Sunday Telegraph 27th February 2000 p29<\/p>\n
How Albright manoeuvred Nato into war<\/strong><\/p>\n Political manipulation of a massacre in Kosovo early last year brought\u00a0<\/span>the might of Nato into battle on the side of the separatist rebels,\u00a0<\/span>says Allan Little, who has interviewed the key players<\/em><\/p>\n When news of a massacre in the Kosovan village of Racak reached\u00a0<\/span>Washington early last year, Madeleine Albright’s reaction was\u00a0<\/span>immediate. “Spring has come early,” the US Secretary of State told\u00a0<\/span>Sandy Berger, the National Security Adviser, after hearing that the\u00a0<\/span>corpses of 45 ethnic Albanians had been found following an attack by\u00a0<\/span>Serb forces.<\/p>\n Ms Albright, one of the West’s leading anti-Serb hawks, was quick to\u00a0<\/span>grasp how the slaughter could be used with great effect to stiffen\u00a0<\/span>international resolve against President Slobodan Milosevic of\u00a0<\/span>Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n But she also knew that she would have to move quickly to take advantage\u00a0<\/span>of the Racak effect. “It was the kind of event we wanted to avoid,” she\u00a0<\/span>told me. “But the fact that it had happened meant that it had to be a\u00a0<\/span>galvanising event and we had to move the Allies as rapidly as we\u00a0<\/span>could.”<\/p>\n Ms Albright was not alone in turning the Serb atrocity into a tactical\u00a0<\/span>advantage. Hashim Thaci, the young guerrilla who emerged as the leader\u00a0<\/span>of the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army, had begun to think of\u00a0<\/span>international opinion as potentially the strongest weapon in his\u00a0<\/span>otherwise ineffective armoury.<\/p>\n The KLA had already sought to encourage Serbian retaliation, targeting\u00a0<\/span>police and military patrols in hit-and-run ambushes, then melting back\u00a0<\/span>into the civilian population. At Racak, the week before the massacre,\u00a0<\/span>the rebels had killed four Serb policemen. The response was\u00a0<\/span>predictable.<\/p>\n “We knew full well that any armed action we undertook would trigger a\u00a0<\/span>ruthless retaliation by Serbs against our people,” said Mr Thaci.\u00a0“We knew we were endangering civilian lives, too, a great number of\u00a0<\/span>lives.”<\/p>\n Ms Albright and Mr Thaci made their candid admissions to me as I\u00a0<\/span>compiled a BBC documentary to mark the first anniversary of a war which\u00a0<\/span>the West presented as a moral crusade against ethnic cleansing but\u00a0<\/span>which, in reality, was rather more complex. \u00a0KLA commanders and their\u00a0<\/span>political backers in Washington understood how effectively civilian\u00a0<\/span>casualties would stoke international outrage – particularly among\u00a0<\/span>Western allies whose thinking was driven by the guilt of having\u00a0<\/span>hesitated over neighbouring Bosnia.<\/p>\n In late 1998, Milosevic had signed up to a ceasefire that curtailed the\u00a0<\/span>number of Serb police in Kosovo and required the withdrawal of\u00a0<\/span>Yugoslavian troops to barracks. Milosevic faced Nato bombing if he\u00a0<\/span>failed to comply. He did comply.<\/p>\n But the KLA had not been asked to undertake anything. Because it\u00a0<\/span>threatened force against Milosevic only, the agreement enabled the\u00a0<\/span>rebels to perpetuate the cycle of violence while recruiting, rearming\u00a0<\/span>and regrouping.\u00a0 <\/span>They even filled the trenches vacated by the Serbs.<\/p>\n The ceasefire monitors had no stick to wield against the KLA. “This\u00a0b<\/span>ecame a problem with the Serbs,” recalls one British monitor. “They\u00a0<\/span>said to us, ‘Hang on, the deal was that we withdrew from these places,\u00a0<\/span>so can you please get these KLA out of the trenches we were in a month\u00a0<\/span>ago?”<\/p>\n Even on the North Atlantic Council, Nato’s governing body, there was\u00a0<\/span>profound scepticism about rebel intentions. Confidential minutes taken\u00a0<\/span>by one member nation on November 13, 1998, speak of the KLA as “the\u00a0<\/span>main initiator of the violence which is threatening the ceasefire\u00a0<\/span>arrangements”.<\/p>\n But following the fiascos of Bosnia, the Americans were taking a firm\u00a0<\/span>diplomatic line.<\/p>\n Three days after Racak Ms Albright persuaded President Clinton to\u00a0<\/span>promise that US troops would be part of a peacekeeping force in the\u00a0<\/span>event of a political agreement.<\/p>\n She then began to work on the European allies. They wanted another\u00a0<\/span>round of diplomacy. She declared bluntly that she had had enough of\u00a0<\/span>meetings that did not lead anywhere.” I remember telling the Europeans\u00a0<\/span>that I was not going to come to any more meetings where nothing\u00a0<\/span>happened until you give me your word that we will have a Nato\u00a0<\/span>activation order authorising the threat of the use of force.”<\/p>\n The British sought a middle track between Washington’s hawks and the\u00a0<\/span>French and Germans who were still opposed to force. The compromise was\u00a0<\/span>a final round of negotiations – backed by the explicit threat of force\u00a0<\/span>should no deal be reached.<\/p>\n Talks were convened at Rambouillet, near Paris, last February. For the\u00a0<\/span>Europeans, they ended in failure because the Serbs would not accept a\u00a0<\/span>Nato peacekeeping force. But for the Americans they ended in success,\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Precisely because they were so managed that they paved the way for war.\u00a0“Obviously, publicly, we had to make clear that we were seeking an\u00a0<\/span>agreement, but privately we knew the chances of the Serbs agreeing were\u00a0<\/span>quite small,” the State Department spokesman James Rubin now concedes.<\/p>\n “The other acceptable out-come,” he says of Washington’s fallback\u00a0<\/span>position, “was to create clarity where previously there had been\u00a0<\/span>ambiguity… That meant the Kosovar Albanians agreeing to the package\u00a0<\/span>and the Serbs not agreeing to the package.”<\/p>\n For Ms Albright, Rambouillet was a triumph.<\/p>\n She had used the impetus created by the Racak massacre to persuade the\u00a0<\/span>Allies to agree to force. When Hashim Thaci signed the document the\u00a0<\/span>Serbs had rejected, the interests of a small guerrilla band finally\u00a0<\/span>converged with those of the world’s biggest military power. Two months\u00a0<\/span>later, both were at war against a common enemy.<\/p>\n