April 17, 2006
Both sides dragging their feet over Kosovo
By Nicholas Wood International Herald Tribune
MONDAY, APRIL 17, 2006
PRISTINA, Kosovo Two months after talks began in Vienna on this province's future, both sides appear to be maneuvering to change the facts on the ground to help determine whether Kosovo will become an independent state or remain a province within Serbia.The issue has been regarded as the most intractable in the Balkans since NATO bombers forced Yugoslav security forces to withdraw in 1999, halting what international war crimes prosecutors say was a brutal campaign to force ethnic Albanians to flee.Ethnic Albanians make up over 90 percent of Kosovo's population and want total independence. Serbs, within Kosovo and without, want a return to rule from Belgrade. With little progress in the initial phase of talks, the likelihood of an eventual imposed solution in the Albanians' favor grows ever stronger.The United Nations has been administering Kosovo since the Yugoslav withdrawal, but in recent weeks, Serbia, which finances many services in Serbian enclaves across the province, ordered all Serbian government employees in Kosovo to resign from any responsibilities with the United Nations or lose their Serbian paychecks.Serbia had continued to pay Serb public employees in Kosovo since 1999 despite the transition of the region's administration to the United Nations. Many Serb officials have therefore been able to earn two salaries, one from the Serbian government and another from the United Nations.Diplomats say that if Serbia were to find and arrest the leading war crimes suspect and former commander of the Bosnian Serb army, Ratko Mladic, its negotiating hand might be strengthened.At the same time Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership is trying to make the case that an independent Kosovo would protect and nurture its minorities. Kosovo's new prime minister, Agim Ceku, took office in March, after his predecessor, Bajram Kosumi, was forced to step down under pressure from international officials who considered his efforts at reconciliation with Kosovo's Serbs ineffectual.Ceku made his inaugural address to Kosovo's Albanian-dominated assembly partly in Serbian, to the astonishment of several members of Parliament."I want to be seen as the prime minister of all Kosovo's citizens, Serb and Albanian," he said in an interview. His primary challenge, he said, is to convince Kosovo's Albanian leaders and government officials to make changes that benefit the Serbs, rather than just pay lip service to foreign demands for multiethnicity.Ceku, a former Croatian general, was a wartime commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group. Serbian government officials refuse to meet with him, but Western officials say he is one of the few ethnic Albanian leaders with the standing to convince local Kosovar authorities that they need to provide services to Serbian communities. He helped calm ethnic tensions at several critical junctures over the last six years.The negotiating teams - a Kosovar panel of ethnic Albanians, and a Serb group drawn from both Belgrade and Kosovo - are to return to the table in Vienna on May 4, where they will debate proposals to give more powers to local authorities. That measure would allow Kosovo Serbs a greater say in running their affairs. The following week discussions should start on the protection of religious and historical sites, in particular the Serbian Orthodox Churches and monasteries that are dotted across Kosovo.The diplomats have a genuine intent to find an agreement on issues which they believe could be negotiated before the issue of sovereignty, such as the devolution of powers to the local authorities, and the protection of patrimonial sites, but both negotiating teams have shown little room for compromise.Comments from representatives of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Germany, who together make up the Contact Group overseeing Kosovo's negotiation process, indicate there is little alternative to granting the majority population its wish for an independent state.A statement issued by the group following meetings with Serbian leaders in Belgrade on April 6 called on Serbia to be "realistic" in its proposals and find a solution "acceptable to the people of Kosovo."The head of UN mission here, Soren Jessen-Petersen, said he expected Martti Ahtisaari, a Finish statesman and negotiator, to conclude the initial negotiations by midsummer, enabling talks on sovereignty to begin.Whatever course is taken on political authority, officials here expect the international community to retain significant governing powers.
http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/16/news/kosovo.php
Copyright � 2006 The International Herald Tribune www.iht.com
How to make a non-nationalist a Serb
17 April 2006 12:36
How to make a non-nationalist a Serb
I returned from Belgrade on 23 March, where I attended a conference on Kosovo (16-18 March) at the Serbian Academy of Arts & Scoences.
After Sloba's death on 11 March, Austrian TV faked pictures showing him with eczema. When I saw him on 8, 9, and 10 February his color was excellent.
His mood was proud and confident, ready to give a thrashing to the post-Orwellian Mr Nice & Co. I was there to prepare testimony especially on the non-destruction of Dubrovnik.
While I was at Scheveningen, judge Patrick Robinson, instantaneously closed down testimony by Eve Ann Prentice that she and a correspondent for Der Spiegel, sitting in the waiting room for an interview with the Islamist Bosnian President, had seen Osama bin Laden enter and be escorted directly into the office of "our SOB" , Alija Izetbegovic.
-- Either the tame colonial boy is a quick thinker or Prentice and Sloba were bugged by the court while preparing her testimony. He had his instructions to throw the switch.
Unless we hold a tribunal on the Tribunal and publish our testimonies, the truth will be buried with him.
In Belgrade Sloba's body arrived from the Netherlands. I was at a rally in front of the Parliament, where 80,000 people assembled. The crowd was civil, disciplined, un-cowed. Peter Handke, Russian dignitaries and Ramsey Clark delivered eulogies. Handke spoke mostly Serbian.
Anti-Milosevic "protesters" at the Square of the Republic numbered 600, which was magnified with a zero or two by the BBC and CNN. They show-biz American eventwas like the "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Ukraine, Georgia etc. The props were green and blue balloons. They must have run out of orange T-shirts.
The citizens people filing past the coffin, in a minor museum, to pay their respects numbered 102,000.
The quislings blocked a proper funeral. The funeral at Pozarevac was huge.
Proof that Milosevic was no nationalist is that the priest (Father Filaret) who waited to perform the Orthodox burial ceremony at the grave was prevented from doing so, and the interment took place, against Orthodox rubrics, after sunset.
More proof: that Milosevic was no nationalist: the casket was draped with the communist Yugoslav flag, with red star. There was no Serb Orthodox cross for a grave marker, but the communist pentagonal wooden slab, the "pyramid".
Milosevic was an internationalist to the end. The only reason that Milosevic is dead is the malfeasance of the ICTY kangaroo court, with its Dutch cops and jail, British transvestites ambulance-chasers prancing about in effete silken robes and, as in a cheap TV docu-drama.
After the dirge, the band played the 1960s' pop song "Moscow Nights". This, I presume, was on Mrs Milosevic's orders. A nice piece of pop music, it was not the thing for the national moment.
Milosevic's daughter castigated her family for the whole affair. Burial in the family garden was something for the family canary, she said.
Milosevic was betrayed by quislings and kidnapped on the Serbs' most sacred day, the anniversary of the 1389 Battle on Kosovo Polje and the 1914 assassination of the universally unloved Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which Austria used as a casus belli to destroy and annex Serbia. -- Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf how relieved he was to hear it was "Slav fanatics" and not German students who had carried out the assassination.
The only reason Milosevic was in the Hague at all is that he was a Serb. They made him one.
j p maher
How to make a non-nationalist a Serb
I returned from Belgrade on 23 March, where I attended a conference on Kosovo (16-18 March) at the Serbian Academy of Arts & Scoences.
After Sloba's death on 11 March, Austrian TV faked pictures showing him with eczema. When I saw him on 8, 9, and 10 February his color was excellent.
His mood was proud and confident, ready to give a thrashing to the post-Orwellian Mr Nice & Co. I was there to prepare testimony especially on the non-destruction of Dubrovnik.
While I was at Scheveningen, judge Patrick Robinson, instantaneously closed down testimony by Eve Ann Prentice that she and a correspondent for Der Spiegel, sitting in the waiting room for an interview with the Islamist Bosnian President, had seen Osama bin Laden enter and be escorted directly into the office of "our SOB" , Alija Izetbegovic.
-- Either the tame colonial boy is a quick thinker or Prentice and Sloba were bugged by the court while preparing her testimony. He had his instructions to throw the switch.
Unless we hold a tribunal on the Tribunal and publish our testimonies, the truth will be buried with him.
In Belgrade Sloba's body arrived from the Netherlands. I was at a rally in front of the Parliament, where 80,000 people assembled. The crowd was civil, disciplined, un-cowed. Peter Handke, Russian dignitaries and Ramsey Clark delivered eulogies. Handke spoke mostly Serbian.
Anti-Milosevic "protesters" at the Square of the Republic numbered 600, which was magnified with a zero or two by the BBC and CNN. They show-biz American eventwas like the "spontaneous" demonstrations in the Ukraine, Georgia etc. The props were green and blue balloons. They must have run out of orange T-shirts.
The citizens people filing past the coffin, in a minor museum, to pay their respects numbered 102,000.
The quislings blocked a proper funeral. The funeral at Pozarevac was huge.
Proof that Milosevic was no nationalist is that the priest (Father Filaret) who waited to perform the Orthodox burial ceremony at the grave was prevented from doing so, and the interment took place, against Orthodox rubrics, after sunset.
More proof: that Milosevic was no nationalist: the casket was draped with the communist Yugoslav flag, with red star. There was no Serb Orthodox cross for a grave marker, but the communist pentagonal wooden slab, the "pyramid".
Milosevic was an internationalist to the end. The only reason that Milosevic is dead is the malfeasance of the ICTY kangaroo court, with its Dutch cops and jail, British transvestites ambulance-chasers prancing about in effete silken robes and, as in a cheap TV docu-drama.
After the dirge, the band played the 1960s' pop song "Moscow Nights". This, I presume, was on Mrs Milosevic's orders. A nice piece of pop music, it was not the thing for the national moment.
Milosevic's daughter castigated her family for the whole affair. Burial in the family garden was something for the family canary, she said.
Milosevic was betrayed by quislings and kidnapped on the Serbs' most sacred day, the anniversary of the 1389 Battle on Kosovo Polje and the 1914 assassination of the universally unloved Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which Austria used as a casus belli to destroy and annex Serbia. -- Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf how relieved he was to hear it was "Slav fanatics" and not German students who had carried out the assassination.
The only reason Milosevic was in the Hague at all is that he was a Serb. They made him one.
j p maher
'Solution' for Kosovo
"acceptable to the people of Kosovo."
Serbs, in and out of Kosovo, want a return to rule from Belgrade. With little progress in the initial phase of talks, the possibility of an eventual solution imposed by the international community � in the Albanians' favor � grows more likely.
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/scant-gains-raise-chance-of-imposed.html
NY TimesApril 16, 2006
Scant Gains Raise Chance of Imposed Solution in Kosovo
By NICHOLAS WOOD
PRISTINA, Kosovo, April 9 � Nearly two months after talks began in Vienna in February on this province's future, both sides appear to be maneuvering to change the facts on the ground to help decide whether Kosovo will become an independent state or remain a province within Serbia.
The issue has been regarded as the most intractable in the Balkans since NATO bombers forced Yugoslav security forces to withdraw from Kosovo in 1999, halting what international war crimes prosecutors say was a brutal campaign to force ethnic Albanians to flee.
Ethnic Albanians make up more than 90 percent of Kosovo's population, estimated at more than two million, and want total independence. Serbs, in and out of Kosovo, want a return to rule from Belgrade. With little progress in the initial phase of talks, the possibility of an eventual solution imposed by the international community � in the Albanians' favor � grows more likely.
The United Nations has been administering Kosovo since the Yugoslav withdrawal, and as a result has been paying the salaries of many local officials. Meanwhile, Serbia has continued to finance many services in Serbian enclaves across the province, including paying those local officials a second salary. In early April, Serbia ordered all Serbian government employees in Kosovo to resign from any responsibilities with the United Nations or lose their Serbian paychecks.
Diplomats say that if Serbia were to find and arrest the leading war crimes suspect and former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladic, its negotiating hand might be strengthened.
At the same time, Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership is trying to make the case that an independent Kosovo would protect and nurture its minorities. Kosovo's new prime minister, Agim Ceku, took office in March, after his predecessor, Bajram Kosumi, was forced to step down under pressure from international officials who considered his efforts at reconciliation with Kosovo's Serbs ineffectual.
Mr. Ceku made his inaugural address to Kosovo's Albanian-dominated assembly partly in Serbian, to the astonishment of several members of Parliament.
"I want to be seen as the prime minister of all Kosovo's citizens, Serb and Albanian," he said in an interview on April 7. His primary challenge, he said, is to persuade Kosovo's Albanian leaders and government officials to make changes that benefit the Serbs, rather than just pay lip service to foreign demands for multiethnicity.
Mr. Ceku, a former Croatian general, was a wartime commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group. Serbian government officials refuse to meet with him, but Western officials say he is one of the few ethnic Albanian leaders with the standing to convince local Kosovar authorities that they need to provide services to Serbian communities. He helped calm ethnic tensions at several critical junctures in the last six years, including during widespread rioting in March 2004 when 19 people were killed.
