YUGOSLAVIA, HAITI, IRAQ: MILOSEVIC CASE COMBATS WASHINGTON'S
"REGIME CHANGE"

By John Catalinotto
New York

March 7, 2004--A Feb. 29 International Action Center forum here on NATO's two-year-long prosecution of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic turned into a spirited fight-back workshop. The discussion ranged across topics from that morning's criminal overthrow of the Haitian government to the Iraqi resistance, the latest political turn in Serbia and Washington's aggressive policy of "regime change."

Pat Chin, an IAC spokesperson on both Haiti and Yugoslavia, chaired the meeting. She drew the audience's attention to the similarities of the U.S. overthrow of constitutional governments in both countries. Both were pushed out by a combination of military assault and subversion under the cover of "human rights" concerns, she said.

IAC organizers had originally called the meeting to coincide with the end of the case that the prosecution had tried to bring against Milosevic at the Inter national Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia.

Speakers at the forum included former Attorney General Ramsey Clark, IAC co-director Sara Flounders and Kings bor ough Community College professor Barry Lituchy, who had recently observed the ICTY trial and Milosevic's defense. Clark had been hit by a car the day before the forum, suffering a broken foot and ankle. Still he found the energy to inspire the audience with his phoned-in presentation defending Milosevic.

Without any legal basis in United Nations bylaws, the United States and other NATO powers established the tribunal through the UN in 1993 to target Yugoslavs and especially Serbs. In May 1999, during the 78-day U.S./NATO bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the ICTY charged Yugoslav President Milosevic with war crimes in order to bring additional pressure on him to surrender Serbia's Kosovo province to NATO occupation.

Two years later, NATO forces kidnapped Milosevic from Belgrade and put him under ICTY control in a former Nazi prison in The Hague. Only then did the tribunal also charge him with war crimes and even genocide regarding the civil wars in Croatia and Bosnia.

By now, in 2004, the court has dropped genocide charges regarding Kosovo. It may also drop all charges regarding Bosnia and Croatia, according to rumors in the media.

OBSERVING THE ICTY 'CIRCUS'

As far as Lituchy is concerned, the court proceedings were a "circus" and the case should end now in a mistrial.

"It should be ended immediately," he said. "In two years we have seen no decent evidence. They have been unable to produce any direct links between Milosevic and those alleged to have committed war crimes. The media coverage has dried up because the prosecution has been unable to impose its false version of events on the trial proceedings."

Lituchy, a key organizer of the Inter national Committee for the Defense of Slobodan Milosevic in the U.S., also showed 30 fascinating minutes of a longer documentary shown last fall on Dutch television. The documentary exposes many of the lies about 1990-2000 events in the Balkans. It also shows Milosevic's effective cross-examination that consistently expos ed prosecution witnesses' weaknesses and outright lies.

Milosevic has represented himself before the ICTY. As he defends himself, he sets the historic record straight by blaming the United States and NATO for aggression in the Balkans.

The former president suffers from high blood pressure. He faces a grave risk of heart attack. Despite these serious health problems, he has outperformed the prosecutors and outlasted presiding judge Richard May.

May's recent announcement that he has to retire from the case because of unexplained medical problems has thrown the prosecution into disarray. How the trial should proceed now is in doubt: A new judge would have to review videotapes of almost 300 witnesses, plus 33,000 pages of transcribed testimony and a million pages of depositions. A serious review of this material could require a year.

The ICTY is allowing Milosevic only three months to go over the same material to prepare his defense, which is supposed to open on May 26.

IRAQI RESISTANCE HELPS THE TRUTH

In her talk, Flounders showed how the heroic Iraqi resistance to the U.S. occupation has created an atmosphere where few believe Washington's lies to justify its war. "It is important that we continue to fight to get out the truth about Yugoslavia at a time when many are questioning the 'Big Lie' told by the U.S. government," she said.

Clark reviewed recent Balkans history and attacked the legality of the ICTY. He recently wrote a paper developing these points, "Divide and Conquer," which is avail able at the IAC website: www. iacenter.org.

Clark urged the audience to work to support the team doing back-up research for Milosevic as he presents the defense case. This team consists of a few young Yugoslav attorneys who hope to have continuing assistance from Tiphaine Dickson, a Canadian attorney experienced in international law before this type of tribunal.

During an audience discussion that lasted over an hour, a member of an early Milosevic cabinet who lives now in the United States brought up recent developments in Serbia. "The last elections," she said, "pushed out the neo-liberal puppets of the West who had replaced Milosevic in 2000." She called it "a first step" toward winning independence again in Serbia.

Some in the audience expressed frustration that the progressive movement in the United States had failed to understand the Yugoslav struggle. Yet the general mood as the meeting ended was increased readiness to struggle.

People vowed to find ways to support the website of the ICDSM-US (www. icdsm-us.org), to work to get the video shown publicly, to circulate Ramsey Clark's paper and to support those defending Slobodan Milosevic and exposing U.S. imperialism's lies.

"Mugabe in Zimbabwe, Chavez in Venezuela, Aristide in Haiti and Milosevic in Yugoslavia were demonized. People who understand how the government here lied in one of these cases should be helped to understand them all," remarked one participant during the discussion. "And publicizing Milosevic's defense is one way to do it for Yugoslavia."

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