March 29, 2006
A five part series on Yugoslavia. The Dominion (Canada)
This is an outstanding five part series on Yugoslavia. After reading this, no one can say, "I didn't know."
The Dominion - Canada's Grassroots Newspaper
A five part series on Yugoslavia that covers the following:
Part 1: Milosevic the Guilty? http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analysis/2006/03/17/milosevic_.html
Part 2: The Origins of the War in the Balkans http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analysis/2006/03/18/the_origin.html
Part 3: The Media War http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analysis/2006/03/19/the_media_.html
Part 4: The Good Guys http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analysis/2006/03/20/the_good_g.html
Part 5: Peace from Above http://dominionpaper.ca/media_analysis/2006/03/22/peace_from.html
"In 1999, NATO planes dropped twenty thousand tonnes of bombs on targets in the former Yugoslavia, killing upwards of 3,000 human beings and injuring thousands more. Targets included power plants, hospitals, industrial infrastructure, schools, churches, historic sites, water and sewage facilities, apartment buildings, temporary housing for refugees, traveling refugees, the state television station, bridges, and socially-owned, worker-run factories."
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Wednesday, March 29, 2006
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March 28, 2006
Ceku must face justice
http://thechronicleherald.ca/Opinion/492868.html
The Halifax Herald
HALIFAX, NOVA SCOTIA | Tuesday March 28, 2006
Opinion
Ceku must face justice
By SCOTT TAYLOR / On Target
LAST WEEK, I just happened to be in Belgrade attending a conference on the future status of Kosovo when the funeral for former Serbian president Slobodan Milosevic was held.
True to form, the western media's coverage of these events presented accused war criminal Milosevic as evil incarnate and the Serbian people, by extension, as something bordering on the subhuman.
Almost entirely lost in the frenzy to heap responsibility for a decade's worth of death and destruction into Slobo's coffin was the announcement that the Albanians in Kosovo have just selected a new prime minister.
To have examined this development in the slightest would have served to spread around some of the blame and to illustrate that the Serbs certainly did not have a monopoly on war crimes during those bloody civil wars. In fact, if one only casually glances at the resume of the incoming prime minister, Agim Ceku, it becomes apparent that his election flies in the face of international justice, foreshadows more violence in Kosovo and ignores the sacrifices and valour of our Canadian Forces.
In summary, Ceku, an Albanian Kosovar by birth, began his military career as an officer in the former federal Yugoslavian army. When the initial Yugoslav breakup occurred in 1991, Ceku was quick to switch his loyalty to the Croatian cause. As a colonel in the Croatian army, Ceku commanded the notorious 1993 operation in what is known as the Medak Pocket.
It was here that the men of the 2nd Battalion of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry came face to face with the savagery of which Ceku was capable. Over 200 Serbian inhabitants of the Medak Pocket were slaughtered in a grotesque manner (the bodies of female rape victims were found after being burned alive). Our traumatized troops who buried the grisly remains were encouraged to collect evidence and were assured that the perpetrators would be brought to justice.
Nevertheless in 1995, Ceku, by then trained by U.S. instructors as a general of artillery, was still at large. In fact, he was the officer responsible for shelling the Serbian refugee columns and for targeting the UN-declared "safe" city of Knin during the Croatian offensive known as Operation Storm. Some 500 innocent civilians perished in those merciless barrages, and senior Canadian officers who witnessed the slaughter demanded that Ceku be indicted. Once again, their pleas fell of deaf ears.
Just a few months after the Storm atrocities, Canada's own Louise Arbour began making a name for herself as the chief prosecutor for the war crimes tribunal in The Hague. Despite the Canadian connection to these alleged crimes, Arbour and her lawyers chose instead to pursue more "politically prominent" individuals such as Milosevic, and other senior Serbs, while nothing was done to bring Ceku to justice.
Fast-forward to January 1999, and the world's attention begins to focus on a war-ravaged Kosovo. With the blessing of the U.S. State Department and NATO, Ceku takes his retirement (at age 37) from the Croatian army and is pronounced supreme commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Throughout the air campaign against Yugoslavia, Ceku was portrayed as a loyal ally and he was frequently present at NATO briefings with top generals such as Wesley Clark and Michael Jackson (see photo at http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/pictures.htm).
Under the terms of the June 1999 Kosovo peace deal, Ceku's Albanian guerrillas were to be disarmed and reconstituted into a UN-sponsored (non-military) disaster relief organization known as the Kosovo Protection Corps. But despite the fact that they now collected UN paycheques, Ceku's men never gave up their guns - nor their quest for a Greater Albania
From the armed Albanian incursions into southern Serbia in 2000 - and Macedonia in 2001 - right up until the violent pogrom unleashed against Kosovo Serbs in March 2004, Ceku's brand of violence, hatred and ethnic cleansing has remained unchanged.
Now he is being hailed as a political leader, and the world is once again turning a blind eye to his crimes.
Hopefully, Canada at least will respect the eyewitness testimony of our own peacekeepers and finally insist that Ceku face the same justice that was demanded of Slobodan Milosevic.
Presenting the soldiers of the 2nd Battalion of Princess Patricia's Canadian Light Infantry with a belated Governor General's unit citation for the Medak Pocket battle will remain a hollow gesture until Ceku is held responsible for his atrocities.