The negotiating teams � a Kosovar panel of ethnic Albanians, and a Serbian group drawn from Belgrade and Kosovo � are to return to the table in Vienna on May 4, when they will debate proposals to give more powers to local authorities. That measure would allow Kosovo Serbs a greater say in running their affairs. The next week discussions should start on the protection of religious and historic sites, in particular the Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries that dot Kosovo.
But the negotiating teams have shown little room for compromise even on these issues, and diplomats expect that they will have to be dealt with in the final phase of negotiations. And comments from representatives of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Germany, who together make up the Contact Group overseeing Kosovo's negotiation process, indicate there is little alternative to granting the majority population its wish for an independent state.
A statement issued by the group after meetings with Serbian leaders in Belgrade on April 6 called on Serbia to be "realistic" in its proposals and to find a solution "acceptable to the people of Kosovo."
The leader of the United Nations mission here, Soren Jessen-Petersen, said he expected Martti Ahtisaari, the Finnish statesman and veteran negotiator, to conclude the initial negotiations by midsummer, enabling talks on sovereignty to begin.
Whatever course is taken on political authority, officials here expect the international community to retain significant governing powers. The European Union is expected to take a major role, while NATO will continue to keep the peace. It has 17,000 troops in Kosovo.
*********************http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/kosovo-serbs-tell-us-envoy-they-fully.html
Kosovo Report
Sunday, April 16, 2006Kosovo Serbs tell US envoy they "fully agree" with Belgrade on status
Excerpt from report by Belgrade-based private BKTV on 15 April[Presenter] Representatives of the Serb List for Kosovo-Metohija [headed by Oliver Ivanovic] have told the special US envoy for Kosovo status talks, Frank Wisner, that they are against any kind of imposed solution for the future status of Kosovo, a member of the List, [member of Serbian Kosovo status talk team] Goran Bogdanovic, has said.[Reporter] Serbs noted their full agreement with the authorities in Belgrade as regards the manner of solving the Kosovo crisis and its final solution, a solution which envisages the greatest possible autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia and the Serbia-Montenegro state union.Wisner, who is in Kosovo on the second day of his visit, asked the Serb political representatives to join the interim provincial institutions. Wisner said that he did not agree with Belgrade's call to Serbs employed in the health and education sector in Kosovo to give up their salaries from the Kosovo budget. [Passage omitted]Source: BKTV, Belgrade, in Serbian 1655 gmt 15 Apr 06
posted by KosovaReport @ 12:15 AM 0 comments
Serbs, in and out of Kosovo, want a return to rule from Belgrade. With little progress in the initial phase of talks, the possibility of an eventual solution imposed by the international community � in the Albanians' favor � grows more likely.
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/scant-gains-raise-chance-of-imposed.html
NY TimesApril 16, 2006
Scant Gains Raise Chance of Imposed Solution in Kosovo
By NICHOLAS WOOD
PRISTINA, Kosovo, April 9 � Nearly two months after talks began in Vienna in February on this province's future, both sides appear to be maneuvering to change the facts on the ground to help decide whether Kosovo will become an independent state or remain a province within Serbia.
The issue has been regarded as the most intractable in the Balkans since NATO bombers forced Yugoslav security forces to withdraw from Kosovo in 1999, halting what international war crimes prosecutors say was a brutal campaign to force ethnic Albanians to flee.
Ethnic Albanians make up more than 90 percent of Kosovo's population, estimated at more than two million, and want total independence. Serbs, in and out of Kosovo, want a return to rule from Belgrade. With little progress in the initial phase of talks, the possibility of an eventual solution imposed by the international community � in the Albanians' favor � grows more likely.
The United Nations has been administering Kosovo since the Yugoslav withdrawal, and as a result has been paying the salaries of many local officials. Meanwhile, Serbia has continued to finance many services in Serbian enclaves across the province, including paying those local officials a second salary. In early April, Serbia ordered all Serbian government employees in Kosovo to resign from any responsibilities with the United Nations or lose their Serbian paychecks.
Diplomats say that if Serbia were to find and arrest the leading war crimes suspect and former commander of the Bosnian Serb Army, Ratko Mladic, its negotiating hand might be strengthened.
At the same time, Kosovo's ethnic Albanian leadership is trying to make the case that an independent Kosovo would protect and nurture its minorities. Kosovo's new prime minister, Agim Ceku, took office in March, after his predecessor, Bajram Kosumi, was forced to step down under pressure from international officials who considered his efforts at reconciliation with Kosovo's Serbs ineffectual.
Mr. Ceku made his inaugural address to Kosovo's Albanian-dominated assembly partly in Serbian, to the astonishment of several members of Parliament.
"I want to be seen as the prime minister of all Kosovo's citizens, Serb and Albanian," he said in an interview on April 7. His primary challenge, he said, is to persuade Kosovo's Albanian leaders and government officials to make changes that benefit the Serbs, rather than just pay lip service to foreign demands for multiethnicity.
Mr. Ceku, a former Croatian general, was a wartime commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army, the ethnic Albanian guerrilla group. Serbian government officials refuse to meet with him, but Western officials say he is one of the few ethnic Albanian leaders with the standing to convince local Kosovar authorities that they need to provide services to Serbian communities. He helped calm ethnic tensions at several critical junctures in the last six years, including during widespread rioting in March 2004 when 19 people were killed.
The negotiating teams � a Kosovar panel of ethnic Albanians, and a Serbian group drawn from Belgrade and Kosovo � are to return to the table in Vienna on May 4, when they will debate proposals to give more powers to local authorities. That measure would allow Kosovo Serbs a greater say in running their affairs. The next week discussions should start on the protection of religious and historic sites, in particular the Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries that dot Kosovo.
But the negotiating teams have shown little room for compromise even on these issues, and diplomats expect that they will have to be dealt with in the final phase of negotiations. And comments from representatives of the United States, Britain, France, Russia, Italy and Germany, who together make up the Contact Group overseeing Kosovo's negotiation process, indicate there is little alternative to granting the majority population its wish for an independent state.
A statement issued by the group after meetings with Serbian leaders in Belgrade on April 6 called on Serbia to be "realistic" in its proposals and to find a solution "acceptable to the people of Kosovo."
The leader of the United Nations mission here, Soren Jessen-Petersen, said he expected Martti Ahtisaari, the Finnish statesman and veteran negotiator, to conclude the initial negotiations by midsummer, enabling talks on sovereignty to begin.
Whatever course is taken on political authority, officials here expect the international community to retain significant governing powers. The European Union is expected to take a major role, while NATO will continue to keep the peace. It has 17,000 troops in Kosovo.
*********************http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/kosovo-serbs-tell-us-envoy-they-fully.html
Kosovo Report
Sunday, April 16, 2006Kosovo Serbs tell US envoy they "fully agree" with Belgrade on status
Excerpt from report by Belgrade-based private BKTV on 15 April[Presenter] Representatives of the Serb List for Kosovo-Metohija [headed by Oliver Ivanovic] have told the special US envoy for Kosovo status talks, Frank Wisner, that they are against any kind of imposed solution for the future status of Kosovo, a member of the List, [member of Serbian Kosovo status talk team] Goran Bogdanovic, has said.[Reporter] Serbs noted their full agreement with the authorities in Belgrade as regards the manner of solving the Kosovo crisis and its final solution, a solution which envisages the greatest possible autonomy for Kosovo within Serbia and the Serbia-Montenegro state union.Wisner, who is in Kosovo on the second day of his visit, asked the Serb political representatives to join the interim provincial institutions. Wisner said that he did not agree with Belgrade's call to Serbs employed in the health and education sector in Kosovo to give up their salaries from the Kosovo budget. [Passage omitted]Source: BKTV, Belgrade, in Serbian 1655 gmt 15 Apr 06
posted by KosovaReport @ 12:15 AM 0 comments
"Preservation" of Serbian religious and cultural-historical monuments
Kosovo Serb home in Mitrovica attacked
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/rts041506.htm
Serb church vandalized in Kosovo
http://www.slobodanmilosevic.org/news/mina041606.htm
-----------------------------------
http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2006/April_17/1.html
KiM Info Newsletter 17-04-06Frank Wisner visits Visoki Decani MonasteryAmbassador Wisner stated that the purpose of his visit to Kosovo was to learn more about the situation under which various communities were living in order to better determine needs that need to be taken into consideration while resolving the future status of Kosovo. Bishop Teodosije emphasized that in addition to institutional protection for the Serb people and the return of displaced persons to their homes it is also necessary to find appropriate models for the protection of monasteries and other Serbian religious and cultural-historical monuments. The protection of holy shrines and cultural treasures should serve to bring us even closer in our responsibility for their protection instead of becoming an obstacle to reconciliation and common life among communities, concluded the BishopKIM Info ServiceDecani, April 15, 2006U.S. special envoy for Kosovo status Frank Wisner visited Visoki Decani Monastery today accompanied by the head of the U.S. office in Pristina Philip Goldberg and Steven Gee. Ambassador Wisner first visited Prizren, followed by the families of victims of war in the village of Mala Krusa/Krusha e Vogel near Orahovac, and after the visit to Visoki Decani the U.S. delegation continued its tour to Belo Polje near Pec, where they visited Serb returnees. Ambassador Wisner and his associated were received in Visoki Decani by the monastery's abbot, Bishop Teodosije of Lipljan, Fr. Sava and Fr. Nektarije, the director of KIM Radio from Caglavica.During the meeting, which was held in the monastery library, Ambassador Wisner stated that the purpose of his visit to Kosovo was to learn more about the situation under which various communities were living in order to better determine needs that need to be taken into consideration while resolving the future status of Kosovo. He demonstrated considerable understanding for the protection of Serbian Orthodox monasteries and other cultural-historical monuments, emphasizing that the U.S. Administration is firm in its determination that these sites must be preserved for the future. Ambassador Wisner also emphasized that the protection of monuments is not just the responsibility of the international community but also the local ones, which should be more active in their efforts to establish mutual confidence.Bishop Teodosije of Lipljan sincerely thanked Ambassador Wisner for his understanding of the present situation of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the region. He emphasized that in addition to institutional protection for the Serb people and the return of displaced persons to their homes it is also necessary to find appropriate models for the protection of monasteries and other Serbian religious and cultural-historical monuments. The Bishop pointed to the example of the Special Zoning Area (SZA) around Visoki Decani Monastery as a model that could be implemented in other locations, too. He explained that the SZA represents an attempt to preserve the monastery and its immediate environment, which represent a unified whole, in an appropriate fashion. He emphasized that the Serbian Orthodox Church does not want the protection its holy shrines to unnecessarily politicized. The protection of holy shrines and cultural treasures should serve to bring us even closer in our responsibility for their protection instead of becoming an obstacle to reconciliation and common life among communities, concluded Bishop Teodosije.After the meeting Ambassador Wisner and members of the U.S. delegation toured the monastery and learned more about the activities of the monks. Upon seeing the church Mr. Wisner said that he was deeply impressed by the beauty of the church and the artistic treasures guarded in Visoki Decani Monastery, which are the treasures of the entire civilized world.Prior to leaving Visoki Decani Monastery Ambassador Wisner made a statement for representatives of the Albanian and Serbian media in the monastery courtyard.
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/rts041506.htm
Serb church vandalized in Kosovo
http://www.slobodanmilosevic.org/news/mina041606.htm
-----------------------------------
http://www.kosovo.net/news/archive/2006/April_17/1.html
KiM Info Newsletter 17-04-06Frank Wisner visits Visoki Decani MonasteryAmbassador Wisner stated that the purpose of his visit to Kosovo was to learn more about the situation under which various communities were living in order to better determine needs that need to be taken into consideration while resolving the future status of Kosovo. Bishop Teodosije emphasized that in addition to institutional protection for the Serb people and the return of displaced persons to their homes it is also necessary to find appropriate models for the protection of monasteries and other Serbian religious and cultural-historical monuments. The protection of holy shrines and cultural treasures should serve to bring us even closer in our responsibility for their protection instead of becoming an obstacle to reconciliation and common life among communities, concluded the BishopKIM Info ServiceDecani, April 15, 2006U.S. special envoy for Kosovo status Frank Wisner visited Visoki Decani Monastery today accompanied by the head of the U.S. office in Pristina Philip Goldberg and Steven Gee. Ambassador Wisner first visited Prizren, followed by the families of victims of war in the village of Mala Krusa/Krusha e Vogel near Orahovac, and after the visit to Visoki Decani the U.S. delegation continued its tour to Belo Polje near Pec, where they visited Serb returnees. Ambassador Wisner and his associated were received in Visoki Decani by the monastery's abbot, Bishop Teodosije of Lipljan, Fr. Sava and Fr. Nektarije, the director of KIM Radio from Caglavica.During the meeting, which was held in the monastery library, Ambassador Wisner stated that the purpose of his visit to Kosovo was to learn more about the situation under which various communities were living in order to better determine needs that need to be taken into consideration while resolving the future status of Kosovo. He demonstrated considerable understanding for the protection of Serbian Orthodox monasteries and other cultural-historical monuments, emphasizing that the U.S. Administration is firm in its determination that these sites must be preserved for the future. Ambassador Wisner also emphasized that the protection of monuments is not just the responsibility of the international community but also the local ones, which should be more active in their efforts to establish mutual confidence.Bishop Teodosije of Lipljan sincerely thanked Ambassador Wisner for his understanding of the present situation of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the region. He emphasized that in addition to institutional protection for the Serb people and the return of displaced persons to their homes it is also necessary to find appropriate models for the protection of monasteries and other Serbian religious and cultural-historical monuments. The Bishop pointed to the example of the Special Zoning Area (SZA) around Visoki Decani Monastery as a model that could be implemented in other locations, too. He explained that the SZA represents an attempt to preserve the monastery and its immediate environment, which represent a unified whole, in an appropriate fashion. He emphasized that the Serbian Orthodox Church does not want the protection its holy shrines to unnecessarily politicized. The protection of holy shrines and cultural treasures should serve to bring us even closer in our responsibility for their protection instead of becoming an obstacle to reconciliation and common life among communities, concluded Bishop Teodosije.After the meeting Ambassador Wisner and members of the U.S. delegation toured the monastery and learned more about the activities of the monks. Upon seeing the church Mr. Wisner said that he was deeply impressed by the beauty of the church and the artistic treasures guarded in Visoki Decani Monastery, which are the treasures of the entire civilized world.Prior to leaving Visoki Decani Monastery Ambassador Wisner made a statement for representatives of the Albanian and Serbian media in the monastery courtyard.
