to the Princes of the 20th
 century, the multinational companies and their proxies in western governments.
 Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, Rwanda, Thailand, Kosovo, East Timor… can all attest to it.

 As the curtain dropped on the twilight of the industrial era at the close of the century;
 spilling human blood to line the western multinationals’ pockets, and to fuel our
 factories, vehicles and homes had reached a morbid crescendo. But it also marked the
 apex of the West, as glimmers of mankind’s new dawn in the East became discernible
 on the first day of the 21st century.

 Take the wars in Chechnya, for example. We are told by the establishment media that
 the 1994-1995 and 1999-2000 conflicts were about Islamic separatism and ethnic
 hatreds. They were not. They were about oil.

 Just as in Bosnia and Kosovo, where the West sought to dismantle the former
 Yugoslavia, the Chechnya wars were fomented by the West in an effort to destabilize
 Russia. The Princes had a vested interest in encouraging and funding the Islamic rebels
 in the Caucasus, just as they had used the Islamic secessionists in Bosnia and Kosovo
 to dismantle the former Yugoslavia.

 Why? So as to wrest control of the Caspian oil fields away from Russia. And to fill a
 geopolitical vacuum which the end of the Cold War created in the Balkans. Which
 meant connecting the two geographically separate wings of NATO Turkey to Italy via
 the so-called “Green Interstate”.

Or Corridor VIII, if you prefer the “official” geopolitical jargon devoid of the blood and
 gore inherent in the New World Order’s attempt to construct an Islamic demographic
 “highway” from Bihac in western Bosnia, to Ankara in Turkey, and eventually to Karachi
 in Pakistan. Including the all-important Caspian Sea oil routes.

 Meanwhile, the U.S government, a tool in the hands of the Princes, has been pushing
 for a route through its vassal countries, such as Turkey. And this time, it did it despite
 the opposition of some oil company Princes, who (unsuccessfully) objected to it - on
 account of much higher costs of the Turkey route. Its estimated costs have soared to
 between $2.5 billion to $4 billion.

 As a result, the 1,100-mile pipeline - from the Azerbaijani capital of Baku to the Turkish
 port of Ceyhan - had been plagued by geopolitical and economic problems. Stagnant
 demand, lower-than-anticipated Caspian production, and the continuing Azeri-Armenian
 conflict, have all taken their toll.

 Private investor capital has been lacking for the project as other investment
 opportunities in oil-rich zones like West Africa's Gulf of Guinea, the Gulf of Mexico and
 offshore Brazil offer more secure returns in less risky economic and security
 environments. Caspian oil investors have grown impatient with the seemingly
 intractable problems of developing the Turkish option. But there now is a growing
 expectation among them that Washington will provide financial guarantees for a project
 it regards as a priority strategic objective to economically jump-start the southern
 Balkans.

 Meanwhile, Russia was not sitting idly and watching the multinational Princes trying to
 pick its pockets. As the Associated Press reported on July 27, 1999, Greece and
 Russia, along with Bulgaria, agreed to step up efforts for the construction of a
 Greco-Russian pipeline to carry Russian crude oil through Bulgaria and Greece. The
 285-kilometer-long pipeline would link the ports of Burgas in Bulgaria and
 Alexandroupolis in northern Greece, allowing Russia to export oil through the Black Sea,
 while bypassing the Bosphorus in Turkey.

 And then there is another proposed trans-Balkan line, from Burgas to the port of Durres
 in Albania.

 As if to underline that message, the U.S. government gave Bulgaria last year a
 half-million dollar grant to explore building a pipeline across the Balkans to pump
 Caspian Sea oil to the West - at the height of the Kosovo War (on June 2, 1999). The
 move sent shock waves through Turkey, a key U.S. ally that wants the potentially
 lucrative pipeline for itself.

 The Bulgaria-Macedonia-Albania route has already won support in Moscow and from the
 Chevron-led Caspian Pipeline Consortium that is developing the Caspian-Kazakhstan oil
 deposits. Turkish authorities have now conceded privately that Ankara had
 underestimated Russia's capacity to extend its influence in the southern Caucasus
 states of Armenia and Georgia, thereby dictating a high-risk security environment to
 the building and maintenance of the Baku-Ceyhan line.

 Other oil pipeline routes from the Caspian Sea reserves that would also bypass Turkey
 are now being considered by investors and corporate planners. They include a
 Turkmenistan-to-Iran route that would ship Central Asian oil south to Persian Gulf oil
 terminals. And they extend even to a proposed 2,100 mile pipeline across Central Asia
 to the east from Kazakhstan to the oil hungry, rapidly- growing industries of China.

 Two months before the New Day of Infamy, March 24, 1999, the day NATO started
 bombing Serbia, I said in a column written for the New Dawn magazine, “Washington’s
 Crisis Factory,” that the entire “Kosovo Crisis,” including the creation of the so-called
 Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), of which no one had heard until less than two years
 before, was a result of clandestine U.S.-German operations.

 Commenting about the supposed Racak massacre, I also pointed out in that piece that
 the State Department diplomats, such as “The Butcher of El Salvador,” William Walker,
 whom Albright had appointed to spearhead the U.S. “diplomatic effort” in the region,
 was nothing more than an instrument of Kosovo destabilization and the voice of
 demonization of the Serbs.

 Well, now the London Sunday Times has also confirmed it in its March 12, 2000 story
 headlined “CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army.” “American intelligence agents have
 admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before Nato's bombing of
 Yugoslavia, the Times said. “The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who
 said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs
 and Albanians.”

 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
 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.”

 The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were
 more closely connected to the agency. “It was a CIA front, gathering intelligence on
 the KLA's arms and leadership,” said one, according to the Times’ story.

 And how did the KLA get its weapons and equipment? The same way as the Contras
 did in the 1980s by dealing in narcotics, with tacit or overt help by Washington. A
 Feb/Jan 2000 report by the Mother Jones Wire (MJW), “Heroin Heroes,” corroborates
 the drug trafficking links and winks which the Clinton administration and the KLA have
 been exchanging for years. And confirms that the U.S. is being run by thugs who
 cavort and support the drug-dealing thugs, among others, around the world.

 “Law enforcement officials in Europe have suspected for years that ties existed
 between Kosovar rebels and Balkan drug smugglers,” writes the MJW. “But in the six
 months since Washington enthroned the Kosovo Liberation Army in that Yugoslav
 province, KLA-associated drug traffickers have cemented their influence and used their
 new status to increase heroin trafficking and forge links with other nationalist rebel
 groups and drug cartels… The repercussions of this drug connection are only now
 emerging, and many Kosovo observers fear that the province could be evolving into a
 virtual narco-state under the noses of 49,000 peacekeeping troops” - some of the
 KLA’s best customers, according to the reports by the Serbian media.

 For hundreds of years, Kosovo Albanian smugglers have been among the world's most
 accomplished dealers in contraband, aided by a propitious geography of isolated ports
 and mountainous villages, says the MJW. German Federal Police now say that Kosovar
 Albanians import 80 percent of Europe's heroin. So dominant is the Kosovo Albanians’
 presence in trafficking that many European users refer to illicit drugs in general as
 "Albanka," or Albanian lady.

 At one point in 1996… more than 800 ethnic Albanians were in jail in Germany on
 narcotics charges, according to the MJW. In many places, the Kosovo Albanian
 traffickers gained a foothold through raw violence. According to a 1999 German Federal
 Police report, "The ethnic Albanian gangs have been involved in drugs, weapons
 trafficking, blackmail, and murder. They are increasingly prone to violence."

 Perhaps most alarmingly, Kosovo Albanian drug dealers associated with the KLA have
 begun to form partnerships with Colombian traffickers -- the world's most notorious
 drug lords. We have an all-new situation now," Europol's Storbeck told the MJW.
 "Colombians like to use Kosovo Albanian groups for distribution of cocaine. The
 Albanians are getting stronger and stronger, and there is a certain job sharing now.
 They are used by Turks for smuggling into the European Union and by Colombians for
 distribution of cocaine."

