war crimes
Mainstream Press Reveals Truths about U.S.-NATO Aggression in Yugoslavia
Below are selections from four articles from the mainstream press from June to November 1999 that indicate that U.S.-NATO forces did indeed (1) target civilians, (2) provoked the war and thereby committed a planned aggression against a sovereign state, (3) falsified claims of "genocide" in order to justify this intervention. A fourth article indicates how the War Crimes Court in the Hague is itself a tool of NATO. The newspapers basically supported NATO’s war and these articles are themselves hostile to the Yugoslav government, yet they finally admitted some truths.
1. Purposely targeted civilians(From: "Tension Grew With Divide Over Strategy"
By Dana Priest
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, September 21, 1999; Page A01
Third of three articles )
Planning for the campaign dated back to June 1998. By the opening night, strategists had produced 40 versions of an air war, according to Gen. John P. Jumper, commander of the U.S. Air Force in Europe. Some of these documents were highly critical of using air power alone, without troops on the ground to help flush out the enemy. But NATO ultimately settled on a three-phase air campaign. In Phase I, NATO would strike antiaircraft defenses and command bunkers. Phase II would extend the strikes to Yugoslavia’s infrastructure below the 44th parallel, well south of Belgrade. Only in Phase III would the alliance hit targets in the capital. That was Plan A. There was no Plan B. NATO did not have a contingency blueprint for a longer campaign, officials now say, because the Clinton administration and Clark feared that if the alliance’s 19 member states were asked to contemplate such a possibility, they would not agree to begin the war at all. ... Short On March 24, the opening night of the war, Lt. Gen. Short sat in a darkened room full of computer screens, the Combined Air Operations Center at Vicenza Air Base in Italy. Yellow, green and red tadpole-shaped symbols moved across large electronic maps on the walls, representing all the enemy and NATO aircraft over Yugoslavia. As Short waited for the first missiles to strike, he clenched his jaw and kept his silence, a self-control that some subordinates noted and admired. The three-star general with a drilling blue stare and gruff manner had argued many times to his superiors that the most effective tactic for the first night of the war would be a knockout punch to Belgrade’s power stations and government ministries. ns. Clark Clark also harbored doubts about the initial plan’s meager size. But after a year of coaxing the allies, he felt this was the biggest and best operation he could get NATO to approve. He also believed there was a 40 percent chance that the war would end within three days, since Milosevic might just be looking for an excuse to withdraw from Kosovo. ....
"From the very beginning, Clark changed the strategy," says a European diplomat in Brussels. "He quickly decided to strike on a broader geographic scale and, second, to strike a different type of target. . . . It made us worried about the political risks, the political impact."
...While the allies were hesitating to approve strikes on Belgrade, however, Air Force commanders were unhappy about searching for tanks and troops in Kosovo. Body Language "There was a fundamental difference of opinion at the outset between General Clark, who was applying a ground commander’s perspective . . . and General Short as to the value of going after fielded forces," says Vice Adm. Daniel J. Murphy Jr., who was commander of all naval forces aligned against Yugoslavia.