April 15, 2006
The Real Butchers Of Serbia: Clinton, Clark, NATO
http://www.infowars.com/articles/world/milosevic_real_butchers_of_serbia_clinton_clark.htm
The Real Butchers Of Serbia: Clinton, Clark, NATO Slobo death media spin intensifies, speculation rife that Milosevic was going to call Clinton as witness
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | March 15 2006
The media coverage of Slobodan Milosevic's death has branched off into two distinct contexts. One is the desperate scramble to spin evidence and testimony suggesting Slobo was murdered and the other revolves around discussion that Milosevic was knocked off because he was about to call Bill Clinton as a witness at the Hague.
The consequence of 'The Butcher Of Serbia's' death remains the same. The only man in a position to legally implicate the real butchers of Serbia, Clark and Clinton, in war crimes that all but wiped an entire race off the map, is silenced.
Today both Milosevic's son and his wife went public to say that in their opinion Slobo was deliberately poisoned by the cocktail of drugs that negated the effects of his high blood pressure medicine, leading to his heart attack.
"They kept cameras and lights on in Slobodan's cell non-stop, so that he could not sleep. That is an officially recognised form of torture,"
said Mirjana Markovic. Which makes the UN's claim that the drugs found in Slobo's body were smuggled into his jail cell all the more ridiculous. This is the biggest conspiracy theory of them all. Milosevic was under constant monitoring and surveillance yet we are led to believe he had a 'dealer' who was able to provide the goodies.
The truth is that the prosecution was losing the case against Milosevic and as the trial was wounding down to a close the only evidence regarding ethnic cleansing implicated Wesley Clark, Bill Clinton, NATO and all the other warmongers in chief who oversaw the 78 day bombing of Yugoslavia.
What of the U.S. bombing of Radio Television Serbia, the cluster bombing of the Nis marketplace, the use of depleted uranium munitions and the targeting of petrochemical plants causing toxic and chemical waste to pour into the Danube River, or the deliberate targeting of civilian transport? As Jeremy Scahill adeptly points out,
"What the corporate media overwhelmingly ignores in Milosevic's death is what they ignored in his life as well-his intimate knowledge of U.S.
war
crimes in Yugoslavia. While Milosevic was undoubtedly a war criminal who deserved to be tried for his crimes, he was also the only man in the unique position of being able to expose and detail the full extent of the U.S. role in the bloody disintegration of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. In fact, that is precisely what he was fighting to do at his war crimes trial when he died."
"Milosevic's death means that those who bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days beginning 7 years ago this month, killing thousands, will be, once and for all protected from any public scrutiny for their crimes. However opportunistic Milosevic may have been, he would have been one of the few people to appear at the Hague that could have and would have laid out these crimes in great detail."
"To be sure, there will never be indictments of these U.S. war criminals at the Hague: Bill Clinton, Madeline Albright, Jamie Rubin, William Cohen, Sandy Berger, Richard Holbrooke and Wesley Clark. For many of Serbia's victims of U.S. war crimes, Milosevic's trial was a "Hail Mary"
pass, as awful of an historical irony as that is, aimed at someone recognizing their forgotten suffering."
And what of the rather troubling little matter of US government support for Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda' not fighting the evil Commies in the 70's and 80's, but helping the death squads of the KLA ethnically cleanse the last remaining Serbs and ethnic minorities from Kosovo, outnumbered nine to one by the ethnic Albanian colonizers, in the late 90's?
>From the very opening statement of his trial, Milosevic had made his intentions clear by outlining the true power structure behind Al-Qaeda.
"In 1998 when [Clinton envoy Richard] Holbrooke visited us in Belgrade, we told him the information we had at our disposal, that in Northern Albania the KLA is being aided by Osama bin Laden, that he was arming, training, and preparing the members of this terrorist organisation in Albania.
However, they decided to cooperate with the KLA and indirectly, therefore, with bin Laden, although before that he had bombed the embassies in Kenya and Tanzania [and] had already declared war." Milosevic concluded that "one day all this will have to come to light, these links."
The media fallout from Milosevic's death has predictably split down myopic partisan lines.
The establishment left press, who only cry bloody murder about a war if a Bush is in office, were quick off the mark to denounce questions about the nature of 'The Butcher's' death and rally round to defend their darling war criminals Clinton and Clark.
One example is Media Matters, who called Rush Limbaugh's sanity into question, after Limbaugh suggested that Milosevic may have been the final victim of the Clinton Death List, whose previous members include Ron Brown and Vince Foster. Like others, Limbaugh speculated that Slobo was about to call Clinton as his last witness, implicating Clark and the rest of the NATO collaborators in the process
Although Limbaugh has about as much objectivity as a 9/11 Commission panel member, he is right to make this connection. The Brown and Foster evidence lead right back to Clinton and for Media Matters to couch this in the context of another madcap Rush rant betrays the hypocrisy of the left.
It was Bill Clinton who turned Serbia into a DU ridden hellhole and it was Bill Clinton who initiated sanctions in Iraq that killed 500,000 children, a "price worth paying," according to his Secretary of State Madeleine Albright.
But to the left Clinton can do no wrong, so for them the blame must be pinned on Slobo. And when a Democrat gets in after 2008 and launches an unjustified and unconstitutional war against a defenseless sovereign nation, the majority of them will drop their Bush banners, line up in an orderly queue, and assume the position to lick government boots.
As Paul Craig Roberts highlights, Serbia was a practice run for the ethnic cleansing we now see unfolding in Iraq. It doesn't matter what letter the Commander In Butchery has before his name, governments and terrorist henchmen are bought and paid for while American soldiers are used as cannon fodder for the New World Order's next imperial conquest. Any individual that has intimate knowledge and evidence of that fact, like Slobodan Milosevic, is a target for elimination.
Albanian gangs running Kosovo
Albanian gangs running Kosovo
Tom Walker,
Pristina, Serbia
April 11, 2006
KOSOVO, the former Yugoslav province, is falling into the grip of Albanian organised crime gangs, casting a shadow over attempts by the international community to turn it into a fully fledged independent state by the end of this year.
Participants in talks in Vienna, sponsored by the UN, on the "final status" of Kosovo, are concerned that the mafia networks that smuggled guns into the disputed province from Albania in 1997 and 98 are using the same channels for a burgeoning trade in illicit petrol, cigarettes and cement. Prostitution and drugs are also popular staples of the black economy.
The profits are ploughed into shopping centres and hotels, which are going up as part of a building boom in the province. Petrol stations are especially popular - there are more than 2000 of them catering for a population of two million.
Many are believed to be part of a money-laundering racket, controlled by a few of the largest clan families, involving oil smuggled in from Montenegro.
Despite attempts by the head of the UN mission in Kosovo, Soren Jessen-Petersen, to downplay the extent of the problem, UN officials admit the corruption extends deep into the heart of the Kosovo Government.
"Crime groups have been able to operate with impunity," said Marek Antoni Nowicki, Poland's leading human rights lawyer and the UN's international ombudsman for Kosovo until last year.
"You have a criminal state in real power - it needs underground illegal structures to supply it with everything to survive.
"These networks can rely on the weakness of the public institutions to sanction their operations."
The UN's internal watchdog, the Office of Internal Oversight, accused Mr Jessen-Petersen on Friday of turning a blind eye to widespread fraud at Pristina airport. He said the report was "entirely unwarranted".
Kosovo is still technically part of Serbia, and Serbian Prime Minister Vojislav Kostunica argues that Belgrade must retain some form of control.
The fight against corruption is complicated by the fact that the task is shared between different bodies of varying degrees of competence.
"The aim is to keep the criminals under control," Mr Nowicki said. "The question is: can the international community do it? It is very doubtful."
The Sunday Times
http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,18778323-2703,00.html
Kosovo: All scandals of UNMIK
Kosovo: All scandals of UNMIK
Prishtinë, Apr 14, 2006 - There would be a scandal if the allegation about misuses at the Airport of Pristina during the time when Ioan Woollet was the manager, would be substantiated by Prosecution. It would be about hundreds of redundant workers, the sale of working positions, and even the murder of a young person involved in such a sale. The case is in the hands of international prosecutors, and they will show if the OIOS report was worth to seek responsibility from the UNMIK heads for allowing such things to happen.
Still, the affair of Ioan Woollet is not the first one, neither the heaviest scandal since the UN Mission in Kosovo began. The Organization of United Nations has turned a blind eye to all affairs in public institutions managed by internationals, despite domestic and international media reporting on them.
Agron Dida did not have much time for enjoying the return to work. He was discharged in December 1999 for “lacking cooperationâ€. In fact, he was dismissed for not signing the contract with Monaco Telecom. Dida had said that the offer from Siemens was financially and technically much more favorable. Gerard Fischer, whose name was mentioned in many media reports, and by investigation procedures by international prosecutors, replaced him.
Still, the SRSG of that time, Kouchner had secured Monaco Telecom and Alcatel the most profitable business they ever had. The last report from the Council of Europe proved that the services of mobile telephony were the most expensive and the poorest in the region.
In the time of Kouchner, Siegfried Brenke was the Pristina Administrator, in the time of which un-permitted construction took a boost, and many were legalized. But there was no single reaction from UNMIK or the United Nations.
While Haekkerup was Head of UNMIK in 2001, the PTK management signed contracts with the Austrian companies Infonova and Management Partners Business Solution GmbH, at the amount of €10 million or more.
These contracts were then basis for the investigation against Gerard Fischer, Deputy SRSG, Lesar Rainer, Director of Infrastructure and Telecommunications Directorate, Leme Xhema, former PTK Director, Bedri Rama, Director of PTK Telecom, whose signatures were on the contract. But, the investigation initiated in 2004 were surprisingly halted in 2005, with the justification of “the prosecutor not finding sufficient facts†to initiate the file.
Thanks to the former Head of the KTA, and the predecessor of Joachim Ruecker, Nikolas Lambsdorff, the privatization process was blocked for a full year, while no official explanation was given for this. Not a single KTA Board meeting was held for a full year. There was no reaction or report by the United Nations.
At Holkeri’s time, the former Minister of Education and Science, Rexhep Osmani, as compensation for his land in Sllatina, through which the road was foreseen to be paved towards the airport, was given land of a public enterprise in the industrial area of Pristina, which was worth at least half a million Euros more than the land in Sllatina.
During the mandate of Michael Steiner, German authorities arrested one of his fellow citizens. Joe Trutschler had admitted that he had taken €4.5 Million from the KEK cashbox and had sent them to Gibraltar, though not for personal benefit, as he had said.
“The money was parked there to be used for another need that Kosovo would have,†had said the Spokesperson for the Special Investigator of Economic Crimes in Bochum. Trutschler was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison.
Koha Ditore
All scandals of UNMIK
http://www.eciks.org/english/lajme.php?action=total_news&main_id=370
Prishtinë, Apr 14, 2006 - There would be a scandal if the allegation about misuses at the Airport of Pristina during the time when Ioan Woollet was the manager, would be substantiated by Prosecution. It would be about hundreds of redundant workers, the sale of working positions, and even the murder of a young person involved in such a sale. The case is in the hands of international prosecutors, and they will show if the OIOS report was worth to seek responsibility from the UNMIK heads for allowing such things to happen.
Still, the affair of Ioan Woollet is not the first one, neither the heaviest scandal since the UN Mission in Kosovo began. The Organization of United Nations has turned a blind eye to all affairs in public institutions managed by internationals, despite domestic and international media reporting on them.