 And what does the Clinton White House say about that?

 The U.S. Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 prohibits aid to any entity that has colluded
 with narcotics traffickers. Late last spring, Senator Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) sent a
 letter to President Bill Clinton requesting an assessment of KLA drug trafficking. The
 president responded that neither CIA nor the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration)
 "has any intelligence that indicates the KLA has either been engaged in other criminal
 activity or has direct links to any organized crime groups."

 Right. Just as the same lamentable U.S. President once claimed that he “didn’t have
 sex with that woman.” And just as an earlier White House liar (Richard Nixon) asserted
 on national television in the early 1970s, “I am not a crook!” Before being forced to
 leave the White House in disgrace.

 "There was no action," said a congressional source close to Grassley. "It was a
 non-answer."

 White House officials deny a whitewashing of KLA activities. "We do care about [KLA
 drug trafficking]," said Bob Agresti (of the White House Office of National Drug Control
 Policy, whose name, by the way, sounds very Albanian to this writer. If so, talk about
 a fox guarding a chicken coop!?). "It's just that we've got our hands full trying to bring
 peace there.”

 “Peace?” What peace? Make it a “peace farce,” as evident by the over 1,100 Kosovo
 Serbs who were murdered during the NATO “peace” mission which commenced on June
 12, 2999, and as can be seen by more than 200,000 who were driven from their
 ancestral homes.

 The DEA, whose sole purpose in life to fight the trafficking of narcotics, seemed equally
 reticent to address the issue. According to Michel Koutouzis, the DEA's website once
 contained a section detailing Kosovo Albanian trafficking. But a week before the
 U.S.-led bombings began, the section disappeared.

 The MJW’s devastating indictment of the Clinton administration's criminal activities
 carried out under the guise of civility and "humanitarian" interventions, summed it up as
 follows: “Is our embrace of the KLA the latest in an ignoble tradition of aiding drug
 traffickers for political reasons? Similar recipients of U.S. largesse have included the
 Nicaraguan Contras, former Panamanian strongman Manuel Noriega, the Afghan Taliban,
 and Burma's Khun Sa.”

 Now, substitute the Chechens for Kosovo Albanians in the above paragraphs, and you
 will see why the Chechen wars were a mirror image of the West’s destabilization
 efforts, both in the former Yugoslavia, and in Russia.

 With one big difference, though. Unlike the Boris Yeltsin Russian government which
 kow-towed before the West during the 1994-1995 Chechen war, or Slobodan
 Milosevic’s chickening out over Kosovo last June, the Vladimir Putin administration
 reacted decisively and with full force against the Chechen terrorists. As a result, they
 have been virtually wiped out, with survivors forced to hide in mountainous crevices in
 the south of this Russian province.

 Does the same fate sooner or later await the Kosovo Albanians, the NATO “protection”
 notwithstanding? Probably. For, the Balkans is known in history as the graveyard of
 empires. The Ottoman and the Austrian empires broke their backs there. The Third
 Reich was also buried there. It’s starting to look as if that's where the New World
 Order’s Evil Empire will also bite the dust.

 As a former Russian naval officer put it recently, quoting a famous Russian author,
 Valentin Pikul, "(in battle) the Serbs stand like a rock, and fall like a cliff." The
 “tsunami” which the fall of Kosovo has unleashed is yet to reach the western shores.
 But there is no doubt that it’s on its way.

 The end of the North Atlantic Terrorist Organization, also known as NATO, started as
 its bombing of Serbia ended. The Serbs and the 250 Russian troops changed the course
 of history on June 11, 1999, when they snatched the sophisticated underground
 Slatina (Pristina, Kosovo) military airport right under the noses of their “victorious” but
 klutzy NATO “Uebermenschen.” From that day forward, the Russian quisling, Boris
 Yeltsin, became merely a model for a future wax figure in a New World Order museum.
 On that day, the epitaphs for Clinton, Tony Blair, Gen. Wesley Clark or Madeleine
 Albright were written.

 After June 11, 1999, it was just a matter of time before the official foreign policy began
 to reflect the new anti-western political climate in Russia. Yeltsin’s appointment of
 Vladimir Putin, a total unknown in the West, to the post of the prime minister on Aug.
 9, was the first step. Yeltsin’s stepping down as Russia’s president on Dec. 31,
 completed his transition from a president to a wax figure.

 It was an apt New World Order anti-climax to be played out on the last day of the 20th
 century. It was also a prelude to a western sunset.

 For, the first day of the new century also gave mankind its first glimpse of the new
 dawn rising in the East. Russia’s new acting president and a born-again Christian, flew
 out of Moscow with his wife at the crack of dawn to be with his troops in Chechnya on
 the first day of the first year of the new century. At the same time, the western
 leaders partied in the comfort of their palaces. Just as the Austro-Hungarian and
 Turkish royals happily toasted the new century one hundred years ago, oblivious of
 their impending sunset.

 And so, God’s World Order is once again unfolding as it has been for millions of years.
 The sun is rising in the east, and it is setting in the west. Sooner or later, a new dawn
 will shine on Kosovo, too. As it already has on Chechnya.

The proponents of the Kosovo intervention are in real trouble. That they
stand exposed as liars, conspirators against peace, and war criminals is
no news to our readers. But when their own minions in the courtier press
decide that it is time to look for a lifeboat, the ship must be sinking
indeed.

The International Herald Tribune published a remarkable op-ed piece last
Thursday (May 11) by that paper's and Los Angeles Times' columnist
William Pfaff. "After NATO's Lies About Kosovo, It's Time to Come Clean," says
the headline to Pfaff's piece prompted by recent revelations that NATO lied
about the military effectiveness of its air war against Serbia a year
ago.
This "poses a question," says he:

"What other lies may have been told? Did the ethnic cleansing inside
Kosovo really begin before NATO's attacks started? The Serbs and some reports
in the international press say 'no.' There have been claims that the United
States deliberately sabotaged the Rambouillet conferences in order to
provoke a bombing campaign that it expected to be quick and decisive. We
know that panic was produced in Brussels when it proved to be neither...

What else is there to come out about what went on in Kosovo before the
NATO intervention? About the American connection with the Kosovo Liberation
Armyand the promises, if any, made to them? About the diplomacy that led up
to the war, and the diplomacy that ended it? Eventually it will all come
out, just as the truth about the air campaign has now come out. It would be
better if the rest of the truth were told now. Otherwise the alliance that
fought the war is undermined, and so are the reputations of NATO and the
United States."

Not to mention the reputation of William Pfaff. Hypocritically posing
the questions to which we have had the answers all along he hopes to cover
up his tracks. He was an early and enthusiastic advocate of the war. On
January 25 his headline was self-explanatory: "Turn Kosovo Into an
International Protectorate." Only three days later (January 28) he asked
for "an international agreement, or NATO finding, that Serbia's policy
in Kosovo, by its war crimes and defiance of international norms of
conduct, has provisionally forfeited Serbia's rights in Kosovo" and called for "a

NATO decision to conduct air operations to interdict Serbian military
and police."

Now he wonders if Rambouillet was a "sabotage," but on February 11,
1999, he declared urbi et orbi that "The plan for Kosovo put before Serbian
and Kosovar delegates to the Rambouillet conference is the best plan that
rational man could design."

We would have suggested the above quote for the Idiocy in Journalism
Award had it resulted from genuine stupidity of the author. But Pfaff is not
an idiot, even though he treats his readers as such. On March 25 he hailed
the mbeginning of the bombing and demanded that Kosovo's independence be
recognized: "Kosovo's claim to national independence is solidly based
Kosovo's independence could scarcely be more destabilizing than what had
been going on until Tuesday's NATO decision to attack Serbian forces."

