NEW STATESMAN – 17 MAY 1999 page 17<\/p>\n
JOHN PILGER<\/p>\n
Revealed: the amazing Nato plan, tabled at Rambouillet, to occupy\u00a0<\/b>Yugoslavia<\/b><\/p>\n
The justification for Nato’s attack on Serbia, now the outright terror\u00a0bombing of civilians, was the Serbs’ rejection of the “peace accords”\u00a0drafted at Rambouillet in France in February. The precise terms were\u00a0never made public, with the British media generally accepting the word of the\u00a0Foreign Office that the west’s aim was to bring peace and autonomy to\u00a0Kosovo.<\/p>\n
This is the big lie of Tony Blair’s “crusade for civilization”. Anyone\u00a0scrutinising the Rambouillet document is left in little doubt that the\u00a0excuses given for the subsequent bombing were fabricated. The peace\u00a0negotiations were stage-managed, and the Serbs were told: surrender and\u00a0be occupied, or don’t surrender and be destroyed. The impossible terms,\u00a0published in full in LeMondeDiplomatique, but not in Britain, show that\u00a0Nato’s aim was the occupation not only of Kosovo, but effectively all of\u00a0Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n
Nothing like this ultimatum has been put to a modern, sovereign European\u00a0state. Of all the Hitler and Nazi analogies that have peppered the\u00a0west’s propaganda, one is never mentioned – Hitler’s proposal in 1938 to the\u00a0British prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, that Germany occupy\u00a0Czechoslovakia because ethnic Germans there had been “tortured”,\u00a0“forced to flee the country” and “prevented from realising the right of nations to\u00a0self-determination”. As a cover for German expansion, Hitler was laying\u00a0the basis for a “humanitarian intervention”, whose fraudulence was no\u00a0greater than Nato’s cover for its own worldwide expansion.<\/p>\n
Take chapter seven of the Rambouillet accords. Headed “Status of\u00a0Multinational Military Implementation Force”, it says a Nato force\u00a0occupying Kosovo must have complete and unaccountable political power,\u00a0“immune from all legal process, whether civil, administrative or\u00a0criminal, [and] under all circumstances and at all times, immune from [all laws]\u00a0governing any criminal or disciplinary offences which may be committed\u00a0by Nato personnel in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia . . . Nato\u00a0personnel shall enjoy . . . with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft and equipment,\u00a0free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the\u00a0Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, including associated airspace and territorial\u00a0waters.”<\/p>\n
Propaganda is not overlooked. The government of Yugoslavia “shall, upon\u00a0simple request, grant all telecommunications services, including\u00a0broadcast services, needed for [the occupation], as determined by Nato. This\u00a0shall be free of cost.” And the ideological basis for the occupation is left in\u00a0no doubt. “Nato is granted the use of airports, roads, rail and ports\u00a0without payment of fees, duties, tolls or charge. The economy shall function in\u00a0accordance with free market principles.”<\/p>\n
No government anywhere could accept this. It was a deliberate\u00a0provocation. On 19 March the Kosovo Liberation Army, which Madeleine Albright and\u00a0Robin Cook had earlier dismissed as terrorists, signed the “accords”. The\u00a0Serbs, of course, refused. And it was not just Milosevic. The elected Yugoslav\u00a0parliament, reported the New York Times correspondent in Belgrade,\u00a0“rejected Nato troops in Kosovo [but] supported the idea of a United\u00a0Nations force to monitor a political settlement there”. What amounted\u00a0to a viable alternative to bombing was ignored in Washington and Brussels.<\/p>\n
Five days later, Nato attacked. The Serbs had been nicely stitched up.\u00a0There is plenty of evidence that the bombing was pre-ordained. On 12\u00a0August 1998, the US Senate Republican Policy Committee commented: “Planning\u00a0for a US-led Nato intervention in Kosovo is now largely in place. The only\u00a0missing element seems to be an event – with suitably vivid media\u00a0coverage – that could make the intervention politically saleable . . . That\u00a0Clinton is waiting for a ‘trigger’ in Kosovo is increasingly obvious.”<\/p>\n
On 25 March, the day after the bombing began, the (UK) Defence Secretary,\u00a0George Robertson, described Nato’s aim as “clear-cut”. It was, he said, “to\u00a0avert an impending humanitarian catastrophe by disrupting the violent attacks\u00a0currently being carried out by the Yugoslav security forces against the\u00a0Kosovan Albanians”. A UN report contradicted this, putting the balance\u00a0of violence between Serb and Albanian paramilitaries at roughly equal.<\/p>\n
Moreover, Clinton was warned by the CIA that bombing was likely to spark\u00a0mass ethnic cleansing.<\/p>\n
On 30 April, sitting among top military brass on HMS Invincible, George\u00a0Robertson said Nato had never expected to prevent a humanitarian\u00a0disaster. This was the opposite of his “clear-cut” announcement five weeks\u00a0earlier. Like Clinton, he and Blair must have been forewarned of the refugee\u00a0catastrophe their actions would ignite.<\/p>\n
General Satish Nambiar, an Indian, was the head of the United Nations\u00a0Mission in Yugoslavia from 1992 to 1993. Recently he wrote: “I felt that\u00a0Yugoslavia was a media-generated tragedy . . . The Yugoslav government\u00a0had, after all, indicated its willingness to abide by nearly all provisions\u00a0of the Rambouillet ‘agreement’ on aspects like a ceasefire and greater\u00a0autonomy to the Albanians. But they would not agree to station Nato\u00a0forces on the soil of Yugoslavia. This is precisely what India would have done\u00a0under the same circumstances. It was the west that proceeded to escalate\u00a0the situation under the current senseless bombing campaign that smacks of\u00a0hurt egos, revenge and retaliation. Nato’s massive bombing appears no\u00a0different from the morality of the actions of the Serb forces in\u00a0Kosovo.”<\/p>\n