Why Milosevic was never trated in Russia?

Serbianna

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Moscow Calling

Why Milosevic was never trated in Russia?
By Jonathan Widell, Dr Patrick Barriot and Jacques VergÄs


Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell in the United Nations Detention Unit in The Hague on March 11, 2006. According to the pathological report, the cause of death was the heart infarction. That is still debated. The cause of death hinges, at least in part, on the question whether the cause of death could have been prevented by the treating physicians. Understandably, they would prefer a cause of death that could not be detected nor treated. The debate can get convoluted and technical, but it cannot be overstated that Milosevic was known to be a sick man when he came to The Hague. The tribunal could not pretend it did not know of his health problems. The detention unit even confiscated Milosevic's antihypertensive drugs on his arrival. Even if Milosevic's hypertensive problems have become part of the tribunal's folklore by now, closer medical attention has revealed much more profound health problems. Those who do not want to admit that the tribunal could have done anything about the problems seem to opt for ventricular fibrillation as the cause of death, because it fills the bill: it was hard to detect and to treat. However, that was not all. To cite just one of the preventable, though perhaps more innocent-sounding, health conditions we could mention the hearing loss, which was ultimately diagnosed by one of the Dutch physicians. Because the cardiac problems had taken the center stage, the tribunal did not have the opportunity to decide how it was going to conduct the trial in spite of Milosevic's hearing problem.
Milosevic's medical history soon turns into a report card of the court's appointed physicians. One does not have to be prejudiced or particularly harsh to conclude that at least the medical officer, Dr Paulus Falke, may have been out of his depth. The Trial Chamber even remarked that one of his reports was unsatisfactory. The fact appeared in all its poignancy after the examination by three "foreign", i.e. non-Dutch, doctors who examined Milosevic on November 4, 2005 at Milosevic's request. One of them, Dr Margarita Shumilina, was bold enough to mention in her report that the treatment of Milosevic in the detention unit had been inadequate so far. The visiting doctors made the concrete proposal to prescribe a six-week rest for Milosevic until further tests could be carried out.

The prosecution thought the medical problems concealed some sinister conspiracy against the tribunal. Its theory must have been that Milosevic was losing his nerve as the end of the trial was approaching and did everything he could to disrupt the remainder of the trial. So he sought an escape by some desperate act. Even the reliability of the visiting doctors was questioned. It did not seem quite plausible to argue that they had been bought by Milosevic to produce reports that he wanted. However, no matter how remote that possibility seemed, the tribunal clung to that explanation rather than admit that its physicians had been wrong.

In the meantime, Milosevic must have been strengthened in his conviction that his health was really at stake and that whatever could still be done about it was not going to happen in The Hague. After a period of medical as well as legal uncertainty, he submitted his request for provisional release on December 20, 2005. He wanted to get treated at the Bakoulev Center in Moscow.

By that time, the reports of November 4, 2005 seemed outdated and, as it turned out, the original reports submitted by the visiting doctors were not formulated clearly enough with Moscow-based treatment in mind. The prosecution made the most of the time gap between the reports and Milosevic's current medical position. In fact, the prosecution realized how useful it was to delay the process. The winter recess, during which Milosevic planned to get treated in Moscow, had passed, and the prosecution was still posing questions about his choice of the Bakoulev Center. The Center's main attraction, the expeditious treatment promised by the Head of the Center, Dr. Bockeria, began to wear thin.

But so did Milosevic's health. The time-consuming case within a case that Milosevic's request had prompted was at cross purposes with the urgency of the matter. The arguments centering on the expeditiousness that were thrown around in the process sounded hollow. All they did was to prolong the resolution of the case even further.

Not that Milosevic's choice for the Bakoulev Center had come out of the blue. Dr Elena Golukhova from the Bakoulev Center had examined him in early 2004, as was confirmed in the Parker report, which the tribunal published after his death. He had good reasons to trust the specialist from the Bakoulev Center, and his declared trust in the medical specialists at the Center was put forward in the request for provisional release as the main reason his wish should have been respected. Instead, the prosecution started making ad hominem arguments against Dr Shumilina, whose primary fault was that she had stated that Milosevic's current treatment was inadequate.

The confidentiality of Milosevic's medical file has been lifted, at least some of it. There are still many unanswered questions, and the documents that would answer them are not available. What we can do is to point out the questions. Still, the medical file to date contains more than 360 pages. In what follows we will review the documentation. Due to the amount of material that we intend to cover, the article is not really an article. It is longer.

I. Row of rotating doctors.......CONTINUED----> http://www.serbianna.com/columns/widell/005.shtml

Dividing the Pannonian Sea

Dividing the Pannonian Sea

By Russell Gordon


If those who aspire to the fulfillment of the Wolfowitz Doctrine were nonplussed by the termination of the 50-year Cold War with the Soviet Union, existent blowback may be the answer to their hegemonic prayers.

