Kosovo anti-Christian violence continues

SRNA: Albanians growing more nervous
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2006/May_16/16.html

WND: Kosovo anti-Christian violence continues
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2006/May_16/18.html

RTS: Raskovic-Ivic asks Petersen to rescind UNMIK decision
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2006/May_16/14.html

EU envoy says necessary to continue technical talks on Kosovo
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2006-05/17/content_4555494.htm"

It is obvious that the process of Kosovo becoming independent has already gone very far"
http://www.b92.net/english/news/index.php?&nav_category=19&nav_id=34924&order=priority&style=headlines

Danke Deutschlandhttp://english.pravda.ru/news/world/16-05-2006/80385-Serbia-0

Kosovo status should be solved through essential autonomy and preservation of existing borders
http://www.srbija.sr.gov.yu/vesti/vest.php?id=23462

Interview - Scott Taylor on the Balkans

http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2006/May_16/4.html

Interview - Scott Taylor on the Balkans (pt. 2)
www.espritdecorps.ca


May 16, 2006

This article first appeared in the April 2006 issue of the "Canadian-Macedonian News" in Toronto


CMN: A number of events have transpired since our last interview and I believe there is a need to understand what is happening with regards to Balkan politics. Agim Cheku was elected Prime Minister in Kosovo, and we know who Agim Cheku is, Milosevic died a short time later which affected the political climate in Serbia and the Albanian foreign minister made comments regarding Kosovo becoming independent. What next: the creation of Illyrida in western Macedonia? What is your opinion on all this? Are the Balkans boiling over again?

Scott Taylor: It's a very dangerous time right now in the Balkans especially when you've got Agim Cheku accepted by the West and praised as good for the future of Kosovo. Some from the West admit, kind of on the edges, that there may be some issues with Cheku, some critics may accuse him of war crimes but those of us who have followed his career very well know he is guilty of wrongdoing in Meduk and in the shelling of Knin.  Cheku did things as a Croatian officer that are fully documented and recorded particularly by Canadians. These things are known to NATO and to the UN yet he was never brought to justice.

       This is something which flies in the face of the whole Milosevic thing where we jump to the conclusion of his guilt. He was indicted, brought to the Hague, all the things that he was accused of, now that he is dead, simply presumes that he is guilty of everything and it's a tremendous effort on the part of the West to put all the blame for all that happened into his casket. They're trying to bury all of the responsibility with Milosevic to say we can move forward. You can't do that. You can't now build the future of an independent Kosova, as they say, on a guy like Agim Cheku who is a murderous thug. I mean this guy is a real war criminal not someone removed in an office like Milosevic might have been, making policy. He was on the ground in command of his troops. He actually got wounded in action at Meduc because his guys were there. He was right on the ground. This is a war criminal and the West knows it yet is willing to turn a blind eye to keep the Albanians on side.

       The fact that the Albanian government is now saying the border will not be recognized is a very dangerous situation. It is something which anywhere else in the world would be sparking all kinds of controversy. Any country saying anything about a border that's not being recognized is almost a declaration of an undeclared war. This is pushing the future of Kosovo further towards the flame. It's like a barrel of gunpowder being pushed further towards the flame and of course all eyes are on Iraq and Afghanistan. The Balkans is a backwater right now, everyone's trying to put it behind them, trying to convince themselves that this was a victory, this was a success story. We're seven years into the occupation of Kosovo by NATO. They've not stopped the violence; they've not solved the problems. We've seen the violence spread into Macedonia and it will again. I mean all these names being raised, the fact that western Macedonia is now on the target list. They're [Albanians] not hiding their intentions, the fact that the West is blindly ignoring them is a dangerous sign because I don't think Macedonians can accept the situation the way it is. Also, what is going to happen to the Serbs in Kosovo; what is there for them to accept an independent Kosovo under the rule of an indicted war criminal?

 CMN:  Interpol has been looking for Cheku for some years now, because of his war crimes, trying to negotiate with him in Vienna, Austria, Serbia and with the Kosovo delegation. What's going to happen with these negotiations now that Cheku is a Prime Minister? Do you think that they should refuse to negotiate with him?