...In the Air Force magazine interview, Short said that Clark urged him even before the conflict started to "get down amongst" Yugoslav armored vehicles and troops in the field. Eventually, he said, "we, the airmen of the alliance, were able to convince General Clark" of a need to conduct sustained operations against "more lucrative and compelling targets . . . in Serbia proper." (IAC’s emphasis) No Pause Clark says he didn’t need any convincing about strategic targets, but he wanted to strike Serbian forces in Kosovo, as well. Meanwhile, he was fending off proposals from the political leaders of some NATO countries—particularly Italy and Greece—who wanted to suspend the bombing altogether. Clark’s frustration with the alliance’s timidity was reflected in a video conference on March 27. These live, highly secure communication links replaced the crackly field telephones and urgent cables of previous wars. They were part theater, say some of the people who sat through them, with a dozen large personalities on the stage. NATO must strike "as many targets as we can each night," said Clark, seated at the head of a classroom-style conference room, staring at a television screen hanging from the ceiling. "I don’t want to let the perception get started that we’re not doing much, so we can have a pause." ...Yet, in the end, Clark pushed hard for approval to go after exactly the kind of targets that the Air Force wanted. And it was then that his political acumen proved useful. Aim Points ...On March 30, day seven of the war, the North Atlantic Council debated Clark’s request but made no decision. Instead, the council left Solana with the job of interpreting its wishes. A few days later, he gave the go-ahead. By winning approval for continuing strikes on Belgrade as well as Kosovo, Clark finally brought the allies and the Air Force together, creating the broader war that led Milosevic to capitulate. But military historians, air power strategists and budding commanders at war colleges will long debate the merits of Short’s position vs. Clark’s. Last week, Clark released some long-awaited figures on the Kosovo campaign: Allied warplanes destroyed or damaged 93 tanks, 153 armored personnel carriers, 339 military vehicles and 389 artillery pieces and mortars. Those numbers represent only about one-third of all the weaponry and vehicles that the Yugoslav army had in Kosovo; two-thirds survived intact. To those in Short’s camp, this is strong evidence that the war was won by strategic bombing of Serbia proper, where NATO damaged or destroyed 24 bridges, 12 railway stations, 36 factories, seven airports, 16 fuel plants and storage depots, 17 television transmitters and several electrical facilities, according to a Yugoslav government report. Clark is not swayed. He argues that Yugoslavia was defeated by steady losses both in Kosovo and in the rest of Serbia, combined with diplomatic pressure and the threat of an allied invasion. The air campaign "was an effort to coerce, not to seize," said Clark. "It only made good sense that at some point, if [Milosevic] continued to lose and we didn’t, that he would throw in the towel. But we could never predict how long he would hold on because it wasn’t a function of any specific set of losses. It was a function of variables that were beyond our predictions—ultimately, his state of mind."
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2. U.S. provoked war
FROM THIS ARTICLE ON RAMBOUILLET PART B, PUBLISHED NOV. 26 IN THE BRITISH NEWSPAPER THE INDEPENDENT, WITH THE HEADLINE "THE TROJAN HORSE THAT ‘STARTED’ A 79-DAY WAR" ---
By Robert Fisk in Belgrade
In the last days of the Paris peace talks on Yugoslavia last March, something extraordinary happened. The Serb delegation - after agreeing to a political revolution in Kosovo - was presented with a military appendix to the treaty which demanded the virtual Nato occupation of all Yugoslavia.
The Serbs turned it down and Nato went to war. Yet 79 days later, Nato - which had refused to contemplate a change in the military document - lost all interest in the annexe and at the final dramatic meetings on the Macedonian border was content with a Nato force inside only Kosovo.
Official obfuscation and confusion has ever since surrounded this all-important, last-minute addition to the Paris "peace" agreement. Was it presented by the Americans to force President Slobodan Milosevic to reject the whole peace package and permit Nato to bomb Serbia?...
The full annexes demanded Nato rights of road, rail and air passage across all of Yugoslavia, the use of radio stations, even the waiving of any claims of damages against Nato. For any state - even one as grotesque as Serbia - this would have amounted to occupation.
The Foreign Minister of France, Hubert Védrine, said the military appendix was similar to that used by Nato when it moved troops into Bosnia and that Nato forces needed access to Kosovo through Belgrade. But he has never explained why this supposedly essential part of the treaty was abandoned once Nato troops moved into the province.
Milan Komnenic, who was the Yugoslav Federal Information minister and a member of Vuk Draskovic’s Serbian Renewal Movement (then in government but soon to be in opposition), was in Paris during the talks and has become preoccupied with the military annexe. He is writing a book about the negotiations, The Trap of Rambouillet.....