Agron Dida did not have much time for enjoying the return to work. He was discharged in December 1999 for “lacking cooperationâ€. In fact, he was dismissed for not signing the contract with Monaco Telecom. Dida had said that the offer from Siemens was financially and technically much more favorable. Gerard Fischer, whose name was mentioned in many media reports, and by investigation procedures by international prosecutors, replaced him.
Still, the SRSG of that time, Kouchner had secured Monaco Telecom and Alcatel the most profitable business they ever had. The last report from the Council of Europe proved that the services of mobile telephony were the most expensive and the poorest in the region.
In the time of Kouchner, Siegfried Brenke was the Pristina Administrator, in the time of which un-permitted construction took a boost, and many were legalized. But there was no single reaction from UNMIK or the United Nations.
While Haekkerup was Head of UNMIK in 2001, the PTK management signed contracts with the Austrian companies Infonova and Management Partners Business Solution GmbH, at the amount of €10 million or more.
These contracts were then basis for the investigation against Gerard Fischer, Deputy SRSG, Lesar Rainer, Director of Infrastructure and Telecommunications Directorate, Leme Xhema, former PTK Director, Bedri Rama, Director of PTK Telecom, whose signatures were on the contract. But, the investigation initiated in 2004 were surprisingly halted in 2005, with the justification of “the prosecutor not finding sufficient facts†to initiate the file.
Thanks to the former Head of the KTA, and the predecessor of Joachim Ruecker, Nikolas Lambsdorff, the privatization process was blocked for a full year, while no official explanation was given for this. Not a single KTA Board meeting was held for a full year. There was no reaction or report by the United Nations.
At Holkeri’s time, the former Minister of Education and Science, Rexhep Osmani, as compensation for his land in Sllatina, through which the road was foreseen to be paved towards the airport, was given land of a public enterprise in the industrial area of Pristina, which was worth at least half a million Euros more than the land in Sllatina.
During the mandate of Michael Steiner, German authorities arrested one of his fellow citizens. Joe Trutschler had admitted that he had taken €4.5 Million from the KEK cashbox and had sent them to Gibraltar, though not for personal benefit, as he had said.
“The money was parked there to be used for another need that Kosovo would have,†had said the Spokesperson for the Special Investigator of Economic Crimes in Bochum. Trutschler was sentenced to 3.5 years in prison.
Koha Ditore
All scandals of UNMIK
http://www.eciks.org/english/lajme.php?action=total_news&main_id=370
April 14, 2006
The Serbs and Yugoslavia: Betrayed again and again
Kathimerini
12 April 2006
In response to "President blasts Balkan failings," (12 April), President Papoulias "warned that multiculturalism had not yet taken root in the Balkans
and that the problem of nationalism would have to be overcome to ensure a brighter future for the region."
Before U.S. intervention, Yugoslavia was exactly a multicultural, multiethnic, and multireligious state. Although there are several reasons for the breakup of Yugoslavia sought primarily by the United States, one of the main reasons was because President Clinton wanted to appease the Islamic world for our daily bombing of Iraq even if it meant destroying the Christian Serbs. Furthermore, NATO (North Atlantic Treaty) needed a new mission since the Soviet Union no longer existed. Without a new mission, NATO would have ceased to exist, and what better place than Yugoslavia to drop their bombs for 68 unmerciful days on innocent Serbs?
I attended one of the demonstrations during the bombing of Yugoslavia in Washington, D.C., and I have to say that I was never more proud of being an American of Greek descent than when I saw the Greek flag, with its Cross, its beautiful blue and white colors, fluttering in the breeze.
Stella L. Jatras
Camp Hill, PA
USA
"The core of the problem is that the Balkans are still treated as a sphere of influence"
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_politics_100006_12/04/2006_68550
.........................
http://expatriatedamerican.com/2006/04/12/the-serbs-and-yugoslavia-betrayed-again-and-again.aspx
Exaptriated American
Personal reflections of a man without a country...
"I love America; but the America in which I believe
doesn't exist anymore."
The Serbs and Yugoslavia: Betrayed again and again
This entry was posted on Wed, 12 Apr 2006 10:57:00 GMT and is filed under religion,Terrorism,Foreign Policy,ISLAM.
When I moved to Montenegro I had the same impression of the situation in former Yugoslavia as most Americans: that the Serbs were monsters who subjugated the other nationalities in Yugoslavia. I learned the truth first hand.
Like many views created and fostered by the media, this one was a lie.
This hateful view of the Serbs was a huge lie propounded by the EU as a weapon to destroy Yugoslavia! Why? Because Yugoslavia was the only state that could have successfully stood outside it in Europe. To accomplish this, the EU supported thugs in Bosnia and Croatia who were as bad or worse than Serbia's Milosevic.
Worst of all the US participated in the bloody dismembering of Yugoslavia by contributing the bulk of the NATO troops who fought an aggressive war against a sovereign nation in violation of NATO's defense-only charter. The same United States which worries about fighting Muslims during Ramadan had no compunctions whatsoever about bombing Orthodox Christians on Easter.
The simple truth is that the US, NATO and the EU intervened on the side of the Muslims in Yugoslavia because they were pandering to the oil-rich Arab states.
Here are some facts that Americans need to know:
+ during World War II, the Allies betrayed the King of Yugoslavia in exile in London and supported Tito and his communists over General Mikhailovic and the royalist forces;
+ the "westernized" Croats established a fascist puppet state headed by a wacko who murdered Jews and Serbs and forced Serbs to convert to Catholicism at gunpoint (as opposed to the Serbs who have no record of anti-Semitism);
+ Kosovo is the heart of Serbia-the Muslim Albanians were brought in by Tito and the Communists in an effort to "divide and conquer" the royalist Serbs;
+ the only sin of the Bosnian Serbs was that they wanted to stay united with their fellow Serbs, rather than forced into a state of permanent subjection to the Bosniak Muslims back by NATO guns;
+ the EU, NATO and the US have promoted self-determination for the Slovenians, the Croatians and the Bosniaks, but not for the Bosnian Serbs;
+ before the Dayton Peace Accords, the Bosnian Serbs controlled 75% of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in a huge sacrifice for peace, they willingly cut that back to 49%;
+ since the peace accords and under the NATO occupation, tens of millions of dollars of international aid has been poured into the Muslim side of Bosnia-Herzegovina, and almost nothing has found its way to the Serb side;
+ since the NATO occupation, the allies have been teaching the Serbs "democracy" by disallowing a majority of the officials they elect because those officials want union with Serbia.
Let me make one more point about Kosovo. Kosovo Polje (field) is to Serbs what the Alamo is to Texans-the place of a great defeat which led directly to their independent nationhood. I wonder if Texans would be willing to let a majority of Mexicans voted San Antonio back to Mexico?
The death of Slobodan Milosevic was a renewed opportunity to trash the Serbs.
The simple response is this:
+ the Serbs are not perfect;
+ there were certainly atrocities; any perpetrated by Serbs were done in the heat of anger and in retaliation for atrocities visited upon them by the Muslims;
+ the Serb Orthodox Patriarch has forbidden the attack on the religious institutions of any other group and has insisted "we only protect our own";
+ Christians are being persecuted today in Muslim controlled Kosovo and Bosnia and this will only get worse if Kosovo is granted independence.
Who gains from this misdirected US policy? What strategic interest does the US have?
The Serbs are being offered to the Muslims by the NATO as a sacrifice to keep the oil flowing. One cannot help but wonder who they will sell out next-I certainly hope it is someone more deserving France or Germany.
Reflections on Milosevic
Milosevic's death & Carla's coiffure
Sent to BBC "News":
I filmed the Old City of Dubrovnik on 25 March 1992, 3 months after the total destruction. The roof tiles were old, the graffiti read "lynch the Serbs" [srbe na vrbe]... Columns of black smoke are -- ask any fireman -- from burning petroleum, outside the walls...
The synagogue was whole, but a Croat had taken a chunk out of the "Jewish Street" marble plaque with a pistol shot. The only gutted building was one marked with a sign in English -- "ICONS" and, in Serbian Cyrillic "IKONE". In autumn 1991 Croat gunners were firing from hotels full of refugees.Tito had built the hotels for dual purpose: tourism and defence. On 1 October 1992 a flood of 7000 Croats, who feared the fascist rebirth, and 3000 Serbs fled Dubrovnik. The first deaths were Serbs. A resident told me his neighbor's car had been set alight.Neighbors -- Croats and Serbs and others -- tried to extinguish the blaze. I asked why the attack: "because he's Serb; I'm not;I'm a Muslim." British Honorary Consul Sarah Crowgey Marojica starred (Nov 1991) in a kitschy (but proze winning) docu-drama with ITN's Paul Davies. Remember ITN of the kinny guy hoax at Trnopoljse "Death Camp"? --Sighed Sally: "Like the Blitz, isn't it?". -- So, from Act I Britain's consul was in on the break-up of Yugoslavia. -- On 6, 9 and 10 February I spent hours with Slobodan Milosevic, preparing my testimony, not buried along with him. He was not suicidal, but confident of trumping amblance chaser Geoffrey Nice.. Milosevic complained that the "court" was accusing him of (pick one) not taking his hypertension medication or (2)smuggling in a medication for TB and leprosy, which neutralized the blood pressure medicine. The guards at Scheveningen must be careless. --Milosevic was confident of refuting the ICTY "court". I dare you to put the Hague Show on the BBC telly. Let the public judge the judges and the "journalists"...
The Serb atrocity stories are as fake as WMDs, incubator babies, Tonkin Gulf, or the 2 SAS men caught in Basra in a van packed with bombs and timers (wearing Arab garb). Or Carla's blonde mop.
John Peter Maher
....................
http://www.balkanalysis.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=656
Balkanalysis
Reflections on Milosevic
Date: Friday, April 14 @ 01:00:00 EST
Topic: Other Balkans Articles
By David Binder
No Serbian leader had such renown since the time of Prince Lazar and Tsar Dusan. No Yugoslav except Tito had such international recognition. One must concede that to Slobodan Milosevic and, at the end of his days he appeared to relish that prominence immensely - the sole reminder of his years in power over the shredded country he left behind.
But keep in mind, his notoriety was manufactured largely outside of Serbia, outside of the larger Yugoslav frame, by adversaries who became enemies slavering over his final defeats and rejoicing in his incarceration.
"Butcher of the Balkans!" (who was it that coined that ludicrous epithet reminiscent of World War I or World War II propaganda?) "He was a monster!" trumpeted Richard Holbrooke adding, "Sometimes monsters make the biggest impact on history. Hitler, Stalin. And such is the case with this gentleman."
Note the sly addition of "this gentleman" - because Holbrooke, the failed diplomat, had not merely shaken the putatively bloody hand of the monster, he had also smoked fine cigars and drunk excellent whisky with him, again and again.
Wesley Clark, the failed general - the U.S. Army retired him after his troubled stint as NATO commander - faintly echoed Holbrooke calling Milosevic a "petty Hitler."
Why such preposterous exaggeration? Because it provided a venomous rationale justifying the United States and its allies to subject Milosevic's Serbia first to severe sanctions and then to bombs, rockets and uranium-laced munitions. Of parallel importance, it elevated Madeleine Albright, Bill Clinton, the Holbrookes and the Clarks to the status of giant-killers.
No wonder that the Hague Tribunal's chief prosecutor bemoaned the death of Milosevic. Without such a star-quality defendant in her dock, Carla del Ponte would have a hard time generating attention and publicity for what for many if not most has become a tiresome expenditure of resources and time. Amid the Milosevic post-mortem frenzy and with the logic of a Hollywood producer, she told anyone who would listen that it was now more important than ever to bring the fugitive General Ratko Mladic and his political collaborator Radovan Karadzic to trial.
The first time I reported about Milosevic was in autumn 1987 when he politicked his way to the top of the Serbian Communist party and began to manipulate the media through his adjutants. A Belgrade colleague told me how Milosevic had brutally threatened Azem Vlasi, the Kosovo leader, using vulgarities about the Albanian's mother. Vlasi replied: "I do not say that about your mother, but I do not forget what you said about my mother." As soon as he could Milosevic had Vlasi, the one Albanian who might have preserved Kosovo for Yugoslavia, thrown in jail.
In 1988 I sought an interview with Milosevic. I got only as far as Mihailo Crnobrnja, at the time his adviser on economic policy, who said he had a strong impression Milosevic was striving to assume the mantle of Tito. "That is his ambition," Crnobrnja emphasized.
In following years I asked six times for an interview with Milosevic. He never replied. The only time I encountered him was in January 1993 when I followed Cyrus Vance, the international mediator, to the Federal Executive Building in New Belgrade. Milosevic shook hands with us journalists, but he declined to answer questions.
Another snapshot from 1993: I was strolling on a Washington street with P.J. Nichols, a State Department Yugoslavia specialist and one of the principal architects of the punishing economic sanctions instituted against Serbia. We talked about the Yugoslav wars.