 Scott Taylor:  They should refuse. Canada should make its objection clear regarding Cheku as a choice of Prime Minister. He's the Prime Minister elect, he's not been sworn in as far as I know at this point but Canada played a key role in documenting his war crimes both in the Meduc and in Knin during Operation Storm, as a Croatian officer. He's an Albanian Kosovar.

        In 1995 he was the artillery commander who shelled Knin. He was the Croatian artillery commander. Very few people understand that as an Albanian Kosovar he was committing war crimes wearing a Croatian uniform. So there's a dual guilt. The Croatian army has some responsibility but he as an individual, as an Albanian serving in Croatian uniform, has to be accountable at some point. He ordered those killings. Now he's serving potentially as the Prime Minister of a country. What message does that send to the Serbs in Kosovo? They know what he did. I mean he fought for the Croatians not because he loved Croatia but because he hates Serbs. That was why he killed those people,  that is why the US MPRI groomed him, trained him and then when you look back on this they were grooming him in '93 to eventually become the commander in "99. So who is behind all of this? That's what's protecting him now is that he didn't act alone. He's the puppet, not the puppeteer. So the puppeteer is still saying that this guy is okay we'll accept him.  That's the problem, we need to look at who is behind Agim Cheku, not just Agim Cheku. Who's been grooming him, taking him, positioning him? Who created Frankenstein's monster? We see the monster, that's Cheku. Who is the doctor that created him?

 CMN: Who is the doctor?

 Scott Taylor:  The Americans. The MPRI, this Pentagon training cadre brought him, selected him from day one, saw in him the potential not just to serve as a Croatian. As soon as it blew up in Croatia he took off his Croatian epaulettes and became head of the Kosovo Liberation Army with NATO's blessing. The timing was all so orchestrated. It was planned and when you look at it as forensic looking back on how things developed it's very clear that even Kosovo in '98 '99 was planned as early as '93. It was all stepping stones and Cheku was one of the characters being manipulated. A brutal war criminal was being manipulated to get where he is now. But the fact that they still won't hold him accountable is because he knows who created him and if there is ever to be a trial of Agim Cheku at the Hague, in his own defense he's going to of course bring in all the evidence as to who really was behind all this in the Balkans.

 CMN:  So basically, is that why he never went to the Hague?

 Scott Taylor:  If he goes to the Hague he can bring some very key people with him and that's the problem. And that's why everyone is accepting him as the Prime Minister despite all the evidence that exists on what he did, collected by Canadian soldiers, horrific crimes. Yet he's being distanced from that, accepted as a political leader as a figurehead for the new Kosova.

 CMN: Were you surprised when you heard that Agim Cheku was the new Prime Minister of Kosovo?

 Scott Taylor:  I still can't believe he is still serving as the head of the TMK, the Kosovo Protection Corps. I can't believe every day that goes by that he's not indicted for what he did. It's a crime and then to find out that he's moving up and going to become a world leader.

 CMN: For you it was shocking news...

 Scott Taylor:  Yes it's incremental in its shock. The fact that he's not been brought to justice is one shock and then the fact that they're going to ignore that and move him to another level, it's unbelievable when everybody, Louise Arbour, Madeleine Albright, these people know what he did. It's not been hidden from them but they never indicted him. He by his very existence and his promotion, every time he gets put up it makes the Hague tribunal that much more of a joke. It's just incredible that they would turn a blind eye to what he did and allow him to proceed up. He wasn't a President or a Prime Minister. He started off as a very junior Colonel in the Croatian Army committing atrocities. Then they trained him again and he became a General and committed bigger atrocities. Then he became the commander of the KLA, committed more atrocities. He released his commanders to fight in Macedonia, connected with the TMK. All of that he is responsible for. All of that, the quest for a greater Albania. I don't think Agim Cheku has ever been on the sidelines.

       They held the Prizren meeting in 2001 or 2002 about the future of Albanian speaking people in the region of the Balkans, inside Kosovo, and NATO protected them. The meeting was held there and Cheku went to that. Rugova did not go. I mean politically it was seen as unwise, he didn't go but Cheku did. So this man, his nationalism, at least he's honest about that. He's not hiding this. He's not a hypocrite. For that I respect him because he's never played under false colours. NATO, the international community, the Hague: all of them turn a blind eye to what he's done. It's like rubbing it in their face. He's never denied what he is, never pretended to be anything but a man in a quest of, if military means are necessary, a Greater Albania.