On March 27 he went a step further: "A Western policy of supporting
Kosovo independence is politically sustainable. Western publics will accept it.
It is politically coherent because it responds to the reality that, for the
Kosovars, their independent republic already exists: They proclaimed it,
ratified it, and have respected its clandestine authority for nearly a
decade. Such a NATO policy would have a plausible claim to represent
international legality." By April 8 Pfaff was urging the all-out land
war:

"The only solution, then, is a NATO military victory. If there is no
NATO victory over Serbia, there will no longer be a NATO... The debate over
intervention is no longer a dispute over the means to an end. It is a
debate over abandoning NATO and the American claim to international
leadership."

In a culture that takes journalistic standards seriously the career of
William Pfaff would be over by now on the strength of his role in
spreading the lie about "Operation Horseshoe" and using it as a means of
supporting his war hysteria. As we now know, and as the leading German daily
Frankfuhrter Rundshau reported on March 21, German secret services had
forged a "secret Serb plan" that was used as justification for NATO air
strikes on Yugoslavia last year. The plan, code-named "Horseshoe,"
purported to prove that the Serbs had planned ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.
Albanians well before the NATO bombing campaign. The German paper quoted
Bundeswehr General Heinz Loquai, who says that the "plan" was no more
than an intelligence assessment written in Sofia and subsequently embellished
in Bonn.

But William Pfaff eagerly spread the lie as fact. On April 15 he used
"Horseshoe" in support of his claim that it would be "immoral" to stop the
bombing of Serbia. Needless to say, Pfaff treated "Horseshoe" as a given
fact:

"Mr. Milosevic and his government are attempting to solve their Kosovo
problem by producing a basic demographic change in the province through
deporting its Albanian population, the overwhelming majority. According to
German government sources, this program for purging Kosovo of its
Albanian population was prepared at the end of last year under the code name
"Horseshoe." ... Horseshoe was designed to produce a permanent solution,
and was launched even before the Rambouillet discussions in February,
which the Serbian leadership did not take seriously."

It is now common knowledge that Operation Horseshoe was yet another
Kosovo Lie, even though Mr. Pfaff is keeping understandably quiet about that one.
Perhaps he doesn't read German; but on April 2 The Sunday Times of
London followed the Rundschau story up with a comprehensive and conclusive
report: "Serbian ethnic cleansing scare was a fake," proclaimed its headline,
explaining that the German defense ministry turned a vague Bulgarian
report from Sofia into a "plan" and even coined the name Horseshoe. But this
eagerness to embellish it in order to produce a convincing forgery resulted
in the fundamental flaw: the Germans named the operation "Potkova,"
which is the CROATIAN word for horseshoe. The Serbian for horseshoe is
Potkovica.

"Eventually it will all come out, just as the truth about the air
campaignhas now come out," wrote Pfaff last Thursday. Is it just his arrogance,
or frivolity, or both, that blinded him to the fact that he should take his
own words seriously?

The "Horseshoe" revelations were still a year away when on April 22,
1999, the indefatigable Pfaff warned that the war against the Serbs must end
with a clear NATO victory. "There still is time for NATO to redeem itself by
launching serious land operations to expel Serbian forces from Kosovo,"
he urged before proceeding with the customary hateful stereotyping of
"Serbs" and yet more outright lies about their "program" of ethnic cleansing:

"Serbs, with some honorable exceptions, seem unable to concede that the
cause of their war with NATO is not the goals they have for the Serbian
nation but how they have gone about getting what they want. NATO has
never sought Kosovo's separation from Serbia. The Western powers have defended

Kosovo autonomy, not independence. They have now set peace terms that
logically imply independence - withdrawal of all Serbian forces and
installation of a foreign troop presence - because President Slobodan
Milosevic's program to expel ethnic Albanians from Kosovo has left them
no alternative."

Pfaff does not name those "honorable exceptions," but - still not
satisfied with his own contribution to the collective demonization of the Serbs - on
May 13 of last year he made a further contribution to the lie of the
"Kosovo genocide":

"Kosovo's... fatalities must be in the tens of thousands, and in
addition there have been the well-attested rapes, other deliberate humiliations or
degradations of ethnic Albanians."
Kosovo's fatalities in fact amounted to 2,108 victims on all sides in
the two years preceding the war, but Mr. Pfaff never corrected the
assessment presumably made for him by Messrs. Rubin and Cohen.
Never the one to allow mere reality to stand in the way of his longings,

and unburdened by the demands of conventional morality, by the end of
May
William Pfaff eagerly advocated an all-out war against Serbian
civilians:

"Depriving Serbia of electricity, and disrupting its water supplies,
communications and civilian transport, are part of the program. Much has

been made, unwisely in my view, of NATO's being in conflict only with
Serbia's leaders. Serbia's leaders have been elected by the Serbian
people.
Those elections were decidedly imperfect, but few suggest that the
overall
results failed to express the will of the Serbian electorate. Serbian
voters have kept Slobodan Milosevic in power during the past decade. It
is
not clear why they should be spared a taste of the suffering he has
inflicted on their neighbors."

The depth of cynicism evident in Mr. Pfaff's writing was coupled, in his

June 9 column, with a colossal misrepresentation of the political
endgame
in the Balkans:

"If NATO is not in clear control of Kosovo, with international approval,

and the Kosovars are not offered a convincing prospect of permanent
protection from the power that has just brutally expelled them from
their
own country - or of independence - the refugees will not go back. If
they
do not go back, Mr. Milosevic has won. Kosovo will have been purged of
its
ethnic Albanian population. The goal of a "greater Serbia" for Serbs
alone
will have been advanced. President Milosevic's remaining task will be to

dispose of the Hungarian minority that remains inside his country, and
recover the Republika Srpska, now part of Bosnia. Macedonia, Montenegro
and
rival Albania will all have been destabilized."

After a year of NATO occupation of Kosovo - during which hundreds of
thousands of its non-Albanian inhabitants have been ethnically cleansed,

thousands murdered, and over a hundred Serbian churches destroyed - it
takes a strong stomach to go through Mr. Pfaff's final, gloating
pontifications to the freshly defeated Serbs (June 17):

"Russian support for Serbia indulges the paranoid political culture in
Serbia, which has done so much harm not only to Serbia's neighbors but
also
to Serbia itself. The country has no serious future, other than to
reopen
relations with Western civilization, install democracy and give up its
linked fantasies of national superiority and national persecution. It
has
to come to terms with the reality that Serbia intolerably repressed the
Kosovars, inviting their rebellion, committed war crimes and has been
defeated. The game that Russia is playing in Kosovo comforts the Serbian

denial that any of this happened. The West is ready for reconciliation
with
the Serbs. It wants solid relations of mutual respect with Russia. It is
up
to the Serbs and Russians to choose."

In this and many other instances William Pfaff chose to speak on behalf
of
"the West." The role of a self-appointed port-parole of the
"international
community" evidently suited his vanity, his self-importance, his
neurotic
urge to be on what he assumed to be the winning side of history. Now
that
the edifice is unraveling he cannot evade the responsibility for his
actions. They show him to be not a journalist, much less an analyst, but
a
propagandist in "Jamie" Shea's intellectual and moral league.

Indeed, as his headline reads, "after NATO's lies about Kosovo, it's
time
to come clean," but William Pfaff cannot do so because he is unable to
come
clean on his own lies and distortions. A sincere "mea culpa" might save
his
soul, if not his career, but the Pfaffs of this world know their
priorities. He often asks what "history" will say of people and events
he
writes about. If "history" ever bothers to say anything of William Pfaff
it
will be to record him - in a footnote to the infamous paragraph on "The
Clinton Presidency" - as a fellow-purveyor of lies, a flawed man whose
morals and whose values accurately reflected the spirit of these
shameful times.

For the better part of a decade the U.S. public has been bombarded with
a media campaign to demonize the Serbian people and their elected
leaders. During that time, the U.S. government has pursued a goal of
breaking up Yugoslavia into a cluster of small, weak, dependent,
free-market principalities. Yugoslavia was the only country in Eastern
Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector
economy. It was the only one that did not beg for entry into NATO. It
was--and what's left of it, still is--charting an independent course not

in keeping with the New World Order.