All at once, his eyes glistening with missionary zeal, Nichols put a hand on my elbow and declared: "I have a vision! A vision of a worker from Rakovica, who grabs a pistol and goes up and shoots Milosevic!" I shook my head: "You've got that wrong, P.J. The workers in Rakovica are some of Milosevic's strongest supporters!"
Now in looking back on the astounding career of a provincial politician who now ranks as one of the 20th century's leading villains, I remind myself of what he was and what he wasn't.
Milosevic did conduct himself as a petty despot.
His actions turned Serbia into a kind of prison.
By action here and inaction there he fostered massive corruption at the state level and below, some of which is still flourishing.
He also left Serbia behind in a condition of economic and political weakness unmatched since the Ottoman conquest and occupation.
But he did not himself start four Balkan wars.
He did not strive for a "Greater Serbia."
He did not play a part in the massacres around Srebrenica.
He did not mastermind the expulsion of Albanians from Kosovo.
Nor could the Hague prosecution, with all the time and all the resources at its disposal, have proven any of those charges.
So what will the judgment of history be on Slobodan Milosevic?
It took Sidney B. Fay, an American historian, a decade after the end of World War I to demonstrate exhaustively and definitively that Germany did not by itself precipitate World War I, with his The Origins of The World War. But that was much too late to prevent crippling reparations and other punitive actions by the victorious entente powers, or their deadly impact on postwar German politics.
But I suspect it will take historians much, much longer to redress the current one-sided version of the true causes of the wars of Yugoslavia and the real nature of Slobodan Milosevic's part in them.
.............
David Binder (born 1931) was a correspondent for The New York Times from 1961 until 2004. He specialized in coverage of central and eastern Europe, based in Berlin, Belgrade and Bonn. The current piece was published in Belgrade's Politika on March 22, 2006.
Requiem For Milosevic
Coastal Post Online
April, 2006
|
|
Requiem For Milosevic
By Edward W. Miller
By Edward W. Miller
"I'll be the judge and I'll be the jury," said cunning old Fury. "I'll try the whole case and condemn you to death." (Alice's Adventures in Wonderland) Lewis Carroll, 1865
"Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it... I am truly convinced that... Socialism ... being a progressive and just democratic society, should not allow people to be divided in the national and religious respect." (Milosovic speech made in Kosovo in 1989)
On March 13th, 2006 ( NY Times) Slobovan Milosevic was found dead in his prison cell in the Hague. After suffering during his four years in prison from high blood pressure, Milosevic had recently asked the Court's permission to seek medical treatment in Moscow where his son and wife were living.. She had been facing possible indictment by the Serbian government. The Hague Court's Chief Justice declined Milosevic's request. An autopsy performed in the Netherlands determined his death to be from coronary disease though some had accused the authorities of murdering him.
Milosevic's body was flown from the Netherlands to Belgrade, where, as Daniel Williams noted : (Washington Post 16 Mar) "The trip into the city of his flag-draped coffin provided signs that Milosevic still inspires some measure of adulation. Several hundred mourners lined part of the road and tossed carnations at the hearse. When the vehicle reached the St. Sava Hospital morgue, supporters waved the red flags of his political party, some clutching photos of the former leader." His coffin was placed inside Belgrade's Museum of the Revolution for two days of public viewing, where on March 18 well over 50,000 Serbs massed on the central square here ...in the public wake, representing, in this nation's deep divide, either his final victory or one last embarrassment for Serbia at his hands. (New York Times, Mar 19) The following day he was buried at his own residential compound in Pozarevac, his home town 50 miles east of Belgrade. The government rejected burial in a section of Belgrade's central cemetery called the Lane of the Greats.
Just as Gaius Julius Caesar, Rome's general during her Gallic wars, paraded the captured Versingetorix, brave leader of the revolting Gauls, in chains before the Roman populace before executing him in 45 BC, just so, Clinton and our Western media paraded Milosevic, as the Serb's criminal, before a misinformed public before he was murdered in the Hague prison. A routine coronary bypass, easily available in Moscow might have added years to the life of this man who died at age 62. To many of his countrymen, Milosevic was a hero, a tough politician who fought a defensive battle against those Western countries which had been tearing apart his beloved Yugoslav Federation for their colonial economic gain.
Twice elected president of the Serbian Republics, and once President of Yugoslavia, Milosevic during his last years in office was increasingly demonized by Western media while he resisted the dismemberment of his Yugoslavia, the only country in Europe which would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy. A campaign of disinformation and villification provided the media cover under which NATO politically and militarily destroyed the Federal Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia and then decimated the Kosovo, a Yugoslav economy, leaving millions homeless, cities in ruins, factories and refineries smoking environmental hazards and highways and rivers (the Danube) obstructed and useless. The 78 days of intense NATO bombing, in 1999 destroyed Serbia's economic infrastructure, laying bare its remaining government-owned and private businesses to the predatory jackals of international commerce to seize at rock-bottom prices. The Western-controlled election which followed the military devastation left Milosevic only marginally defeated but a run-off election, demanded by Yugoslavia's Constitutional Court never took place. It was canceled by NATO.
Much of the intrigue associated with the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation was hidden from the public, however, Jared Israel and other investigative political writers from the USA, Canada and the Netherlands (see http://emperors-clothes.com) had earlier reported that Senator Biden, with Clinton's special envoy to the Balkans, Robert Gebard, confirmed during the July 1999 Senate hearings on Yugoslavia, that: "The US pays and controls the so-called 'independent democratic' opposition."... "In the two years leading up to the Kosovo crisis, we spent $16.5 million in support of Serbian democratization... Gebhard's millions had "funded or even created political parties, radio stations, even trade unions." The Senate had previously voted $105 million to the Yugoslav opposition. Jared, et al, noted: "If any hostile foreign power did that in the USA, their local agents would be thrown in jail."
Clinton's top advisor also testified that the US distributed money in Yugoslavia via the National Endowment for Democracy, which calls itself "non-governmental" but is actually funded by Congress, and does openly what our CIA does under cover, recruiting peace and democracy activists, and "independent economists." During those Senate hearings, Senator Biden said: "... We are kicking the living hell out of Milosevic. There ain't no alternative left... My dream is to visit Milosevic in prison."
Jared's investigative group added: "These (Serbian) people were wined and dined and paid well. With fellowships, scholarships, and internships, they were made to feel they were tomorrow's leaders
in the American Empire."
Recruited reporters were overnight transformed into "independent journalists" who took over newspapers, radio, TV stations, and TV shows. Small underground print shops and distribution networks were set up. The international financier and crook, George Soros, using his Open Society Institute, had spent millions, both working with the CIA and funding "independent" media and other organizations in Yugoslavia. Almost a year before the Serbian election, leaders of OTPOR, a US-funded student resistance movement, attended a seminar on "Non-Violent Resistance" at the Hilton Hotel in Budapest, Hungary, some 12 miles across the border from Serbia where, American pollster Doug Schoen briefed the students on strategies for toppling Milosevic and in the months following, US-funded consultants "played a crucial role in virtually every facet of the anti-Milosevic drive, running tracking polls, and training thousands of opposition activists."
US taxpayers paid for 5000 cans of spray paint to scrawl anti-Milosevic slogans across Serbia, and 2.5 million paper stickers to paste on walls across the country, with the slogan: "GOTOV JE" (he's finished) and a clenched fist. Over three tons of these stickers were plastered across Serbia. As one, Serbian pollster noted: "The brand to sell was Kostunica. The brand to beat was Milosevic." Retired US Army colonel Robert Helvey briefed OTPOR students on non-violent civilian actions, organizing strikes, communication, undermining a regime's authority and overcoming personal fears. Eventually, OTPOR trained over 70,000 "activists."
Had Yugoslavia been a totalitarian state, the US strategy would not have worked, but Milosevic's free society gave western backers their all-important opening.
Before the NATO bombing, Yugoslavia had 101 radio and TV stations, most independent. Belgrade alone had 14 daily newspapers. Even rival Albanian groups sold opposition papers on Belgrade streets On voting day, polling places across Yugoslavia were monitored not only by foreign experts, but by student activists trained by OTPOR. The media declared Kostonika "winner" by a slender margin, and thousands of demonstrators surged through the streets of Belgrade.
However, when Belgrade's Constitutional Court ordered a run-off election, the Western powers, using OTPOR and trained activists brought to Belgrade by the DOS party, created riots, protesting any run-off. Police fired tear-gas as the crowd stormed the federal parliament, smashing windows and destroying files and computers, and setting fire to office equipment, even destroying that Serbian Television station RTS previously bombed by NATO.
NATO then declared Kostonika "winner" and canceled the runoff election." US-trained activists carried out a three-day reign of terror against Milosevic's Socialist (SPS) Party. Members were threatened and physically beaten, SPS offices broken into and destroyed across Serbia, and SPS-radio and TV stations were seized. Thus the US and Germany, supported by other NATO countries, first subjected democratic-socialist Yugoslavia, to 78 days of fierce NATO bombing, and then politically seized power in a carefully rigged election.
In the midst of this NATO savagery, on October 2nd, 2000 Milosevic via the media addressed his people in an effort to outline for them the West's subversive campaign to destroy his country. Exerpts are as follows:
"Honored citizens.. I'd like to explain my views on the political situation in our country... As you know, efforts have been underway for a whole decade to put the whole Balkan Peninsula under the control of certain Western powers. A part of the job was accomplished by establishing puppet governments in some countries... transforming them into countries with limited sovereignty or no sovereignty at all. Because we resisted, we have been subjected to all the pressures that can be applied to people in today's world... There has been a group amongst us which, under the guise of being pro-democratic, has in fact represented the interests of the governments attacking Yugoslavia. The group calls itself the "Democratic Opposition of Serbia" (DOS)... represents the armies and governments which recently waged war against Yugoslavia... With the establishment of an administration... installed by NATO, Yugoslavia would be quickly dismembered...
All governments controlled by foreign powers speedily become impoverished in a way that destroys all hope... a great division into a poor majority and a rich minority... national humiliation, state fragmentation and social misery... lead to forms of social pathology... crime would be the first. One of the obvious consequences of takeover is the loss of national identity... the greatest defeat a nation can know... The leaders of this (DOS) are trying to stop production, all work, all activity. Using money that is being shipped into the country, they are bribing some, blackmailing or harassing others, organizing strikes, unrest and violence. I consider it my duty to warn the citizens of our country about the consequences of the activities financed and supported by NATO."
While our media was hiding from Americans their government's pre-emptive campaign to destroy the Yugoslav Federation and criminalize its leaders, a few investigative journalists reported Washington's activity in detail.
Writer Michael Parenti (www.tenc.net 05/22/2000 ) wrote: "For the better part of a decade, the US public has been bombarded with a media campaign to demonize the Serbian people and their elected leaders. During that time, the US government has pursued a goal of breaking up Yugoslavia into a cluster of small, weak, dependent, free-market principalities. Yugoslavia was the only country in Europe that would not dismantle its welfare state and public sector economy... it still is charting a course not in keeping with the New World Order. "
From the Jordan Times (12/04/2000) Alexander Schlevogt reported: "The war over Yugoslavia was fought not only inside the country, but also on a global front, through the international public opinion... the strategy proved successful. During the whole string of events that lead to the toppling of the legitimate president, America used its flagship propaganda mouthpiece, CNN, to broadcast manipulated information to a global audience. In addition, television stations together with American coercion, most governments and people spoke with the same voice (and picture)... CNN manufactured and told a one-sided propaganda tale... conveying the impression that the whole people in Yugoslavia not only opposed the president, but deeply despised him." The whole intent behind Washington's ten-year Balkan adventurism had been to first disassemble that Federation of Yugoslavian States (structured by Tito toward the end of WWII ..), and then present these small once-socialist countries on the silver-platter of "democratization" to feed the rapacious appetites of international business, the IMF and the World Bank."
The process had its beginnings shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 when political groups in both Washington and Berlin visualized the Balkan States as potential targets for first, military, and then economic exploitation. At Berlin's Brandenberg Gate on October 12, 1994, President Clinton referred to Germany's then-Chancellor, Helmut Kohl as "my principal partner in Europe." To create military backing for this colonization of the Balkans,
Clinton peddled that straw tiger, NATO across Europe to the border of Russian, while the arms industry lobbied our Senate for NATO expansion. Giant Lockheed-Martin in 1996 offered a $2.3 million campaign fund contribution. Meanwhile, arms manufacturers, Saab/British Aerospace, Boeing/McDonnell
Douglas, and others, envisioning a central European arms market, spent millions on "voter education" in the projected NATO countries, thus violating local media laws regarding foreign contributions (The Nation, March 16, 1998). Early in 1998, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee voted 16/2 to extend NATO membership to Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic, followed by Senate approval in April of that year.
With minimal media coverage in the US, the Balkan countries were violently separated from one another as the West employed nationalist Trudjman in Croatia and Izetbegovic in Bosnia-Hertzegovinia to assist in "ethnic cleansing" of their Serb populations. Over 350,000 Serbian farmers were killed or expelled from their farms in eastern Croatia alone. Our CIA offered arms and military assistance (air cover), and dismantled the Serbian military and police communications systems, while stirring up anti Serb feelings in both countries.