 CMN: You were just recently in the Balkans. What was the reason for your visit and when did you come back?

 Scott Taylor:  I was giving a speech at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. I was a part of a conference to scientifically prove that Kosovo belongs to Serbia. There were a number of international delegates, mostly of course Serbian. For me I'm not an academic, my contribution to the whole thing was my eyewitness accounts. So I took the opportunity to drive down to Kosovo, made a quick trip and met some refugees, spoke to UN police, spoke to NATO soldiers and stayed at a monastery in Grachanica. There was a ceremony, a memorial of the second anniversary of the 17th March pogrom against the Serbs. I attended this and then I drove back and brought a report of what I had just done, to the conference. So again seeing people who have been displaced now for two years since the pogrom, some have been displaced for seven years, but this last wave of people displaced from '04 are still living in absolute squalor, unseen by the world. We saw the conditions that they lived in. They're forgotten by the Serbian government and by the world. They're just tucked away unable to return to their houses, living in Mitrovica basically as pawns in this game.

       It's something which most of these politicians that are making the decisions in Kosovo or for the future of Kosovo don't ever see; the real lives that are being affected. They lost their age old family farm and now they're living in some tiny office with all these people with no privacy, eating donated food which is the basic minimum, just beans. They are simply existing, waiting for something to happen but knowing that it never will. They're in limbo.

 CMN:  Were you there when Milosevic died?

 Scott Taylor:  I got back from Kosovo in time for Milosevic's funeral.

 CMN: Did you attend the funeral?

 Scott Taylor:  I went to the Belgrade memorial. There were 80,000 people out there in front of the Parliament buildings. Seeing how the international media was playing it you could almost predict how it was going to go. They portrayed it as a rejuvenation of Serbian nationalism, as a celebration of a war criminal etc. The Western media has already proclaimed guilt not just on Milosevic but on all the Serbian people. And that again extends to Macedonians because they're Slavs, ergo if oppressing Albanians is bad then the Macedonians are equally guilty of it.

       So you've got to look at the way it's being played out. Just the whole international media's take, you could pull back and see it through that prism. It wasn't good. I mean they were seeing the crowds out there and the statements that were being made about how the West was doing this to us and then the belief that Milosevic was poisoned etc: most of it being portrayed with some sort of derision by the Western media.  And yet if you look at the facts it's not outlandish that the Hague killed him. I mean those that were there, James Bisset, other witnesses that were at the same conference, many of us that were at the conference were ready to testify at the Hague.

 CMN: Did you see any familiar faces from here?

 Scott Taylor:  James Bisset was there.

 CMN:  Former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia...

 Scott Taylor: And he had met Slobodan Milosevic as the President when he was Ambassador. He met him again as a prisoner in the Hague and he testified just days before he died. He was aware, because you get to meet Milosevic when you go to these things, of his health conditions, of his concerns. He knew that he wanted to go to Moscow because he didn't trust the Hague doctors. They'd found this anti leprosy drug in his body that frightened him because he knew that he wasn't taking that drug. He had never taken that drug. He didn't know where that came from and of course he was concerned. His visit to Moscow was denied and subsequently he was found dead. There were other witnesses. There were Americans and others at the conference who again had agreed to testify, were about to and knew that there was still a lot of fight in Milosevic. He wasn't "suicidal" as they claimed. He had a whole bunch more points he was going to make. If I testified, Agim Cheku would have been first and foremost, the main thrust of my testimony was to take it from Kosovo back to Croatia and focus on this individual. That was what I was to bring to the tribunal. Now we won't get the chance.

 CMN: It looks like the tribunal has nothing to do anymore.

 Scott Taylor:  Well they're going to keep trying other Serbian Generals. There are other trials going on and I've been asked as a potential witness for other Generals. I'll go if I can. There's some talk being floated by those witnesses who didn't testify, maybe they can set up some sort of parallel tribunal to at least put it somewhere on the record what we've been prepared to testify.