Targeting the Serbs

Of the various Yugoslav peoples, the Serbs were targeted for
demonization because they were the largest nationality and the one most
opposed to the breakup of Yugoslavia. But what of the atrocities they
committed? All sides committed atrocities in the fighting that has been
encouraged by the western powers over the last decade, but the reporting

has been consistently one-sided. Grisly incidents of Croat and Muslim
atrocities against the Serbs rarely made it into the U.S. press, and
when they did they were accorded only passing mention.1 Meanwhile Serb
atrocities were played up and sometimes even fabricated, as we shall
see. Recently, three Croatian generals were indicted by the Hague War
Crimes Tribunal for the bombardment and deaths of Serbs in Krajina and
elsewhere. Where were the U.S. television crews when these war crimes
were being committed? John Ranz, chair of Survivors of the Buchenwald
Concentration Camp, USA, asks: Where were the TV cameras when hundreds
of Serbs were slaughtered by Muslims near Srebrenica?2 The official
line, faithfully parroted in the U.S. media, is that Bosnian Serb forces

committed all the atrocities at Srebrenica.

Are we to trust U.S. leaders and the corporate-owned news media when
they dish out atrocity stories? Recall the five hundred premature babies

whom Iraqi soldiers laughingly ripped from incubators in Kuwait? A story

repeated and believed until exposed as a total fabrication years later.
During the Bosnian war in 1993, the Serbs were accused of pursuing an
official policy of rape. "Go forth and rape" a Bosnian Serb commander
supposedly publicly instructed his troops. The source of that story
never could be traced. The commander's name was never produced. As far
as we know, no such utterance was ever made. Even the New York Times
belatedly ran a tiny retraction, coyly allowing that "the existence of
'a systematic rape policy' by the Serbs remains to be proved."3

Bosnian Serb forces supposedly raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000
Muslim women, the stories varied. The Bosnian Serb army numbered not
more than 30,000 or so, many of whom were engaged in desperate military
engagements. A representative from Helsinki Watch noted that stories of
massive Serbian rapes originated with the Bosnian Muslim and Croatian
governments and had no credible supporting evidence. Common sense would
dictate that these stories be treated with the utmost skepticism--and
not be used as an excuse for an aggressive and punitive policy against
Yugoslavia.

The "mass rape" propaganda theme was resuscitated in 1999 to justify the

continued NATO slaughter of Yugoslavia. A headline in the San Francisco
Examiner (April 26, 1999) tells us: "SERB TACTIC IS ORGANIZED RAPE,
KOSOVO REFUGEES SAY." No evidence or testimony is given to support the
charge of organized rape. Only at the bottom of the story, in the
nineteenth paragraph, do we read that reports gathered by the Kosovo
mission of the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe found

no such organized rape policy. The actual number of rapes were in the
dozens "and not many dozens," according to the OSCE spokesperson. This
same story did note in passing that the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal
sentenced a Bosnian Croat military commander to ten years in prison for
failing to stop his troops from raping Muslim women in 1993--an atrocity

we heard little about when it was happening.

A few dozen rapes is a few dozen too many. But can it serve as one of
the justifications for a massive war? If Mr. Clinton wanted to stop
rapes, he could have begun a little closer to home in Washington D.C.,
where dozens of rapes occur every month. Indeed, he might be able to
alert us to how women are sexually mistreated on Capitol Hill and in the

White House itself.

The Serbs were blamed for the infamous Sarajevo market massacre. But
according to the report leaked out on French TV, Western intelligence
knew that it was Muslim operatives who had bombed Bosnian civilians in
the marketplace in order to induce NATO involvement. Even international
negotiator David Owen, who worked with Cyrus Vance, admitted in his
memoir that the NATO powers knew all along that it was a Muslim bomb.4

On one occasion, notes Barry Lituchy, the New York Times ran a photo
purporting to be of Croats grieving over Serbian atrocities when in fact

the murders had been committed by Bosnian Muslims. The Times printed an
obscure retraction the following week.5

The propaganda campaign against Belgrade has been so relentless that
even prominent personages on the Left--who oppose the NATO policy
against Yugoslavia--have felt compelled to genuflect before this
demonization orthodoxy, referring to unspecified and unverified Serbian
"brutality" and "the monstrous Milosevic."6 Thus they reveal themselves
as having been influenced by the very media propaganda machine they
criticize on so many other issues. To reject the demonized image of
Milosevic and of the Serbian people is not to idealize them or claim
that Serb forces are faultless or free of crimes. It is merely to
challenge the one-sided propaganda that laid the grounds for NATO's
aggression against Yugoslavia.

The Ethnic Cleansing Hype

Up until the NATO bombings began in March 1999, the conflict in Kosovo
had taken 2000 lives altogether from both sides, according to Kosovo
Albanian sources. Yugoslavian sources put the figure at 800. Such
casualties reveal a civil war, not genocide. Belgrade is condemned for
the forced expulsion policy of Albanians from Kosovo. But such
expulsions began in substantial numbers only after the NATO bombings,
with thousands being uprooted by Serb forces especially from areas where

KLA mercenaries were operating

We should keep in mind that tens of thousands also fled Kosovo because
it was being mercilessly bombed by NATO, or because it was the scene of
sustained ground fighting between Yugoslav forces and the KLA, or
because they were just afraid and hungry. An Albanian woman crossing
into Macedonia was eagerly asked by a news crew if she had been forced
out by Serb police. She responded: "There were no Serbs. We were
frightened of the [NATO] bombs."7 I had to read this in the San
Francisco Guardian, an alternative weekly, not in the New York Times or
Washington Post.

During the bombings, an estimated 70,000 to 100,000 Serbian residents of

Kosovo took flight (mostly north but some to the south), as did
thousands of Roma and others.8 Were the Serbs ethnically cleansing
themselves? Or were these people not fleeing the bombing and the ground
war? Yet, the refugee tide caused by the bombing was repeatedly used by
U.S. war makers as justification for the bombing, a pressure put on
Milosevic to allow "the safe return of ethnic Albanian refugees."9

While Kosovo Albanians were leaving in great numbers—usually
well-clothed and in good health, some riding their tractors, trucks, or
cars, many of them young men of recruitment age--they were described as
being "slaughtered." It was repeatedly reported that "Serb
atrocities"—not the extensive ground war with the KLA and certainly not
the massive NATO bombing--"drove more than one million Albanians from
their homes."10 More recently, there have been hints that Albanian
Kosovar refugees numbered nowhere near that number.

Serbian attacks on KLA strongholds or the forced expulsion of Albanian
villagers were described as "genocide." But experts in surveillance
photography and wartime propaganda charged NATO with running a
"propaganda campaign" on Kosovo that lacked any supporting evidence.
State Department reports of mass graves and of 100,000 to 500,000
missing Albanian men "are just ludicrous," according to these
independent critics.11 Their findings were ignored by the major networks

and other national media.

Early in the war, Newsday reported that Britain and France were
seriously considering "commando assaults into Kosovo to break the
pattern of Serbian massacres of ethnic Albanians."12 What discernible
pattern of massacres? Of course, no commando assaults were put into
operation, but the story served its purpose of hyping an image of mass
killings.

An ABC "Nightline" show made dramatic and repeated references to the
"Serbian atrocities in Kosovo" while offering no specifics. Ted Kopple
asked a group of angry Albanian refugees, what specifically had they
witnessed. They pointed to an old man in their group who wore a wool
hat. One of them reenacted what the Serbs had done to him, throwing the
man's hat to the ground and stepping on it-"because the Serbs knew that
his hat was the most important thing to him." Kopple was appropriately
horrified about this "war crime," the only example offered in an
hour-long program.