Protestant Germany, along with the Vatican, had secretly armed the Roman Catholic Croats, while working politically to separate, first Slovenia and then Croatia from the Yugoslav Federation. Our media constantly demonized Slobodan Milosevic, as he tried in vain both to protect his Serbs and hold his Yugoslav Federation together.
In Bosnia-Herzegovenia, our CIA even brought in thousands of its old Muslim mujahedin fighters from Afghanistan to help drive the Serbs out of their homes. Both the US and Germany using the UN and NATO, as well as compliant members of the EU to shield their activities, secretly supported ethnic cleansing of the Serbs from these states while both demonizing Milosevic and reporting Serb efforts to defend their lives and homes as "Serbian Terrorism."
CNN and other media reported Bosnia Serbs "raped anywhere from 25,000 to 100,000 Muslim women." Michael Parenti noted the Helsinki Watch could find no credible supporting evidence of these "atrocities."
As NATO bombs rained down on Yugoslavia and Kosovo, the anti-Milosevic and anti-Serb media campaign expanded exponentially. In the now infamous Racak incident, our ex-El Salvador ambassador William Walker, escorted foreign reporters to the "execution massacre of 45 Kosovo Albanians in a mass grave." However, foreign forensic experts brought in at Serb request discovered the bodies had been assembled at the "grave" from some distance, that rifle shell casings were missing and only one body had been shot in the head. European news reported these victims as killed in the crossfire actually filmed earlier by an Associated Press TV crew. So much for CNN.
The anti-Milosevic campaign continued up to his death. The US with NATO assistance had set up a pseudo "International Criminal Tribunal for Former Yugoslavia" to indict Serbs accused of crimes genocide. Milosevic was the NATO target.
As Black and writer Edward S. Herman pointed out: " On May 27, 1993 in the midst of the 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia, the US "International Criminal Tribunal's chief prosecutor, Louise Arbour, announced the indictment of Serb president Slobovan Milosevic and four associates for war crimes, as a "public relations coup to justify the NATO policies and help permit the bombing to continue." This pseudo International Tribunal was set up by the UN Security Council in the early 1990s "to serve the Balkan policy ends of its dominant members, especially the United States." ("Z" Magazine Feb. 2000) Toronto lawyer Christopher Black, specialist in International Law, stated this court in the Hague was illegal, and was instigated and funded by private US corporations and NATO. Black said that though the UN Security Council tried to legitimize it, the Council lacked the credentials to do so, since International Tribunals, could, under the UN Charter, only be established by the UN General Assembly, not the Security Council. The Hague, court's chief prosecutor, Carla D el Ponte, in an interview on 12 March 2006, in the Italian newspaper La Republica said: "Perhaps he did commit suicide. He could have done it as a last act of defiance towards us."
Manufacturing a crime to justify military intervention has become the custom in Washington. Noam Chomsky called it "the principle of retrospective justification," while political writer Diana Johnstone prefers "making the crime fit the punishment," saying, "In any case, the object is to present our military adventurism in such a way as to hide both intent and process, thus achieving tacit support from an uninformed public while avoiding such politically-embarrassing backlash as Washington suffered during the Viet Nam war. This smoke-and-mirrors approach to our little wars requires extensive planning." Johnstone* pointed out: "NATO's land is a gated community whose armed forces are being prepared to intervene worldwide, at the bidding of Washington, to defend members' interests..." adding: "Clinton has voiced a "new principle of international relations: the destruction or displacement of peoples within states can justify international intervention." Thus Washington excused NATO's brutal destruction of Yugoslavia and Kosovo as "humanitarian intervention."
Americans had hoped that destroying a people to save them from some politician or political system, the so-called My-lai syndrome had been buried with the Viet Nam war. Not so." (* see her book on the Balkan wars: FOOL'S CRUSADE)
In many ways, the Clinton -Kohl war against the Yugoslav Federation was a rehearsal for the Bush Jr. assaults on both Afghanistan and Iraq. Slobovan Milosevic was the Clinton-Kohl sacrificial victim, Saddam is Bush's.
Slobovan Milosevic, a talented businessman, lawyer and politician, during four years in the Hague Court defended himself and his socialist regime skillfully, frustrating both his prosecutors and the judge. He gave his life in defense of his people and their choice of the socialist form of democracy. He deserves our admiration. As for Americans, will we ever learn to recognize these fascist wars, designed by our military-industrial complex, and stop them in their tracks?
April 13, 2006
The Unbearable Smugness of Being , by Nebojsa Malic
www.antiwar.com
April 12, 2006
The Unbearable Smugness of Being
by Nebojsa Malic
Balkans "Endgame" on Schedule – or Is it?
For a region with more history than it can handle, the Balkans is wrought
with anniversaries and commemorations no matter the season. The end of March
brought the seventh anniversary of NATO's attack that ended in the
occupation of Kosovo (March 24, 1999); it was followed by the anniversary of
the 1941 coup that overthrew the Yugoslav Regency over signing a pact with
Hitler (March 27), and the Nazi invasion that followed (April 6); that was
also the date of Bosnia-Herzegovina's recognition by the EU and Washington
in 1992, which plunged the former Yugoslav republic into civil war. April 10
marked 65 years since the establishment of the "Independent State of
Croatia," a creation of Hitler and Mussolini that engaged in ruthless
extermination of Serbs and Jews within its boundaries.
One month ago, Slobodan Milosevic passed away in The Hague. Unable to
convict him alive – as evidence of his presumed guilt has been just about
nonexistent – the Inquisition did its best to convict him in death, in the
court of Imperial public opinion. The media painted Milosevic as the
arch-villain of the Balkans, and incessant political propaganda promised the
people of Serbia they would be free and prosperous once he was out of power;
then after he'd been arrested and delivered to the Inquisition; then after
they "faced his legacy"…. In the end, Milosevic's passing from power and
life made not an ounce of difference in Empire's behavior toward his
country. He's gone, but things remain the same.
No Resting in Peace
Even though Serbian laws entitled him to a state burial, Milosevic did not
receive one. No representative of the Serbian state attended the funeral,
which took place on March 18 in Milosevic's hometown of Pozarevac. Tens of
thousands flocked to the event, which in many respects resembled a political
rally – not so much in support of Milosevic as against the current
government, and most of all against the rabid pro-Imperialist, globalist
movement loudly abusing the Serbian political scene.
That was enough for the supporters of that movement, such as ICG's James
Lyon, to rail against "rising nationalism" in Serbia. Accusing Prime
Minister Kostunica of "providing [Milosevic] with a state funeral in all but
name," Lyon bemoans the absence of "pro-Western democratic forces" from the
government. Though he specifically mentions President Tadic's Democratic
Party, the movement that most vocally declares itself as pro-Western and
"democratic" is that of militant Ceda Jovanovic, a darling of the Imperial
media who thinks a lot like the ICG.
In Lyon's "analysis," very much in sync with the current Imperial policy in
the Balkans, Kostunica's wicked ways will open the road to the Radical Party
to seize power. But no fear – that will enable Washington and Brussels with
an excuse to detach Kosovo and back the secession of Montenegro, as well as
increase funding to "civil society" in Serbia. Both goals are on ICG's
agenda, and the increase in funding would surely not hurt the Brussels-based
organization that promotes Imperial intervention everywhere. And everything
can, once again, be conveniently blamed on the Serbs.
Unwarranted
Indeed, the ICG has a lot to be smug about. Its former board member, Martti
Ahtisaari, is conducting "talks" in Vienna aimed at forcing Belgrade to
accept the secession of Kosovo under the guise of a negotiated agreement. A
month ago, Washington and Brussels forced the resignation of the Albanian
"prime minister" and the appointment of Agim Ceku, former leader of the
terrorist KLA, to replace him.
There was an outstanding warrant for Ceku's arrest in Serbia, on numerous
charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity, stemming from his
activities as a Croatian officer (1991-95) and as leader of the KLA.
Interpol, however, claims never to have processed it, and announced it had
no intention of doing so now that Ceku was a head of government. There's
only one problem – at one time, there was an outstanding warrant for Ceku,
as demonstrated by his arrest in Slovenia in 2003. Back then, Imperial
viceroy Harri Holkeri bailed him out and claimed Serbian warrants were no
longer valid for "citizens of Kosovo" (sic!). But why would Slovenian police
execute a Serbian warrant? Interpol's facetious announcement attempts to
cover up the fact that in today's world, political decisions trump
international law. As if that hasn't been obvious for a while…
Viceroy vs. Reality
However, even as Ceku was out of the woods and the Vienna "talks" started
putting new pressure on Belgrade, with Ahtisaari's deputy Albert Rohan
rejecting Serb proposals for autonomy within the Albanian-dominated
province, a report in the British Sunday Times claimed widespread crime and
corruption at the highest levels in Kosovo, and accused viceroy
Jessen-Petersen of deliberately ignoring it. Allegations were first made by
the UN's Office of Internal Oversight.
"You have a criminal state in real power — it needs underground illegal
structures to supply it with everything to survive," the Sunday Times quoted
Marek Antoni Nowicki, former ombudsman in Kosovo.
Jessen-Petersen issued a statement denying any wrongdoing. One must wonder,
however, how bad things in Kosovo must truly be if even the Imperial press
saw it fit to report them – and moreover, how much longer can
Jessen-Petersen stay in the job with this cloud over his head. With his
openly pro-Albanian behavior, the viceroy has long been a most undiplomatic
envoy of his Imperial masters; perhaps he has become sufficiently
embarrassing to warrant removal.
Whither Montenegro?
Separation of Montenegro from Serbia has also been a goal promoted by the
ICG. For the past nine years, ever since the former Milosevic supporter Milo
Djukanovic reinvented himself as a "democrat" – with the help of copious
amounts of cash from U.S. taxpayers – a campaign has been underway to
separate Montenegro from a union with Serbia. Not only has the regime in
Podgorica been determined to sever political and economic ties with
Belgrade, it has tried to invent a separate national identity for some
470,000 inhabitants of the rocky republic who once considered themselves
ethnic Serbs.
Djukanovic and his separatists have been threatening a referendum on
independence for years, but always backed down, aware that they simply did
not have enough votes. They have finally decided to call a vote for May 21,
and even accepted EU's condition that 55 percent of voters would have to
approve secession, even though nothing has substantially changed from before.
On March 24, Djukanovic's pro-union opponents produced a secretly filmed
video of separatist activists offering to buy votes. The separatists have
dismissed the video as staged, and accused their opponents of malicious
propaganda. On the other hand, what else would explain their sudden
confidence in winning the independence vote?
Empire-funded IWPR (in its latest Balkans iteration, BIRN) offers a possible
clue: Albanians and Muslims, who have thrown their support behind the
separatists. KLA ideologue Adem Demaci, recently interviewed by a Podgorica
daily, supported secession and even said he could see an independent
Montenegro in union with Kosovo some day.
The extent to which the Montenegrin separatists are trying to poison the
well with Serbia became apparent during the Eurosong selection contest in
March. Exactly as they did last year, Montenegrin TV judges gave no votes to
Serb performers, favoring instead a pro-separatist boy band. The live
concert-hall audience rioted. Serbian television refused to endorse the
result, which though technically valid was absolutely against the spirit of
the competition. "It is better not to have a common representative at all
than to accept, for the second time, the manipulations, pressure,
blackmailing, and tribal voting," said RTS director Aleksandar Tijanic.
One thing is certain. As May 21 approaches, there will be more tensions,
provocations, and hatred, as the separatists will pull out all the stops to
win, and the unionists will try to stop them.
Misguided Confidence
It may seem that events in the Balkans are following Empire's plan for a
victorious "endgame" to crown its interventionist efforts. Milosevic,
convicted by propaganda, is safely dead and unable to defend himself. Rabid
Empire supporters are promoting chaos in Serbian politics. Preparations for
the separation of Montenegro and Kosovo are proceeding well, it appears. But
they should not be so confident.
The thing about the Balkans is that it is always full of surprises. Anyone
who has sought to bend the world to their will, and had the peculiar
misfortune to step into the Balkans, quickly found that out – always to
their great detriment.
