Wednesday, March 1, 2006
\nFormer Member of NATO Parliamentary Assembly Testifies That NATO\u00a0Deliberately Targeted Civilians During Kosovo War
\nWritten by: Andy Wilcoxson<\/p>\n
The trial of Slobodan Milosevic continued on Wednesday with the\u00a0conclusion of former RSK foreign minister Slobodan Jarcevic’s testimony.
\nMs. Uertz-Retzlaff cross-examined Jarcevic on behalf of the prosecution on\u00a0Tuesday.<\/p>\n
During the witness’s re-examination, Jarcevic testified thatMilosevic had nothing to do with the appointment or dismissal of\u00a0Krajina-Serb officials. He said that officials were either elected directly
\nby the people or appointed by the RSK assembly. He underlined that Belgrade\u00a0never intervened in such matters.<\/p>\n
Jarcevic confirmed that the Croatian authorities staged a fake\u00a0attack on the Zagreb-Lipovac highway in order to give themselves a pretext\u00a0to launch Operation Flash and carry out the ethnic cleansing of the Serbian\u00a0population in Western Slavonia.<\/p>\n
This fact first emerged during the testimony of Franjo Tudjman’s\u00a0former cabinet chief Hrvoje Sarinic. Sarinic, while testifying as a\u00a0prosecution witness at the Milosevic trial on January 22, 2004, admitted
\nthat on April 30, 1995 Tudjman approved a plan to stage a fake terrorist\u00a0attack on the highway so that Croatia would have an excuse to launch\u00a0Operation Flash.<\/p>\n
This fact is important because it refutes testimony given by MilanBabic, which the prosecution relied on quite heavily for Jarcevic’s\u00a0cross-examination. Babic testified that Milosevic created “parallel\u00a0structures” within the RSK that were designed to provoke incidents that\u00a0would precipitate Croatian war actions.
\nThe logical question that arises is this: why did Croatia need to\u00a0go out of its way to carry out a fake terrorist attack to justify Operation\u00a0Flash if Milosevic was supposed to be using parallel structures to provoke\u00a0real incidents? Seen through this prism, Babic’s claims just don’t add up.<\/p>\n
Jarcevic called Babic’s claims “sheer nonsense” more than once during his\u00a0testimony.\u00a0During the cross-examination the prosecution made a big deal out of
\nthe fact that Serbia arrested and returned RSK soldiers that deserted to\u00a0Serbia. For his part, Jarcevic confirmed that these soldiers were citizens\u00a0of the RSK, and not citizens of Serbia.<\/p>\n
In spite of the prosecution’s rhetoric, this situation is no\u00a0different than the Canadian authorities returning American deserters to the\u00a0U.S. Government. Just because the Canadian government returns American
\ndeserters it does not mean that the Canadians are secretly controlling U.S.\u00a0troops in the war in Iraq.<\/p>\n
Following the conclusion of Jarcevic’s testimony, Alice Mahon took\u00a0the witness stand. Ms. Mahon served as an MP in the British Parliament\u00a0throughout the Balkan wars of the 1990s. She is member of Tony Blair’s\u00a0Labour Party, and represented Halifax constituency. She also served as a\u00a0member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly representing Great Britain from\u00a01992 until 2005.<\/p>\n
As a former member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, Ms. Mahon\u00a0testified that the NATO air war against Yugoslavia was an illegal\u00a0aggression. She said that it constituted a violation of the NATO Charter as
\nwell as a violation of the UN Charter.<\/p>\n
She accused NATO of deliberately targeting civilians during the\u00a0offensive. She based this conclusion on the civilian destruction she\u00a0directly eye-witnessed in Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n
She said that NATO was openly planning to attack Yugoslavia in\u00a0mid-1998. She said that the plan to attack Yugoslavia was being widely and\u00a0openly discussed inside of NATO at that time. It is worth noting that the\u00a0earliest crime that Milosevic is indicted for in Kosovo is the alleged\u00a0“massacre” at Racak in mid-January 1999.\u00a0Therefore, the plan to attack Yugoslavia existed *BEFORE* the