A widely circulated story in the New York Times, headlined "U.S. REPORT
OUTLINES SERB ATTACKS IN KOSOVO," tells us that the State Department
issued "the most comprehensive documentary record to date on
atrocities." The report concluded that there had been organized rapes
and systematic executions. But as one reads further and more closely
into the article, one finds that State Department reports of such crimes

"depend almost entirely on information from refugee accounts. There was
no suggestion that American intelligence agencies had been able to
verify, most, or even many, of the accounts . . . and the word
'reportedly' and 'allegedly' appear throughout the document."13

British journalist Audrey Gillan interviewed Kosovo refugees about
atrocities and found an impressive lack of evidence or credible
specifics. One woman caught him glancing at the watch on her wrist,
while her husband told him how all the women had been robbed of their
jewelry and other possessions. A spokesman for the U.N. High
Commissioner for Refugees talked of mass rapes and what sounded like
hundreds of killings in three villages, but when Gillan pressed him for
more precise information, he reduced it drastically to five or six
teenage rape victims. But he had not spoken to any witnesses, and
admitted that "we have no way of verifying these reports."14

Gillan notes that some refugees had seen killings and other atrocities,
but there was little to suggest that they had seen it on the scale that
was being reported. One afternoon, officials in charge said there were
refugees arriving who talked of sixty or more being killed in one
village and fifty in another, but Gillan "could not find one eye-witness

who actually saw these things happening." Yet every day western
journalists reported "hundreds" of rapes and murders. Sometimes they
noted in passing that the reports had yet to be substantiated, but then
why were such unverified stories being so eagerly reported in the first
place?

The Disappearing "Mass Graves"

After NATO forces occupied Kosovo, the stories about mass atrocities
continued fortissimo. The Washington Post reported that 350 ethnic
Albanians "might be buried in mass graves" around a mountain village in
western Kosovo. They "might be" or they might not be. These estimates
were based on sources that NATO officials refused to identify. Getting
down to specifics, the article mentions "four decomposing bodies"
discovered near a large ash heap.15

It was repeatedly announced in the first days of the NATO occupation
that 10,000 Albanians had been killed (down from the 100,000 and even
500,000 Albanian men supposedly executed during the war). No evidence
was ever offered to support the 10,000 figure, nor even to explain how
it was arrived at so swiftly and surely while NATO troops were still
moving into place and did not occupy but small portions of the province.

Likewise, repeatedly unsubstantiated references to "mass graves," each
purportedly filled with hundreds or even thousands of Albanian victims
also failed to materialize. Through the summer of 1999, the media hype
about mass graves devolved into an occasional unspecified reference. The

few sites actually unearthed offered up as many as a dozen bodies or
sometimes twice that number, but with no certain evidence regarding
causes of death or even the nationality of victims. In some cases there
was reason to believe the victims were Serbs.16

On April 19, 1999, while the NATO bombings of Yugoslavia were going on,
the State Department announced that up to 500,000 Kosovo Albanians were
missing and feared dead. On May 16, U.S. Secretary of Defense William
Cohen, a former Republican senator from Maine now serving in President
Clinton's Democratic Administration, stated that 100,000 military-aged
ethnic Albanian men had vanished and might have been killed by the
Serbs.17 Such widely varying but horrendous figures from official
sources went unchallenged by the media and by the many liberals who
supported NATO's "humanitarian rescue operation." Among these latter
were some supposedly progressive members of Congress who seemed to
believe they were witnessing another Nazi Holocaust.

On June 17, just before the end of the war, British Foreign Office
Minister Geoff Hoon said that "in more than 100 massacres" some 10,000
ethnic Albanians had been killed (down from the 500,000 and 100,000
bandied about by U.S. officials)."18 A day or two after the bombings
stopped, the Associate Press and other news agency, echoing Hoon,
reported that 10,000 Albanians had been killed by the Serbs.19 No
explanation was given as to how this figure was arrived at, especially
since not a single war site had yet been investigated and NATO forces
had barely begun to move into Kosovo. On August 2, Bernard Kouchner, the

United Nations' chief administrator in Kosovo (and organizer of Doctors
Without Borders), asserted that about 11,000 bodies had been found in
common graves throughout Kosovo. He cited as his source the
International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Republic of Yugoslavia
(ICTY). But the ICTY denied providing any such information. To this day,

it is not clear how Kouchner came up with his estimate.20

As with the Croatian and Bosnian conflicts, the image of mass killings
was hyped once again. Repeatedly unsubstantiated references to "mass
graves," each purportedly filled with hundreds or even thousands of
Albanian victims were publicized in daily media reports. In September
1999, Jared Israel did an internet search for newspaper articles,
appearing over the previous three months including the words "Kosovo"
and "mass grave." The report came back: "More than 1000-- too many to
list." Limiting his search to articles in the New York Times, he came up

with eighty, nearly one a day. Yet when it came down to hard evidence,
the mass graves seemed to disappear.

Thus, in mid-June, the FBI sent a team to investigate two of the sites
listed in the war-crimes indictment against Slobodan Milosevic, one
purportedly containing six victims and the other twenty. The team lugged

107,000 pounds of equipment into Kosovo to handle what was called the
"largest crime scene in the FBI's forensic history," but it came up with

no reports about mass graves. Not long after, on July 1, the FBI team
returned home, oddly with not a word to say about their investigation.21

Forensic experts from other NATO countries had similar experiences. A
Spanish forensic team, for instance, was told to prepare for at least
2,000 autopsies, but found only 187 bodies, usually buried in individual

graves, and showing no signs of massacre or torture. Most seemed to have

been killed by mortar shells and firearms. One Spanish forensic expert,
Emilio Perez Puhola, acknowledged that his team did not find one mass
grave. He dismissed the widely publicized references about mass graves
as being part of the "machinery of war propaganda."22

The Washington Post reported that 350 ethnic Albanians "might be buried
in mass graves" around a mountain village in western Kosovo. Or they
might not. Such speculations were based on sources that NATO officials
refused to identify. Getting down to specifics, the article mentions
"four decomposing bodies" discovered near a large ash heap, with no
details as to who they might be or how they died.23

In late August 1999, the Los Angeles Times tried to salvage the genocide

theme with a story about how the wells of Kosovo might be "mass graves
in their own right." The Times claimed that "many corpses have been
dumped into wells in Kosovo . . . Serbian forces apparently
stuffed...many bodies of ethnic Albanians into wells during their
campaign of terror."24 Apparently? Whenever the story got down to
specifics, it dwelled on only one village and only one well--in which
one body of a 39-year-old male was found, along with three dead cows and

a dog. Neither his nationality nor cause of death was given. Nor was it
clear who owned the well. "No other human remains were discovered," the
Times lamely concluded. As far as I know, neither the Los Angeles Times
nor any other media outlet ran any more stories of wells stuffed with
victims.

In one grave site after another, bodies were failing to materialize in
any substantial numbers-or any numbers at all. In July 1999, a mass
grave in Ljubenic, near Pec (an area of concerted fighting), believed to

be holding some 350 corpses, produced only seven after the exhumation.
In Djacovica, town officials claimed that one hundred ethnic Albanians
had been murdered, but there were no bodies because the Serbs had
returned in the middle of the night, dug them up, and carted them away,
the officials seemed to believe. In Pusto Selo, villagers claimed that
106 men were captured and killed by Serbs at the end of March, but again

no remains were discovered. Villagers once more suggested that Serb
forces must have come back and removed them. How they accomplished this
without being detected was not explained. In Izbica, refugees reported
that 150 ethnic Albanians were executed in March. But their bodies were
nowhere to be found. In Kraljan, 82 men were supposedly killed, but
investigators found not a single cadaver.25

The worst incident of mass atrocities ascribed to Yugoslavian leader
Slobodan Milosevic allegedly occurred at the Trepca mine. As reported by

U.S. and NATO officials, the Serbs threw a thousand or more bodies down
the shafts or disposed of them in the mine's vats of hydrochloric acid.
In October 1999, the ICTY released the findings of Western forensic
teams investigating Trepca. Not one body was found in the mine shafts,
nor was there any evidence that the vats had ever been used in an
attempt to dissolve human remains.26

By late autumn of 1999, the media hype about mass graves had fizzled
noticeably. The many sites unearthed, considered to be the most
notorious, offered up a few hundred bodies altogether, not the thousands

or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands previously trumpeted, and
with no evidence of torture or mass execution. In many cases, there was
no certain evidence regarding the nationality of victims.27 No mass
killings means that the Hague War Crimes Tribunal indictment of
Milosevic "becomes highly questionable," notes Richard Gwyn. "Even more
questionable is the West's continued punishment of the Serbs."28

No doubt there were graves in Kosovo that contained two or more persons
(which is NATO's definition of a "mass grave"). People were killed by
bombs and by the extensive land war that went on between Yugoslav and
KLA forces. Some of the dead, as even the New York Times allowed, "are
fighters of the Kosovo Liberation Army or may have died ordinary
deaths"-- as would happen in any large population over time.29 And no
doubt there were grudge killings and summary executions as in any war,
but not on a scale that would warrant the label of genocide and justify
the massive death and destruction and the continuing misery inflicted
upon Yugoslavia by the western powers.