 CMN: It looks like the tribunal in the Hague was solely created for certain people; Serbs and Macedonians.

 Scott Taylor:  I think it's a historical precedent that anytime there is a war like this that the victor establishes the guilt of the vanquished. So in this case the Serbs have to be guilty of everything and Milosevic in particular. Now it's all buried in his casket and the Western media again was very complicit in going along with that. It was stunning to see how everything that was ever done in the Balkans, unquestioned. Christine Amanpour was unbelievable, reiterating things that were said and since then have been disproved; death camps and all making it look like the Holocaust. I mean the guy had tuberculosis, all this has been disproved, all of it resurfaced untouched and was put back out for the general consumption. I've likened it to all of us who know better, have built a sand castle of trying to get the truth, checking on things in Srebrenica, Rachak, exposing all the lies and deception etc.

       We were making headway, we were building up the sandcastle and then after Milosevic's death this flood came and swamped everything. And the average person now is probably even more anti-Serb, anti-Milosevic. He was equivalent to Stalin, Hitler whatever. I mean when you know the circumstances it wasn't like that. The Serbian people didn't like Milosevic for different reasons, because he caved in not because he stood firm.  To have such a huge disconnect between reality and Western media is very discouraging to see that again. I should point out that the CBC that was on the ground did not want, they were advised by an American journalist, that James Bisset was there and available for comment and they declined. Bisset who knew Milosevic as a president, as a prisoner and spoke to him just days before he died and testified was not considered a primary source. If he's not who is? They had their own agenda and it all came back very, very distressing and discouraging for me.

 CMN:  Regarding Macedonia. The Albanian minister of foreign affairs just recently said that if Kosovo is divided into an Albanian and a Serbian sector then Illyrida may be the next step.

 Scott Taylor: I think that statement is another indicator that the idea of a greater Albania is alive and well. They want south Serbia and they want Preshevo.

       The Macedonian Government is basically whistling past the graveyard as we say. They're trying to bolster their own spirits when they know better. I'm sure they're frightened by that statement. The fact that the international community didn't react to it and doesn't understand its importance, is kind of frightening and it indicates that they want Kosovo finished. They don't care what it takes, they want it somehow solved and all over with.

 CMN: They want an independent state?

 Scott Taylor:  It's the final solution. The comments that the media and I were getting from people, from American soldiers and from a Lieutenant Colonel who had just arrived from Texas and who spent all these months training and getting indoctrinated is that the sooner they have a resolution the better for the future. Then they can all start to build together no matter what happens in Kosovo, no matter whether it's independent as long, as it's solid then they can all stop their fighting and work together. This is some Utopian belief that the minute it becomes Kosova and the Serbs realize there's no going back, the ones living in the enclaves will somehow emerge into a rainbow world.

 CMN: They probably want a border with Bulgaria. This is what they were striving for during the Second World War. 

 Scott Taylor:  The map that they have, Greater Albania so by saying that this is still on the table we saw the fighting in 2001 it's a reality. They're stirring up trouble and it won't be so easily resolved. Even if they give Kosovo, Kosova its independence they will still want more. That's what we're hearing. Under existing boundaries, altered boundaries they're looking at pieces of land anywhere that there's a majority of ethnic Albanians, they want to include that in a greater Albania. So the border with Serbia would need to be redrawn even if it's not in the immediate plan. They will not accept things the way they are in the short term or in the long term.

 CMN: Macedonian President Crvenkovski wants the border between Kosovo and Macedonia resolved before the "Kosova issue" is resolved. Any comments?

 Scott Taylor:  It's one of the rare sensible statements I've heard from a Macedonian government official. It makes a lot of sense and that needs to be reinforced by the international community if that's agreed to, whatever the border happens to be.  I think they need to call in international monitors for that because of course still as Macedonians you need to protect your own borders. But in this case I think given the declarations made in the Kosovo Parliament they won't recognize certain borders. It needs to be declared, determined, made final and then it becomes inviolate. They have to bring in international monitors to make sure that this will not change. Then whatever happens inside Kosovo, it happens inside Kosovo, but it remains outside of Macedonia.



Liljana Ristova
Risto Stefov