Uncle Sam's genie
Latest news:
http://news.google.be/news?hl=en&ned=us&ie=ISO-8859-1&q=Kosovo0
Top List of the Corrupted
http://www.eciks.org/english/lajme.php?action=total_news&main_id=364
Highlights of the joint weekly Press Briefings
http://www.unmikonline.org/DPI/Transcripts.nsf/0/7723603406BE3382C125714E0054AE72/$FILE/tr120406.pdf
"Internal Security Sector Review is the most important process to determine Kosovo's future internal security structures"
http://www.unmikonline.org/DPI/PressRelease.nsf/0/E3B0395E95FF6D42C125714D00508DF6/$FILE/pr1532.pdf
Guaranteed protection within the borders of (independent)Kosovo
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/unmik-says-no-extraterritorial-entity.html
"Whatever we do is based on principals and in accordance with international laws"
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/4/BBDD2991-451C-40E2-9A2C-BAB8AA18B796.html
AFP: "Be ready to face reality, to move forward"
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/RWB.NSF/db900SID/ACIO-6NSJJF?OpenDocument&rc=4&cc=scm
"EU support is convincing"
http://www.eupolitix.com/EN/News/200604/1fbe413b-4c77-4b56-8e27-bf70a8fe780b.htm
"Kosovo status should be determined as soon as possible"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/kosovo-status-should-be-determined-as.html
"We are not anticipating the outcome of those talks"
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/04/eu-prospect-vital-for-kosovo-success.html
"A 'genie of recognition' let out by the United States and EU could cause a domino effect"
http://www.eurasianet.org/departments/insight/articles/eav041206a.shtml
April 11, 2006
Tribunal had a motive for murder of Milosevic
Read this article about the death of Milosevic, bringing pieces together. Use it, edit it, forward it !
Comments, remarks, additions and other viewpoints, which may contribute to establish that homicide was committed againt Milosevic are warmly welcome !
regards,
Nico Steijnen
Article, published, partly, in the leading Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad on 16 March 2006, free for futher publication.
Please use it, edit it, forward it!
Mr. N.M.P. Steijnen
Couwenhoven 52-05
3703 ER Zeist
030-6956867
mailto:sagitar@hetnet.nl
-----------------------------------------
TRIBUNAL HAD A MOTIVE FOR MURDER
Even when it ever would be evidenced beyond doubt that Milosevic was not murdered as a result of direct action, this still doesn't mean that there was not committed homicide against him.
Milosevic was, from the beginning in his cell in the Hague, a person affected by severe health problems. So it was, for malignant forces, easy to forecast that, in order to get rid of him, no direct attempts on his life, which always may bring about the risk of leaving traces, were necesssary. And that a succession of secret actions, direcly aimed at further undermining of his health were sufficient to make sure that he, sooner or later, was bound to succumb. Certainly if such secret actions against his health were conducted in combination with malicious medical negligence and the extreme stress put upon him by the working conditions and the expediciency the tribunal forced him to.
Therefore, such a more sophisticated course of action would be far preferable to blunt direct liquidation.
Convincing evidence of deliberately undermining Milosevic's health
And there are, though there is no clue to direct murder, already at the moment quite a lot of convincing indications that Milosevic was killed in this indirect way.
The specific element of his, from the beginning, medical negligence is a already a well-document story, just like the enormous pressure put upon him by the tribunal by its devasteting claims for expeciency.
These subjects require a separate description.
This article limits itself to some serious indications that Milosevic's health was deliberately undermined by covert direct actions. At least during a number of crucial episodes of his process. Episodes in which there have been persistent efforts to 'switch him of', to silence him.
Unfortunately for the tribunal, periods of increased attempts to 'switch him of' turn out, viewed more closely, to coincide with a number of very suspect events discussed here below.
A failure for NATO was threatening
But first the following must be said.
In a climate where loyal friends of the tribunal have been given the monopoly over reporting in western countries, it is no wonder that an image has been created of the Milosevic trial that is completely alien to the reality.
In the discussions I have had with different people
about Milosevic's death, the prevalent opinion was that no matter how valiant this man´s resistance was, or alternatively, how impudent, the evidence against him was growing in a trial that went on for years and that he was a man who felt the ground sinking under his feet, now that the trial was drawing to a close. And who was thus ripe for some desperate act.
This cherished image thus elicits its own psychologisms.
So this image is dominant in western public opinion, resulting from persistent biased information, portrayed by bootlickers of the tribunal, passing themselves disguised as ´reporters´.
The reality concerning the Milosevic trial was diametrically opposite. A reality which can also be verified by everyone.
All one needs is to take the trouble of reading the trial transcripts.
It is nothing short of an objective and hard fact that it was not Milosevic who was under attack in his trial but the tribunal. And not only ´today´.
When the prosecutors had to conclude their evidence after years, prominent Dutch newspapers, like the Volkskrant titled its article ´No conclusive evidence against Slobodan Milosevic´ (VK 26 February 2004), and the NRC even chose the title: ´Case against Milosevic 'falls apart’´ (NRC 28 February 2004).
This, already at that moment, matter of fact is, through the last years, clearly deeply sunk in collective subconsciousness, apparently as a result of the stereotyping, increasingly hammered by the tribunal protagonists that the tribunal was mercilessly busy nailing down the rogue Milosevic.
For years the prosecutors called hundreds of witnesses against him and rained tons of documents on him, but still a 'sound case' against him was missing.
Things got only worse for the tribunal when Milosevic finally started his defense. What the flatterers of the tribunal, passing themselves as reporters, hid from the general public in Western countries is that with the help of his witnesses Milosevic, more and more, wreaked havoc on what was still left from the accusations.
What he was able to show over the past 16 months, to a great extent with the help of Western witnesses, was not only catastrophic for his prosecutors but it was also so disastrous to NATO that it must have sent an alarm.
Just as the Western public opinion, misled and manipulated by a common front of politicians and media had to be reversed as regards the myth of the Iraqi weapons of mass destruction after the war of aggression against Iraq, in the same way Milosevic exposed at the tribunal systematically the Western misconceptions about the NATO´s war of 1999 against Yugoslavia.
Charge of chasing 'a Greater Serbia' no longer persued
In August 2005 prosecutor Nice felt compelled to announce that Milosevic would no longer be prosecuted on the central indictment that he tried to create a Greater Serbia with violence.
This brought down the whole construction of the complaints raised against him, which was based on, and kept together by, the central charge that Milosevic, as the leader of a criminal organization, did everything to create a Greater Serbia.
During the tribunal´s session on 29 November 2005, according to the transcripts of the proceedings, Milosevic reacted to this as follows:
'On the 25th of August this year, Mr. Nice, after three
and a half year of trial, said that he was not prosecuting
me on account of a Greater Serbia, and he ascribed that
idea to me from the very outset, from his introductory
remarks and then through the testimonies of almost half of
even more than half of his witnesses who - his witnesses, who spoke of a Greater Serbia as my objective and answered questions put by him to them in that context. (...) What is the fate of these proceedings that have been going on for over three years where you and I, and problably the other side, thougth that I was being tried for a Greater Serbia, which was the objective of some kind of alleged joint criminal enterprise? So what was what we tried to deal with when putting questions to the witnesses and in dealing with all the evidence, because that is what Mr. Nice was alleging through his witnesses? So then, what is the legal validity of that part of the proceedings, when we are all being deluded into believing that this was the main objective of the Prosecution? So what´s the point of all these witnesses who talked about a Greater Serbia as my primary goal here? Are you going to take that out of the evidence, or are you going to let me examine them further?
Also what about this joint criminal enterprise? And what would its objective be after this change? And what is this phantom of a joint criminal enterprise that is being discussed here? And what is it that is exactly being alleged? People who are sitting here, including you, on the one hand, simply cannot know all the things that are referred to in all these documents that Mr. Nice served - a million pages, no less - and no one knows what the Prosecutor is prosecuting, including the Prosecutor herself. She doesn´t know either.
I think even Franz Kafka would feel that he did not have great imagination compared to this.´
Further havoc to NATO's carefully spinned positions
But the damage, caused by Milosevic to the Tribunal, was getting even bigger. And it turned against the Western accusers themselves like a boomerang.
Milosevic presented, again with mostly Western witnesses, forceful evidence that there was no humanitarian emergency in Kosovo on the eve of the NATO war of 1999 against Yugoslavia, that the KLA was conducting a large-scale terrorist campaign at the time, that international terrorism had secure positions in Bosnia while it was being supported by the West throughout the 1990’s, that the Twin Towers suicide terrorist Hatta resided there for a number of years in the 1990’s and that Osama Bin Laden was received by the Bosnian president Izetbegovic in November 1995.
It became a reflex for the tribunal judges to immediately dismiss these last testimonies as 'irrelevant'. Obviously, they attempted to keep a lid on such explosive announcements.
As if this had not been bad enough for the tribunal's case, Milosevic's witnesses gave also evidence that the Albanians were not driven out by the activities of the Serbian army in Kosovo but mostly as a result of the intensive NATO bombings and the intimidation by the KLA. For that reason there were also relatively more Kosovo Serbs among the refugees than Kosovo Albanians during the 1999 war.
When Alice Mahon, who was a member of the NATO Parliamentary Assembly at that time, finally gave evidence that the civil population was openly terrorized by the NATO bombings in the 1999 war, Milosevic was found dead a few days later.
Motives on NATO's side
Milosevic thus did not have a motive for suicide but the tribunal-entourage working for NATO did have a motive for murder. And let there be no misunderstanding that the tribunal is swarming with officials who have close connections with NATO.When the former vice-prosecutor Hewitt stepped back, he already stressed in an interview with the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad that countless tribunal officials spent at least as much time at the US Embassy in the Hague as at the tribunal's office.
The case was getting completely out of hand for NATO(countries), the instigators and the financers of the tribunal. Earlier attempts to silence Milosevic by assigning him a lawyer and to reduce him to silent ‘attendance’ in his own trial failed. Then there was the unexpected factor which the tribunal could not control, namely the massive refusal of the witnesses to appear as witnesses under such conditions in the first place. Under this massive boycott the trial was on the verge of disintegrating.
It is obvious that enormous interests are at stake. After Abu Graïb and Guantanamo Bay, people, also in the West, are less gullible regarding the Western scruples in matters concerning human rights.
Milosevic's determination
I am one of the few Dutchmen who has had candid discussions with Milosevic. That way, I have had the opportunity to get to know him personally, as well as his standpoints and motives, in an informal setting. I can say that as a lawyer I have seldom met anybody who was so convinced of his case. And of his possibilities to prove it. If something escaped him, that was commonplace intrigues. He had a mission and he stood behind it, without reservations.
Also his assigned counsel Steven Kay declared 11 March 2006 on BBC World that he spoke with Milosevic just some weeks ago about suicide. Kay stated that he could not imagine that Milosevic had undertaken any suicidal action, that Milosevic, to his opinion, was determined to bring this fight before the tribunal to an end and that Milosevic told him that he had not waged this legal battle with an intention finally to bring at stake his own life.
This opinion is shared by everyone who was in close contact with Milosevic. He was firmly determined to finish his job.
The next witness, scheduled to testify, the former Montenegrin president Momir Bulatovic, told a news conference that Milosevic, during the last months of his life and imprisonment, was 'strongly and deeply' convinced that he was being poisoned by the tribunal.
Bulatovic stipulated:
"The crown proof that Milosevic was poisoned is the Hague tribunal's indifference - the tribunal did nothing - although the medication was found in his bloodstream on 12 january, while the results of tests were given to Milosevic only on 9 March."
He also stated:
"On 9 march, Milosevic spoke to the assistant of the imposed defence lawyer, Gillian Higgins and asked her to refer to the court council his request that an independant medical commission establish whether he was being poisoned."
And H.E. James Bissett, the former Canada's Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1990 to 1992, who testified as a witness on February 23-24 said in an interview with CKUK's 'Monday's Encounter':
"When I went te see him in penitentiary in the Hague, Milosevic was dressed very casually. (..) He looked good. He had good color. He was relaxed. He had a sense of humor. He was obviously busy trying to prepare for my testomony and he struck me as being reasonable content with the way the trial was going on."
And:
"The following day, however, it was in the afternoon around five o'clock after two or three hours with him, he suddenly became flushed in the face and clasped his hands to his head. I was startled and asked if he was all right. He answered that he was O.K. and explained that he suffered from a loud ringing sound in his ears that seemed as though he was speaking in an empty pail. He told me that although his blood pressure was under control he had this constant ringing and echoing sounds in his head."
And, finally, Socialist Party aide of Milosevic, Milorad Vucelic, recounting a phone conversation the day before Milosevic's death, declared that the ex-president was very defiant:
"He told me, Don't worry, they will not destroy me or break me; I shall defeat them all".
More than 200 pages appeals to the tribunal to stop it to endanger his life
If “they” did not kill Milosevic, for which they had every power and opportunity in a setting like the prison, then they drove him to death. The warnings, appeals and supplications by organizations that were sympathetic to him to stop compromising his life and health, consists of more than 200 pages accumulated over the years.
Not only medical negligence
But, as already stipulated, also strong indications remain that there was not only a matter of medical negligence but there are also strong indications that his health deliberately and directly was undermined during, certainly, at least some crucial periods of his process.
The final piece is constituted by the very suspect events during the first period of 2006. After it became clear that it would be impossible to stop Milosevic to continue, through his witnesses, to establish facts which are for NATO and its usual tales about the recent Yugoslav history higly compromising.
In January 2006 a drug used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis, and interfering with medicines Milosevic was taking for high bood pressure and vascular disease was found in his blood samples, but this was never made public untill shortly before his death.