We should remember that the propaganda campaign waged by NATO officials
and the major media never claimed merely that atrocities (murders and
rapes) occurred. Such crimes occur in every war, indeed, in many
communities during peacetime. What the media propaganda campaign against

Yugoslavia charged was that mass atrocities and mass rapes and mass
murders had been perpetrated, that is, genocide, as evidenced by mass
graves.

In contrast to its public assertions, the German Foreign Office
privately denied there was any evidence that genocide or ethnic
cleansing was ever a component of Yugoslav policy: "Even in Kosovo, an
explicit political persecution linked to Albanian ethnicity is not
verifiable. . . . The actions of the [Yugoslav] security forces [were]
not directed against the Kosovo-Albanians as an ethnically defined
group, but against the military opponent and its actual or alleged
supporters."30

Still, Milosevic was indicted as a war criminal, charged with the forced

expulsion of Kosovar Albanians, and with summary executions of a hundred

or so individuals, again, alleged crimes that occurred after the NATO
bombing had started, yet were used as justification for the bombing. The

biggest war criminal of all is NATO and the political leaders who
orchestrated the aerial campaign of death and destruction. But here is
how the White House and the U.S. media reasoned at the time: Since the
aerial attacks do not intend to kill civilians, then presumably there is

no liability and no accountability, only an occasional apology for the
regrettable mistakes-as if only the intent of an action counted and not
its ineluctable effects. In fact, a perpetrator can be judged guilty of
willful murder without explicitly intending the death of a particular
victim--as when the death results from an unlawful act that the
perpetrator knew would likely cause death. George Kenney, a former State

Department official under the Bush Administration, put it well:
"Dropping cluster bombs on highly populated urban areas doesn't result
in accidental fatalities. It is purposeful terror bombing."31

In sum, through a process of monopoly control and distribution,
repetition and image escalation, the media achieve self-confirmation,
that is, they find confirmation for the images they fabricate in the
images they have already fabricated. Hyperbolic labeling takes the place

of evidence: "genocide," "mass atrocities," "systematic rapes" and even
"rape camps"--camps which no one has ever located. Through this process,

evidence is not only absent, it becomes irrelevant.

So the U.S. major media (and much of the minor media) are not free and
independent, as they claim, they are not the watchdog of democracy but
the lapdog of the national security state. They help reverse the roles
of victims and victimizers, warmongers and peacekeepers, reactionaries
and reformers. The first atrocity, the first war crime committed in any
war of aggression by the aggressors is against the truth.

                                            --------------

Michael Parenti is the author of Against Empire and America Besieged.
His most recent book is History as Mystery (City Lights Books).

      In March 1999, the most powerful military force in history
attacked tiny Yugoslavia, a country one-fifth the size of my home
province of Saskatchewan. For seventy-nine days the Canadian Air
Force, without a declaration of war, without a parliamentary
resolution and outside the bounds of legality, participated in a
massive around-the-clock air bombardment in support of a
shadowy, armed Kosovo secessionist movement seeking to break up
what remained of Yugoslavia.

      Admitting its intention was to break Yugoslavia’s spirit,
NATO targeted civilian structures, dropping over 23,000 bombs
(500 by Canada) and cruise missiles in a campaign of terror
bombing, described recently by Alexander Solzhenitsyn as follows:

            I don’t see any difference in the behaviour of NATO and of
Hitler. NATO wants
to erect its own order in the world and it needs Yugoslavia simply as an
example: We’ll
punish Yugoslavia and the whole rest of the planet will tremble.

      As many qualified analysts have pointed out, the
bombardment of Yugoslavia was a flagrant violation of the United
Nations Charter that prohibits the use of force by any state against
another except in self-defense, or when expressly authorized by the
United Nations, neither of which occurred with Yugoslavia. It was
also a violation of NATO’s own charter and of international law on
a number of other fronts.

The Canadian government maintained it was bombing to prevent a
humanitarian crisis,
“genocide” and “ethnic cleansing.” Yet Roland Keith, Canadian field
office director of the
Kosovo Verification Mission in the weeks just prior to the bombing,
reported that “the
clear majority” of the violence he saw in Kosovo was instigated by the
Kosovo Liberation
Army (KLA). In his words “there was no ethnic cleansing going on that I
witnessed and
certainly no genocide.”

      Shortly after the bombing started Lt. General Satish
Nambiar, former commander of the United Nations forces in
Yugoslavia, stated that

we did not witness any genocide beyond killings and massacres on all
sides that are
typical of such conflict conditions. I believe none of my successors and
their forces saw
anything on the scale claimed.

      The total death toll on all sides in Kosovo in the year prior
to the bombing was 2000. Nambiar writes: It was the West that
proceeded to escalate the situation into the current senseless
bombing campaign. He condemns the “double standard” whereby
“all Serbs have been driven out of Croatia and the Muslim-Croat
Federation” and ignored. The United Nations have been made
totally redundant, ineffective and impotent, declares Nambiar, by
NATO’s bombing intended to terrorize Serbia into submission.

      The United Nations Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR)
reported the first registered refugees out of Kosovo on March 27th
— three days after the bombing began. Civilian casualties after the
first twenty-one days of bombing exceeded all casualties on both
sides in Kosovo in the three months before the war. It is clear that
the claim that NATO was bombing Yugoslavia to solve a
“humanitarian crisis” is not credible.

      Following World War II the Nuremberg War Crimes
tribunal ruled that to initiate a war of aggression... is not only an
international crime, it is the supreme international crime. Yet this is
precisely what Canada and its NATO allies have done in
Yugoslavia. In the words of Walter J. Rockler, former prosecutor at
Nuremberg, the attack on Yugoslavia constitutes the most brazen
international aggression since the Nazis attacked Poland to prevent
‘Polish atrocities’ against Germans.

            For Canada to drop bombs in favor of the breakup of another
multi-ethnic state
defies comprehension. A founding member of both the UN and the
Non-Aligned
Movement, Yugoslavia was Canada’s staunch ally in World War I and again
in World
War II when it stood at the forefront of the fight against both Hitler’s
Nazis and
Mussolini’s Fascists. Attempting to defend the bombing prominent U.S.
spokespersons,
followed almost immediately by External Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy,
went so far as
to say that the principle of non-interference in the affairs of
sovereign nations is obsolete
because of globalization and the “new world” we now live in. The
implications of such a
claim are profound and in response to this kind of thinking, twenty
high-ranking judges of
Greece’s supreme administrative court issued a statement on the war:

            The only valid crisis management, according to international
law, remains as ever
the UN. And no other organization that is by definition inferior to it
can remove or usurp
this role. NATO cannot abolish international law nor can it produce new,
generally
recognized principles of international legality... Consequently, however
serious the crisis in
Kosovo may be, it remains an internal Yugoslav affair and belongs to the
exclusive
jurisdiction of the sovereign Yugoslav state. Any humanitarian or other
interest on the part
of the UN, other international organizations or third countries may be
manifested only in a
peaceful way and by diplomatic means within the context of the UN
Charter...