According to Mr Komnenic, the American negotiator Christopher Hill and the Austrian diplomat at the talks, Boris [Wolfgang—IAC] Petritsch, insisted on the annexe while the Russian negotiator, Boris Mayorski - who later refused to attend the Kosovo Albanian signing of the "peace" agreement - abstained. "Hill and Petritsch were ‘for’ the annexe and [Robin] Cook and Védrine apparently agreed with a version - not identical to the final annexe - which was called an ‘explanation’ of the political agreement and which said there could be no implementation with a Nato presence only in Kosovo," Mr Komnenic said. .... United Nations Security Council resolution 1244 [which ended the conflict] could have been accepted before the bombing."
In any event, when Nato commanders met the Serbs for the "military-technical agreement" at the end of the war - after thousands of Kosovo Albanians had been murdered by Serb forces and as many as 1,500 civilians killed by Nato bombs - the supposedly crucial military annexe was never mentioned. Miraculously, Nato - with 40,000 troops to move into the province (10,000 more than originally envisaged) - no longer needed appendix B. Not a single Nato soldier moved north of Kosovo into the rest of Serbia. What was the real purpose of Nato’s last minute demand? Was it a Trojan horse? To save the peace? Or to sabotage it? (END)
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3. U.S. lied to justify war
From Nov.3, Toronto Star (a similar article appeared in the Nov. 11 New York Times)
"No genocide, no justification for war on Kosovo"
IN THE GENOCIDE of ethnic Albanians in Kosovo by the forces of Serb leader Slobodan
Milosevic, the worst incident occurred at the Trepca mine. As reported by American and
NATO officials, large numbers of bodies were brought in by trucks under the cover of
darkness. The bodies were then thrown down the shafts, or were disposed of entirely in the
mine’s vats of hydrochloric acid. Estimates of the number of dead began at 1,000.
That was six months ago, in the middle of the war undertaken to halt what both U.S.
President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair called "a human
catastrophe." Estimates of the number of ethnic Albanians slaughtered went upward
from 10,000. U.S. Defence Secretary William Cohen put the count at 100,000. Three weeks
ago, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia released the findings
of Western forensic teams investigating the horror at Trepca. There were not 1,000 bodies
down the mine shafts at Trepca, reported the tribunal. There were not 100 bodies there.
There was not one body there, nor was there any evidence the vats had ever been used to
dispose of human remains. Shortly afterward, the tribunal reported on its work at the most
infamous of all the mass graves of ethnic Albanians, at Ljubenic near the town of Pec.
Earlier, NATO officials had said 350 victims had been hastily buried there by the
retreating Serb forces. There were not 350 bodies at Ljubenic, though. There were five. So
far, not one mass grave has been found in Kosovo, despite four months’ work by
forensic teams, including experts from the FBI and the RCMP. This discovery - more
accurately, this non-discovery - first was made public three weeks ago by the Texas-based
intelligence think tank, Stratfor. Stratfor estimated the number of ethnic Albanian dead
in Kosovo at 500. Last weekend, the story was broadcast for the first time by the TV
Ontario program Diplomatic Immunity. (Last Sunday’s New York Times was still using
the "10,000 deaths" figure.) The story has begun to appear in European
newspapers. Spain’s El Pais has quoted the head of the Spanish forensic team, Emilo
Pujol, as saying he had resigned because, after being told to expect to have to carry out
2,000 autopsies, he’d only had 97 bodies to examine - none of which "showed any
signs of mutilation or torture." Because 250 of 400 suspected mass graves in Kosovo
remain to be examined, it’s possible that evidence of mass killings will yet be
found. This is highly unlikely though, because the worst sites were dug up first. No
genocide of ethnic Albanians by Serbs, therefore. No "human catastrophe." No
"modern-day Holocaust." All of those claims may have been an honest mistake.