The West has finally forced Russian leader Vladimir Putin’s hand, with Russia now supporting the Iran/Syria Axis. Zbigniew Brzezinski’s less than stellar protégés have indeed revived the Cold War: by pushing NATO eastward, humiliating and bombing the Serbs, isolating Russia from its near-abroad through thinly-veiled, anti-democratic “color revolutions”, and covertly supporting al Qaeda terrorists in Chechnya. Russia, in turn, has escalated its support of Iran, Syria, possibly some Iraqi insurgents, Columbian Marxist guerillas, and others in opposition to US global policies.

Blowback - intended or otherwise - is nothing new to the US foreign policy establishment. The US helped create the Viet-Minh while materially backing the French, thus setting the stage for French loss of former colonial possessions in Indochina, and US entry into the region. In a similar vain, the US heavily-armed the most extreme of Afghan and foreign mujahedeen factions, which helped lead to the Soviet Union’s demise, but as forecasted, created a stateless nemesis whose future eradication will prove much more tenuous.

And indeed, if Washington gives independence to Albanian Islamo-fascists in the Serbian province of Kosovo, Foggy Bottom may become up to its’ deaf ears in unforeseen consequences. Or are they?

Charading as Wilsonianism, the Wolfowitz Doctrine has shown itself to be a cheap knock-off of Bismarckian and Hitlerian doctrine, amplifying Bismarck’s Mittel-Europa to a global scale. Washington’s foreign policy elite have effectively shown any and all comers who might have defensible interests that all bets are off in regards to morality, justice, civility, ethics, nobility, and even logic. To say that the US global policies are even in defense of US strategic interests is presumptuous, given the obvious long term consequences.

In the short-term, the US already is seeing negative results. US forces are bogged down in Iraq, squaring off against Islamist and indigenous insurgent forces supported by Sunni and Shi’ite entities – local and regional. Russia, China, Iran and former Soviet Central Asian states have formed a countervailing bloc via the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Iran is saber rattling atomic capabilities, and playing the Hezbollah trump card to counter-balance Sunni Arab influence in the Middle East.

Common misperception is that the Russians are the Serbs’ historical friends, but as the Serb saying goes, “God help us if the Russians arrive.” Indeed, as no nation has friends, but rather allies of immediate convenience, Putin is ready to sacrifice Kosovo to set a precedent for Trans-Dniestr, Abkhazia, and Nagorno-Karabakh, some of which will prove troubling for US plans in dominating the Caucasus oil supply. Moreover, Kosovo independence will affirm to countless separatist groups worldwide that military escalation combined with public relations will eventually yield results, thus making increased localized warfare inevitable.

In the Balkans, it appears that Washington wishes not the continuation of Belgrade's current “collaborative” policies, but rather to force Serbia into a corner, thus driving the Serbian populace towards the Radicals, and thereby creating a justification to isolate Serbia yet again, all the while claiming the Serbs have “chosen the forces of darkness and isolation over a brighter European future.”

With the release of Muslim war criminal Naser Oric from ICTY Hague detention, and continued demands for the arrest and extradition of Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, the Serbian populace may have achieved final proof that the international policy bias was not a series of mistakes, but rather intended as humiliation. Provoking their inat – self-defeating spite –will again enable a free hand to Washington militarists to exact further reprisals in a continuing message to global rivals, and conveniently causing further disunity in Europe. As for the Serbs, damned if they do, and damned if they don’t.

Predictably, the US can then jump back into pre-determined paradigms of demanding special status for Sandzak/Raska, Presevo area, eastern Montenegro, Voivodina, and western Macedonia. Undoubtedly media war, and Albanian terrorist actions, will be employed as provocations, and already US Marines are training with maps of Montenegro, to 'intervene to stop “genocide” against Albanians.' The humiliating psychological conditions are not too dissimilar to those imposed on Germany at Versailles, and may yet contribute to armed conflict at a later date. As far as NATO is concerned, this may be in their perceived interests.
 
Unfortunately, many Serbs are still stuck in outdated paradigms themselves, appealing to logic, reason and decency which have long since been forgone in the halls of power in Washington and the capitols of the co-opted. One Western analyst opined that “most Serbian politicians are fighting over money….”  With gauleiters unwittingly assisting in a phased plan of dismemberment, time may be running short.

Possible encouraging signs include the appointment to DCI of Gen. Michael Hayden, who along with his mentor Gen. Charles G. Boyd has been outspoken in his criticism of US policy and media bias against the Serbs, singling out CNN and the New York Times by name for their duplicity. But as one intelligence analyst noted, Hayden may become “boxed into a corner [at the CIA] in five minutes.” Ohio National Guard troops are training Serbian Army troops in Serbia, and two US F-16’s recently touched down in a courtesy call to the Serbian military – sans accoutrements explosifs of 1999. Clearly there is some diversity of opinion in Washington and Langley.

But as one Serbian-American publisher said, “a conspiracy of silence continues” about the realities of the previous and current Balkan conflicts, which could prepare the way for US public support for continued US moves against Serbia -- should darker forces win out. Dividing the Pannonian Sea
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/gordon/003.shtml