      NATO acted in a self-appointed role. It did not have — nor
could it have — any competence to become involved in the matter
of Kosovo. It first dictated an insolent ultimatum disputing the very
sovereignty of Yugoslavia, and upon its rejection launched an
aggressive war accompanied by the revival of dark propaganda that
sought to exploit the misery of the refugees to draw attention away
from the violation of international law.

      Unable to defend their actions on legal grounds NATO
politicians and the media in their countries made an all out effort to
convince public opinion that Yugoslavia deserved the onslaught,
churning out endless accusations of Serb atrocities, many of which
were accepted and repeated by prominent writers and cultural
figures. Latin American writer Eduardo Galeano, expressing shock
at Western intellectuals’ support for the attack on Yugoslavia, said:

            If things go on as they are in the next few years, the
Pentagon and NATO will be
selecting their enemies by lottery... Seeing how easily the world
accepts a change in bad
guys and the appearance of new bad guys fills me with stupefaction and
also with horror
and concern.

      The propaganda campaign culminated in President Clinton’s
comparison of war-torn Yugoslavia to Hitler’s Germany. Equating a
weak, already partially dismembered country under sweeping
economic sanctions for almost a decade, struggling to hang on to its
heartland, surrounded and under attack by the world’s most
powerful nations armed to the teeth with the latest high tech
weapons, to Nazi Germany graphically illustrated that truth is the
first casualty of war.

      Questioning the publicly proclaimed motivation of his
country American historian and World War II pilot Howard Zinn,
among others, correctly concluded that the United States does not
have a “humanitarian” aim in Kosovo: its whole history shows that
its foreign policy has never been guided by such concerns.

      Why then did NATO attack Yugoslavia?

      Most wars have historically been over trade. When the U.S.
invaded Canada in 1812, Andrew Jackson declared, “We are going
to... vindicate our right to a free trade, and open markets... and to
carry the Republican standard to the Heights of Abraham.” In 1839,
Britain demanded China accept its opium and attacked when China
said no, forcing that country to both accept opium and give up Hong
Kong. When Thailand refused British trading demands in 1849,
Britain “found its presumption unbounded” and decided a better
disposed King [be] placed on the throne... and through him, we
might, beyond doubt, gain all we desire.

            A century and half later NATO said it was attacking
Yugoslavia to force it to sign
the Rambouillet “peace agreement,” even though the Vienna Convention on
the Law of
Treaties, to which Canada and most NATO countries are signatory, states
that any treaty
obtained by force or the threat of force is void. Significantly,
although rarely publicized,
the economic section of Rambouillet stipulated: “The economy of Kosovo
shall function in
accordance with free market principles” and “There shall be no
impediments to the free
movement of persons, goods, services and capital to and from Kosovo.”

            During the war Bill Clinton elaborated:

    If we’re going to have a strong economic relationship that includes
our ability
    to sell around the world, Europe has got to be the key; that’s what
this
    Kosovo thing is all about... It’s globalism versus tribalism.

      Tribalism was the word used by 19th century free trade
liberals to describe nationalism. And this war was all about
threatening any nation that might have ideas of independence or
sovereignty. Almost alone in Eastern Europe Yugoslavia refused to
allow U.S. military bases on its soil. According to the speaker of
the Russian Duma, Yugoslavia annoys NATO because it conducts
an independent policy, does not want to join NATO and has an
attractive geographic position.

      The Canadian government, citing urgent deficit conditions,
has cut Medicare, agricultural research, social housing and even
shelters for battered women, yet it spent tens of millions to bomb
Yugoslavia, millions more to bring Albanian refugees to Canada
and maintain them here and is spending further millions to occupy
Kosovo. All the while Canada is abandoning its own sovereignty
and economy to U.S. demands, whether it be magazines, fish, wheat,
lumber or transportation.

            The implications for democracy of the attack on Yugoslavia
are far reaching.
Who exactly ordered Canada into war? Do unelected generals at NATO now
determine
Canada’s foreign policy, including decisions of war and peace? It is
clear our parliament
does not. Canadian war planes were in the air before parliament
discussed the issue and
no vote was ever taken on the matter. In a crowning abdication of
responsibility, Prime
Minister Chr?tien declared that whatever the NATO “team” decided about a
ground war,
Canada would go along. In the U.S. the elected representatives voted
both against a
declaration of war and against supporting the air war, yet it went on
anyhow.

            Globalization undermines both democracy and national
sovereignty, the main
guarantors of human rights. In a remarkably frank March 28, 1999, New
York Times
article, that paper’s chief diplomatic correspondent Thomas Friedman
wrote:

    For globalization to work, America can’t be afraid to act like the
almighty
    superpower that it is... The hidden hand of the market will never
work
    without a hidden fist — McDonald’s cannot flourish without McDonnell

    Douglas, the designer of the F-15. And the hidden fist that keeps
the world
    safe for Silicon Valley’s technologies is called the US Army, Air
Force,
    Navy and Marine Corps.

            As NATO troops entered Kosovo it was announced that the
province’s new
currency would be the German mark. After months of being told that
Slobodan Milosevic
was the key problem we heard Washington’s Balkans expert, Daniel Serwer,
explain:
“It’s not a single person that’s at issue, there’s a regime in place in
Belgrade that is
incompatible with the kind of economy that the World Bank... has to
insist on.”

            The assault on Yugoslavia represents a turning point in
world history with
profound implications for both democracy and the rule of law. Yet the
silence following
the end of the bombing is deafening. The situation cries out for a
parliamentary inquiry to
examine how Canada got involved in an illegal attack, using
internationally outlawed
weapons, on a former ally. At the same time it is more urgent than ever
that Canada
regain its sovereignty so that it can stand for justice, play an
independent role in world
affairs and never again participate in an unprovoked assault on another
nation contrary to
both law and morality.
 
 

(Mr. Orchard, a leading Canadian opponent of NAFTA, was the runner-up in
last
year’s Progressive Conservative Party leadership contest. He gave this
speech at a
recent conference in Toronto jointly organized by The Lord Byron
Foundation and
the Centre for Peace in the Balkans.)

 Berlin, May 12 - The Berlin court of original  jurisdiction reached
today a
verdict that the
 NATO aggression against Yugoslavia was an  illegal, arbitrary and
impermissible intervention
 by the alliance, representing gross violaion of  the international law.
========================================
 The Tirgarten court of original jurisdiction in the German capital was involved in the case of persons indicted by the state prosecution
 because they called on Bundeswehr soldiers to desert in the last year's war against Yugoslavia.
 The court acquitted them of charges, explaining there was no
desertion, which is a criminal offence under to the German law, since the war
against Yugoslavia was carried out by violating the valid international law.
 Weekly Unser Zeit published today the verdict, which officially
declared the NATO aggression on our country illegal, all in the heart of a country
 which was one of its key protagonists along with the U.S.
 It is stressed in the verdict that arbitrary intervention, such as the
NATO aggression against Yugoslavia was, is impermissible under the valid international law and that it is carried out for humanitarian motifs,
which was one of the phrases most often propagandized by the Western
 alliance.
 "It is contrary to the intention of the U.N. Charter, according to
which violent salvation of international conflicts is not possible above the
systems of institutions of collective security", it is said in the verdict.

 The Berlin court thinks that the deployment of Bundeswehr against the
FR of Yugoslavia "was objectively illegal", since it also represented the
 violation of the valid international law.
 "The air war against the FR of Yugoslavia has violated absolute ban on violence under Article 2 Ref. 4 of the U.N. Charter. The ban on
violence includes every kind of armed violence directed against territorial integrity of another state", concluded the Berlin court.