According to an official statement after Milosevic´s death by the tribunal's registrar Holthuis, the tribunal would not have not been informed about this medical report before March 7, 2006. Neither Milosevic himself was informed before this date about this medical report.
This state of affairs raises the more suspicion since, normally, Milosevic received all medical reports concerning himself shortly after his examinations and so did the tribunal, when it was the commissioner of the medical reporting.
Urgent questions
So the question raises: why this report was kept secret for such a long time? And who decided to keep this report secret for such a prolonged period of time?
This are the more urgent questions because there is no doubt that this drug in his blood was extremely dangerous for him and made him to be in acute mortual danger.
So who decided to keep him for such a prolonged period in mortual danger?
Those who decided to keep this highly explosive and alarming medical report secret for two months must also have been well informed about the content, and, as a consequence, they must must have been fully aware that Milosevic's life was at stake by the drugs found in his blood.
Were it the same forces which applied these drugs to him?
These drugs must have had a further devastating effect to his health and everybody could see this further deterioration of his health reflected in his his whole appearance. Despite this clear signal, the trial chamber didn't take any measure in favour of him, which might have shown any feeling of responsibility for his obviously further declining health.
Finally Milosevic felt forced to file a request at the tribunal to seek medical relief and treatment in Russia.
Those malicious forces responsible for the fact that this highly alarming medical report remained secret for such a prologed period also succeeeded in keeping it secret till after the tribunal had decided upon this request. On February 24, 2006, this request was denied bij the trial chamber.
If the trial chamber knew, at the moment of its ruling, about the content of this report, then there can be no other conclusion then that the tribunal's judges were part of a plot hatched against Milosevic, or even the insprirators of that plot.
Because then it would be sure that, despite that they were aware that Milosevic's life was seriously endangered by extremely harmful drugs in his blood, they deliberate would have ignored and concealed that.
If the judges of the trial chamber really would not have been familiar with the content of the report before it was given to Milosevic, nevertheless a number of questions remain.
The most urgent questions which, then, will remain are: why the judges refrained from insisting on getting acqainted with the content of this report as soon as possible an why they accepted that the release of this report remained forthcoming ?
Was this simply because the judges of the trial chamber were not interested in the health of Milosevic at all ?
Or was there something more behind it ?
Was it, maybe, more convenient to the tribunal's judges 'to be not wiser' and was it, consequently, a matter of tactics for the trail chamber's judges to abstain from insisting upon the release of the report?
So that they could hold a free hand to dismiss Milosevic's request for medical treatment in Moscow ?
Or were they even secretely tipped about the tendency the report and and was this enough knowledge for them to abstain from further insistence upon a full release ?
Bad faith by the trial chamber anyhow
Anyhow, it is a matter of fact that the trial chamber's judges have not taken any action in order to be able to take into account the content of this pending medical report in their pending decision upon Milosevic's request for medical treatment in Moscow.
This alone is already giving evidence of their bad faith with respect to Milosevic.
Refusal to allow treatment in Moscow
Further evidence of their bad faith with respect to Milosevic follows from the reasoning of their ruling, which states:
"The Chamber notes that the the Accused is currently in the latter stages of a very lengthy trial, in which he is charges with many serious crimes, and at the end of which, if convicted, he may face the possibility of life inprisonment. In these circumstances, and notwithstanding the guarantees of the Russian Federation and the personal undertaking of the Accused, the Trial Chamber is not satisfied that the first prong of the test has been met - that is , that it is the more likely than not that the Accused, if released, would return for continuation of his trial."
As already stated by Andy Wilcoxson, member of the Slobodan Milosevic Freedom Centre The Hague on the February 24, 2006 edition of his site www.slobodan-milosevic.org/hague.htm:
"What the tribunal is saying here is that the Russian Government can not be trusted to apprehend a 64-year-old man with a hart condition if he tried to escape. For all its empty rethoric about human rights, what the Hague Tribunal has shown by its decision is that it is perfectly happy to imperil a man's life just for the sake of politics."
This was written by Andy Wilcoxson, not realizing that he really forecasted by this Milosevic's death only two weeks later.
Earlier the tribunal allowed people accused to go back to Kosovo and Montenegro. Like, for instance, Pavle Strugar for a hip replacement surgery. Why it has more trust in the government of Montenegro or the 'interim administration' of Kosovo than the Russian Federation, which has given its word to return Milosevic, is not explained, but the insult to a permanent momber of the Security Council is inescapable.
The day after his death a report posted on the official website of the Russia Federation's Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated:
"Russian doctors were ready to offer him due assistance and the Russian authorities guaranteed the fulfillment of all related ICTY requirements. Unfortunately, despite our guarantees the tribunal refused to give Milosevic a chance to get treatment in Russia."
On March 15, 2006, the head of the Russian medical team, which had been prepared to treat him in Moscow, Leo Bokeria, member of the Russian Academy of Medical Sciences, declared at a press conference in the Hague:
"Ãf Milosevic was taken to any specialised Russian hospital, the more so to such a stationary medical institution as ours, he would have been subjected to coronographic examination, two stents would be made, and he would have lived for many long years to come. A person has died in our contemparary epoch, when all the methods to treat him were available and the proposals of our country and the reputation of our medicine were ignored."
And:
"Ãt's a great regret that they did not heed our numerous appeals during examination. The point is that a man who had suffered from a complex illness and the heart and vascular system was not examined adequately, and thus naturally he could not be cured. If he had had a coronary arteriography...then of course he would have undergone surgery or a bypass and he would be alive".
Finally top Russian heart specialist Bokeria said he believed the right medical examinations of Milosevic could have prevented his death.
Deliberate delay of the release of the medical reporting - more questions
If the trial chamber's judges really didn't know anything about the content of the medical report which revealed the drugs in his blood, it must be concluded that those malicious forces who were after Milosevic's physical destruction must have deliberately delayed the release of this report. In order to prevent that their positive knowledge that Milosevic's life was seriously endangered would became common.
After all, there is no denying the fact that the release of this ominous report was delayed for two months. And, considering the highly alarming content and the fact that the report even had to deal with a life-threatening situation for Milosevic, it must be held for sure, unless still the opposite would be evidenced, that this was done deliberately.
So if it were not the trial chamber's judges who spearheaded this final conspiracy against Milosevic's life, than other tribunal official must have been responsible for that.
According to Holthuis, the tribunal's registrar in his above-mentioned official statement, the trial chamber of the tribunal also received the report only March 7, 2006, but without taking any action.
So why not ?
If the trial chamber's judges would have been trustful, they of course would have taken action immediately.
The more because their daily experience with Milosevic and the fact that they simply must have been aware that he was in a growing bad health.
But no alarm, no action from the trial chamber's judges after they got familiar with the content of this report.
Instead, they did nothing at all.
They only silenced the very existence of this report, and its very alarming content.
Milosevic pointed out the existence of the report to the outside world, not the tribunal
For it also should be stressed that it was not the tribunal which finally released the existence of this highly disturbing medical report, and, consequently, the existence of these highly worrying medical facts, but Milosevic.
Through a letter, a cry for help to the Russian government, which become public only after his death.
So the existence of this medical report became only public after the text of a handwritten letter emerged, dated March 8, send by Milosevic to the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs and asking for active steps by the Russians in order to bring about a medical treatment for him in Russia.
This letter stated, as far as relevant:
“I think that the persistence, with which the medical treatment in Russia was denied, in the first place is motivated by the fear that through careful examination it would be discovered that there were active, wilful steps taken, to destroy my health throughout the proceedings of the trial, which could not be hidden from Russian specialists.
In order to verify my allegations, I´m presenting you a simple example which you can find in the attachment. This document, which I received on March 7, shows, that on January 12th (i.e. two months ago), an extreme strong drug was found in my blood, which is used, as they themselves say, for the treatment of tuberculosis and leprosy, although I never used any kind of antibiotic during this 5 years that I´m in their prison.
(..)Also the fact that doctors needed 2 MONTHS (to report to me) can´t have any other explanation than we are facing manupulation. (emphasis added by the author). In any case, those who foist on me a drug against leprosy can´t treat my illness; likewise those from which I defended my country in times of war and who have an interest to silence me.”
Not directly being poisoned doesn't mean that Milosevic was not deliberately killed
At the autopsy performed by the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI) it was established that Milosevic died as a result of a cardiac arrest and that there were no traces of drugs in his blood.
However, as far as the results of this autopsy are considered reliable, this only proves that he was not directly poisoned at the eve of his death.
But this outcome, in no way, establishes that there were not, in an earlier stage, deliberate efforts to undermine his health.
In order to imperil, step by step, his life.
Alarming signals in November 2002
Already in 2002 there had been alarming signals that Milosevic deliberately received drugs which were damaging his fragile health.
On 23 November 2002 the leading Dutch Newspaper NRC Handelsblad reported, titled “Milosevic got wrong medicine”, as far as relevant here:
“In the Scheveningen prison Slobodan Milosevic was given the wrong medicine, causing his blood pressure to rise very quickly. This was why at the beginning of this month the trial against the former president of Yugoslavia was supended. Sources within the tribunal have confirmed this. However a spokesman for the Tribunal denies that mistakes were made. He refuses to discuss the issue further on grounds that “This is about the privacy of the defendant.”
On 18 November 2002 a cardiological report was handed over to Milosevic, resulting from a medical examination on November 15th, which stated inter alia:
“PATIENT HISTORY
In recent weeks during trial again steep blood pressure up
to around 220/120 to 130 mmHg. The patient had no other
complains related to this. I am now asked to make a
prognosis regarding Mr. MILOSEVIC´s blood pressure and
determine whether the patient is still fit to stand
trial.”
And further, under the paragraph “Discussion”:
“During the trial again strong increase in blood pressure.
Most likely a combination of an existing tendency to
hypertension and the mental pressure of the trial.”
This all was going on exactly in a time period that the prosecutor was vehemently making fresh attempts to convince the trial chamber that it was urgently needed to force Milosevic to accept counsel and to usurp his right to defend himself.
In order to silence him.
So in view of this purpose there were, at that very moment, good reasons to deteriorate his health and to cause a situation that his blood pressure got persistently out of hand.
In order to bring him into a state of health which would it make impossible to him to conduct his own defence.
Alarming signals in August 2004
Two years later, the prosecutor did again her utmost to drive Milosevic out of his own defence. And, instead, to make Kay his spokesman in court, while Milosevic again furiously opposed this attempt to move him out.
During his inspired plea against these renewed infamous attempts in the court session of September 1, 2004, Milosevic stipulated that he was fit enough to continue his own defence and, subsequently, stressed the incident mentioned hereafter:
“Therefore I wish to reiterate: My right to defend myself
is something that I will neither accept having diminished
nor will I ever waive it. Please bear that in mind.
And you can reach your own decisions, but I receive the
medicaments given to by your people, your employees.
What is happening here, I don´t know, but I can bring the
whole floor of the Detention Unit here to testify what
happened when the food I had was exchanged with the food
of the person across the passageway, and there was a big
to-do about setting things right, although the food
apparently was the same. It appeared to be the same. And I
did not raise the issue. I don´t know what was going on.
But please be kind enough to bear in mind that when, for
three years, they have been saying one thing and now
suddenly they turn around and say something else, I am
right in having suspicions. My suspicions may or may not
be justified, but they are well grounded.”
(Trial transcripts September 1, 2004 - pages 32351 to
32351)
The last remark was regarding his doctors, who had always stated, untill that very moment, that he was enough fit to defend himself, but now had taken the opposite position.
And again, also that specific period of this incident was a crucial one in the attempts of the prosecutor to topple Milosevic´s own defence.
And this time the Prosecutor succeeded: Kay has been installed as counsel.
But even this attempt finally failed, because, as already pointed out, the process threatened to fizzle out since the witnesses refused to show up.
And so the tribunal and the prosecutor were forced again to back down.
And, grinding their teeth, they were forced to re-establish Milosevic's right to conduct his own defence.
So there was only one way left to silence Milosevic.
An ultimate and definitive one.
Legal steps against the tribunal's officials
Over the recent years I have acted repeatedly on Milosevic’s behalf. In trials to defend his fundamental human rights within the Dutch legal order. In that context, he has empowered me to take whatever steps were necessary at a given moment. That was the case with the trials against the Dutch State after his kidnapping to The Hague, the proceedings against the then 'amicus curiae' Wladimiroff, against Kay, who threatened to usurp his right of defense, etc. Similarly, legal steps will be taken against the relevant tribunal officers, judges as well as prosecutors, on account of the cruel and inhuman treatment in the context of the Anti-Torture Treaty, a cruel and inhuman treatment by, at least, denying Milosevic, a sick man whose life was in danger for years, the necessary medical care. And by not giving him the support that was necessary, as was evident by the state of his health for years.
The tribunal's officials have protected themselves with a broad immunity from prosecution. But acts contrary to the Convention against Torture are excluded.
Mr. N.M.P. Steijnen
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