Equally, they may have been a grotesque lie concocted to justify a war that NATO
originally assumed would be over in a day or two, with Milosevic using the excuse of some
minimal damage as a cover for a surrender, but then had to fight (at great expense) for
months. There’s no question that atrocities were committed in Kosovo, overwhelmingly
by the Serb forces, although the ethnic Albanian guerrillas were not innocent. Quite
obviously, these forces, acting on Milosevic’s explicit orders, carried out mass
expulsions of people, terrorizing them and destroying their homes and property. Acts like
these are inexcusable. That they occur often in civil wars (far worse are being committed
by the Russians in Chechnya), is irrelevant to their horror. But they have nothing to do
with genocide. No genocide means no justification for a war inflicted by NATO on a
sovereign nation. Only a certainty of imminent genocide could have legally justified a war
that was not even discussed by the U.N. Security Council. No genocide means that the
tribunal’s indictment of Milosevic becomes highly questionable. Even more
questionable is the West’s continued punishment of the Serbs - the Danube bridges and
the power stations remain in ruins - when their offence may well have been stupidity
rather than criminality. The absence of genocide may mean something else, something deeply
shaming. To halt the supposed genocide, NATO bombed targets in Serbia proper. Because of
"collateral" or accidental damage, such as the bombing of a train, some 500
civilians were killed (Belgrade claims almost 1,000 deaths). NATO very likely killed as
many people as were killed in Kosovo. The number of these dead isn’t large enough to
justify NATO’s actions being called a "human catastrophe." But, unless
proof of genocide can be produced, NATO’s actions were clearly a moral catastrophe.
Richard Gwyn’s column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday in The Star
Back to: Statement from the IAC on Hague
Here’s a comment on the War crimes Tribunal in the Hague: From the London Times, June 18, 1999
"This is not victors’ justice in the former Yugoslavia in fact, it is
no justice at all."
By John Laughland
Emotion may be a spur to justice, but it is rarely its guarantor. The allegations of war crimes eagerly funnelled out of Kosovo by the thousands of journalists in the province have provoked a demand for retribution. That cry for justice is natural. But the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the body charged with pursuing those accused of war crimes in Kosovo, is a rogue court with rigged rules....
The International Criminal Tribunal shows little sign of caring that NATO has itself broken nearly every rule of war, or that the peace deal concluded with Belgrade is null and void in international law, since Yugoslavia’s signature was obtained by force. Instead, it displays considerable contempt for the very thing which distinguishes the rule of law from retributive justice, namely due process....
Although it is a key requirement for due process that a defendant be tried by a body "established by law", the Security Council is not a law-making body. Faced with the allegation that it had no legitimacy, the tribunal did not refer the matter to another body, such as the International Court of Justice, but instead decided to deal with the charge itself. Not surprisingly, it found in its own favour....
The tribunal gives itself powers as it goes along. Louise Arbour, the recently departed Chief Prosecutor, has said: "The law, to me, should be creative and used to make things tight," and the tribunal dips into a potpourri of different legal systems from around the world. In one case, the tribunal defended itself against charges that it had illegally seized documents from the Bosnian Government by saying that its procedures were compatible with the law in Paraguay. General Stroessner evidently has a place in the tribunal’s judicial pantheon alongside Sir Edward Coke and William Blackstone.
As if this were not enough, the tribunal is not funded by disinterested parties, but by those who waged or supported the attacks on Yugoslavia. These include the leading NATO governments (especially the United States) and various non- governmental organisations like George Soros’s Open Society Institute, whose head of office in Kosovo is a militant supporter of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Might, it seems, is always right. Just ask the NATO spokesman Jamie Shea. On May 17, he was asked whether NATO leaders could ever be indicted by the tribunal. "As you know," he replied, "without NATO countries there would be no International Court of Justice, nor would there be any International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia because NATO countries are in the forefront of those who have established these two tribunals, who fund these tribunals and who support on a daily basis their activities."
This is not victors’ justice it is no justice at all.
posted: 1/12/00
Back to: Statement from the IAC on Hague