Berlin, Unsere Zeit
32. Jahrgang / Nr. 19 12. Mai 2000

Innenpolitik
Bemerkenswertes Berliner Gerichts-Urteil
 
 

http://www.unsere-zeit.de

Die Persönlichkeiten, die vor einem Jahr Bundeswehrsoldaten zur Desertation
im NATO-Krieg gegen Jugoslawien aufgefordert hatten, wurden jetzt von dem
Amtsgericht Tiergarten in Berlin freigesprochen. Der Tatbestand der
Gehorsamsverweigerung und der Fahnenflucht war nicht gegeben, da der Krieg
gegen die Bundesrepublik rechtswidrig war, so das bemerkenswerte Urteil, aus
dem wir hier Passagen zitieren:

Mit Antrag auf Erlass eines Strafbefehls vom 2. Juli 1999 hat die
Staatsanwaltschaft dem Angeklagten vorgeworfen, er habe am 21. April 1999
gemeinschaftlich mit weiteren als Erstunterzeichner aufgeführten Personen
öffentlich durch Verbreiten von Schriften zu einer rechtswidrigen Tat,
nämlich zur Fahnenflucht (§ 16 WS+G) und Gehorsamsverweigerung (§ 20 WS+G),
aufgefordert. In der Ausgabe der "tageszeitung" vom 21. April 1999 sei eine
Anzeige erschienen, in der der Aufruf veröffentlicht war...

2. Der Angeklagte hat in der Hauptverhandlung glaubhaft erklärt, dass er den
später in der "tageszeitung" veröffentlichten Aufruf unterschrieben habe. Er
habe seine Unterschrift mit dem Wissen und Wollen geleistet, dass der Aufruf
in vielfältiger Weise unter Nennung seines Namens verbreitet werde. Dass der
Aufruf in der "tageszeitung" veröffentlicht werden solle, habe er gewusst.
Von der Versendung des Aufrufs durch den Zeugen H. T. habe er erst durch die
Anklageschrift konkrete Kenntnis erlangt. Er habe sie jedoch ohne
Einschränkung gebilligt und bereits bei der Unterzeichnung sicher
angenommen, dass es zu solchen Aktionen kommen werde. Sein Ziel sei nicht
gewesen, zu Straftaten aufzurufen. Ihm sei es im Gegenteil darum gegangen,
die Soldaten davon abzuhalten, im Kriegseinsatz gegen Jugoslawien Straftaten
zu begehen. Er sei der festen Überzeugung gewesen, dass sich ein Soldat
nicht strafbar machen können, wenn er dem Aufruf Folge leiste.

3. Der Angeklagte war aus Rechtsgründen freizusprechen, da das ihm
vorgeworfene Handeln nicht strafbar ist. Der Tatbestand der öffentlichen
Aufforderung zu Straftaten gemäß § 111 Abs. 1 und 3 StGB war weder im Fall
I. 1 noch im Fall II. 2. erfüllt. Die Vorschrift setzt voraus, dass der
Täter zu einer rechtswidrigen Tat auffordert. Rechtswidrig ist eine Tat nach
§ 111 Abs. 1 Nr. 5 StGB nur dann, wenn sie den Tatbestand eines
Strafgesetzes verwirklicht. Diese Voraussetzung war hier nicht gegeben.
Wären die angesprochenen Soldaten der Bundeswehr dem Aufruf gefolgt, so
hätten sie sich weder wegen Fahnenflucht noch wegen Gehorsamsverweigerung
strafbar gemacht. Die Tatbestände der Gehorsamsverweigerung und der
Fahnenflucht waren nicht eröffnet, weil der Einsatz der Bundeswehr gegen die
Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien rechtswidrig war.

4. Ein Soldat ist nicht strafbar, wenn er die Teilnahme an einem
völkerrechtswidrigen Kampfeinsatz ablehnt oder sich von der Truppe entfernt,
um sich vor der Teilnahme an diesem Einsatz zu entziehen...

.... Die Verbindlichkeit fehlt unter anderem dann, wenn der Befehl gegen die
allgemeinen Regeln des Völkerrechts verstößt. Das ist insbesondere dann der
Fall, wenn der Befehl im Rahmen eines völkerrechtlich unzulässigen Einsatzes
erteilt wird. Es kommt nicht darauf an, ob sich die Erteilung des Befehls in
subjektiver Hinsicht als kriminelles Unrecht darstellt. Ein
völkerrechtswidriger Befehl ist auch dann unverbindlich, wenn er in bester
Absicht erteilt wird.

.... Die betroffenen Soldaten sollten sich von der Truppe lediglich in der
Absicht und zu dem Zweck entfernen, die Teilnahme am bewaffneten Einsatz
gegen die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien zu vermeiden. Ein Verlassen der Truppe,
das zu dem begrenzten Zweck erfolgt, einem bestimmten Kampfeinsatz
fernzubleiben, ist jedoch nur dann als Fahnenflucht strafbar, wenn dieser
Einsatz selbst rechtmäßig ist...

5. Der Krieg gegen Jugoslawien war auch nicht durch ungeschriebenes
völkerrechtliches Gewohnheitsrecht gedeckt. Soweit versucht wird, den
Einsatz mit der Untätigkeit oder auch Unfähigkeit des UN-Sicherheitsrates
zur Einleitung von Maßnahmen nach Kapitel VII der UN-Charta zu
rechtfertigen, fehlt es bereits an den tatsächlichen Voraussetzungen des
behaupteten Rechtfertigungsgrundes. Der Krieg wurde begonnen, ohne die
Beschlussfassung des Sicherheitsrates auch nur abzuwarten. Im übrigen ist es
nicht richtig, die Verhinderung der erwünschten Beschlüsse durch das Veto
eines ständigen Mitglieds nach Art. 27 Abs. 3 UN-Charta gleichsam als
Rechtsmissbrauch zu werten, der die übrigen Staaten berechtigen soll, die
Prärogative des Sicherheitsrates zu übergehen und selbst die für notwendig
gehaltenen Maßnahmen zu ergreifen...

.... Der Rechtfertigungsgrund der Nothilfe greift ebenfalls nicht ein. Dabei
kann offenbleiben, ob die humanitäre Intervention im ursprünglichen Sinne -
die gewaltsame Intervention eines Staates zur Rettung eigener Staatsbürger
im Ausland - völkerrechtlich zulässig wäre. Der Krieg gegen die
Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien wurde nicht zum Schutz eigener Staatsbürger
geführt. Auch die gelegentlich erwogene entsprechende Anwendung des Art. 51
UN-Charta kommt nicht in Betracht. Der Einsatz verfolgte nicht das Ziel, die
albanische Bevölkerung des Kosovo unmittelbar in ihrer militärischen
Selbstverteidigung gegen Menschenrechtsverletzungen durch den jugoslawischen
Staat zu unterstützen. Dieser Zweck hätte es erfordert, mit Bodentruppen in
das Kampfgeschehen einzugreifen. Tatsächlich wurde der Krieg aber als
Luftkrieg auf dem Territorium der serbischen Teilrepublik geführt und hatte
das Ziel, die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien zu schwächen, um sie dadurch zu
einer Änderung ihrer Politik im Kosovo und zur Beendigung der dort
begangenen Menschenrechtsverletzungen zu zwingen.

Eine eigenmächtige Intervention dieser Art ist nach dem geltenden
Völkerrecht nicht zulässig, auch wenn sie aus humanitären Motiven erfolgt.
Sie widerstreitet der Intention der UN-Charta, nach der eine gewaltsam
Austragung internationaler Konflikte außerhalb des institutionellen Systems
kollektiver Sicherheit nicht mehr möglich sein soll. Die UN-Charta hat die
Gewaltanwendung zwischen Staaten der Disposition der einzelnen Staaten
schlechthin entzogen und die Entscheidung den zuständigen Gremien der
Vereinten Nationen übertragen...

6. Der Einsatz der Bundeswehr gegen die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien war
objektiv rechtswidrig, da er dem geltenden Völkerrecht zuwiderlief. Der
Verstoß berührte die allgemeinen Regeln des Völkerrechts...

Der Luftkrieg gegen die Bundesrepublik Jugoslawien verletzte das absolute
Gewaltverbot aus Art. 2 Nr. 4 UN-Charta. Das Gewaltverbot umfasst jede Art
der Anwendung von Waffengewalt, die sich gegen die territoriale Integrität
eines anderen Staates richtet...