\npretext that was offered to the public by NATO officials \u2013 namely that thebombing was NATO’s reaction to Serb war crimes.<\/p>\n
Ms. Mahon testified that the bombing did absolutely nothing to help\u00a0Kosovo’s civilian population. She traveled to Macedonia and spoke to\u00a0OSCE\/KVM observers only three weeks before the war and they told her that\u00a0the situation was getting better and that there was no reason for NATO to\u00a0attack.<\/p>\n
She testified that the NATO bombing caused a mass-exodus of\u00a0refugees to flee from Kosovo. She confirmed that both Serb and Albanian\u00a0refugees fled from the bombing. The witness said that the NATO bombing –not alleged Serbian crimes — was the main reason why refugees fled Kosovo.<\/p>\n
She cited KLA persecution as another reason why people fled Kosovo.\u00a0She said that she had spoken to Kosovo-Albanian refugees who had fled to
\nBelgrade in order to escape the KLA. She also said that a large number of\u00a0Albanians live in Halifax (where she was an MP), and on one occasion an\u00a0Albanian woman had a nervous breakdown in her office because the KLA wasthreatening her family in Kosovo.<\/p>\n
The witness said that the Kosovo war transformed NATO from a\u00a0defensive organization into an offensive organization. She testified that\u00a0NATO was looking for an excuse to attack and that it created its excuse
\npresenting an unreasonable ultimatum to Yugoslavia at Rambouillet.<\/p>\n
The ultimatum that NATO gave Yugoslavia at Rambouillet was toeither accept a wholesale NATO occupation, or be bombed. Obviously,\u00a0Yugoslavia couldn’t accept a wholesale occupation so NATO attacked.<\/p>\n
Ms. Mahon said that the contents of the so-called “Rambouillet\u00a0Agreement” were concealed from British MPs and NATO parliamentarians until
\nApril 1999 \u2013 one month after the bombing began.<\/p>\n
She testified that she had received information that the CIA had\u00a0infiltrated the OSCE\/KVM, and that William Walker had staged the so-called\u00a0“Racak massacre.”
\nShe said that, prior to his role as KVM chief in Kosovo, Walker\u00a0supported central-American “Contra” terrorists during the 1980s, and that\u00a0he helped to cover-up the massacre of civilians in El Salvador.<\/p>\n
Ms. Mahon was also critical of the Hague Tribunal. She said that\u00a0she had presented several volumes of evidence detailing Croatian crimes\u00a0against Serbs to Carla del Ponte, and that the OTP never reacted. She also\u00a0reported speaking to a British policeman who had been hired to arrest ICTY\u00a0indictees in Bosnia, she said that when she spoke to the officer he told
\nher that he was only interested in arresting Serbs.<\/p>\n
Ms. Mahon briefly commented on the role that the Western media\u00a0played. She said that Western media systematically demonized the Serbs. She\u00a0said that crimes allegedly perpetrated by Serbs received excessive mediacoverage, while crimes committed against Serbs received almost no coverage.<\/p>\n
As for Milosevic’s role, she said that he tried to keep Yugoslavia\u00a0together. She testified that she had not always held this view, but that\u00a0she arrived at this conclusion by watching his trial in The Hague.<\/p>\n
Mr. Nice briefly cross-examined her. The prosecutor insulted her\u00a0and accused her of being biased, a charge which she strongly denied. She\u00a0pointed out that she had been critical of Milosevic and the Serbian side on\u00a0a number of occasions and that if Mr. Nice had read her parliamentary\u00a0speeches then he would have known that.<\/p>\n
The trial will resume on Tuesday, March 14th with the testimony of\u00a0former Montenegrin president Momir Bulatovic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Wednesday, March 1, 2006 Former Member of NATO Parliamentary Assembly Testifies That NATO\u00a0Deliberately Targeted Civilians During Kosovo War Written by: Andy Wilcoxson The trial of Slobodan Milosevic continued on Wednesday with the\u00a0conclusion of former RSK foreign minister Slobodan Jarcevic’s testimony. Ms. Uertz-Retzlaff cross-examined Jarcevic on behalf of the prosecution on\u00a0Tuesday. During the witness’s re-examination, Jarcevic … <\/p>\n