( staylor@herald.ca)
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Tuesday, March 28, 2006
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Lies and Myths about Milosevic and the Serbs
["I never saw the Yugoslav Federal Army mistreat anyone in Kosovo" ]
http://www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2006-03-27.html
Free Nations
LIES AND MYTHS ABOUT MILOSEVIC AND THE SERBS
by Rodney Atkinson
Dateline 27th March 2006
"I never saw the Yugoslav Federal Army mistreat anyone in Kosovo" Roland Keith, Commander in the OSCE's Kosovo Verification Mission, 1999.
In the week of the death of Milosevic anti-Serb propaganda reached a peak with not a single word of praise for a people who have in all three European Wars of the 20th century proved their anti-fascist credentials. Instead it is the propaganda of Croatian fascism, German imperialism and BBC appeasement which defends the attack on Yugoslavia (illegal on at least 7 counts under international law) and its break up into the same petty nationalist states with clerical fascist governments which Nazism and Fascism constructed in the 1940s.
So the EU (under German direction) the USA and the UN conducted the most illegal war of all time, without UN approval, destroyed the most ethnically mixed State in the Balkans (Serbia) and brought about the most ethnically and religiously pure state of Croatia and a religiously divided Bosnia. The UN has failed to disarm the KLA who have now invaded Macedonia - with the weapons that the UN was supposed to remove from them! Now, having allowed the Kosovo Muslims to drive out most of the Christian Serbs from Kosovo, the UN seems bent on removing Kosovo from Serbia. This in religious and cultural terms would be like removing Kent from England or Texas from the United States, with Canterbury and Houston becoming Muslims cities!
Throughout the 1990s, the BBC, the British press and the Western media in general have lied and deceived, covered up the truth, broadcast fabrications prepared by anti Yugoslav forces, ignored historical fact and have been willing victims of one of the most successful propaganda missions of modern times. Here are some of the myths and lies which now pass for "facts" in the media today.
Milosevic "started the wars against Bosnia and Croatia"
Serbs were not the aggressors but the defenders of their internationally recognised State of Yugoslavia against foreign powers (principally Germany and the USA) who financed insurrection by Bosnian Muslims, Croatian nationalists (using the same "U" emblem as the Ustashe fascist allies of Germany during the second World War) and Kosovo Muslim Albanians. All three of these groups had provided the Nazis with Waffen SS divisions against our allies, the Serbs, between 1940 and 1945).
Milosevic was a "fascist"
He was in fact the exact opposite, his opponents in Croatia and Bosnia being the historical fascists whose 1990s actions were based on precisely the same imagery, ideology and in some cases even the names of their fascist movements during the second world war. Milosevic could be described, as the whole of Yugoslavia was during the cold war, as a "Reform Communist".
Milosevic was a dictator.
He was elected three times, with the same lack of Western democratic niceties which we praised in the election of Yeltsin and Putin!
He persecuted the Kosovo Albanians.
The exact opposite was the case for the Kosovo Liberation Army had been murdering Serbs and Albanian Kosovans for years. In this they had continued the ethnic cleansing of Serbs started by the Nazis and fascists during the Second World War and carried on by Tito (a Croat) after the war. There were Albanian Muslims in Milosevic's Government - but that did not stop the gradual ethnic cleansing of Serbs from their historic homeland (and centre of Orthodox Christianity) in Kosovo by the KLA, rightly described by international observers as a terrorist organisation.
The KLA has now invaded Macedonia, where Albanian Muslims are creating "a third Albania"!
Both the Commander of the OSCE's Kosovo Verification Mission in 1999 (just before Yugoslavia was attacked) Roland Keith and the former Canadian Ambassador in Belgrade James Bissett have condemned the war and defended the Yugoslav Government. Bissett said that the 1999 attack was a "put up job" and quotes the most revealing admission by the former British Defense Minister, Lord Gilbert, who told the British House of Commons in July 2000 that the terms that NATO sought to force upon Milosevic at Rambouillet were deliberately designed to provoke war.
Commander Keith described the KLA as a terrorist organisation which had a grip on most villages in Kosovo. He had direct experience of grotesque lies told by villagers about ethnic cleansing and he said he never saw the Yugoslav Federal Army mistreat anyone in Kosovo.
Milosevic would have been found guilty of war crimes.
In fact the trial and Milosevic's detailed and penetrating challenge to prosecution witnesses had made a complete fool of the kangaroo court which had effectively kidnapped him in Belgrade (using the same anti-constitutional methods as the European Union did to destroy the sovereignty of the nation states of Europe - Presidential or Crown Prerogative!)
Milosevic was not accused in the International Court in The Hague but by a "special Tribunal" set up by the anti Serb forces. Blair and his partners in the illegal war were indicted at the REAL International Court - but refused to turn up.
The evidence at the trial proved Milosevic's guilt.
Far from that the Court was repeatedly unable to make any connection between Milosevic's orders and the assumed "atrocities". Indeed several Serb army personnel gave evidence that Belgrade had always insisted that soldiers who committed crimes should be brought to justice. The Court case also revealed that Lord Paddy Ashdown had lied to the Court and one of the Prosecution's star witnesses exonerated Milosevic and said he had been tortured to make him provide evidence against the accused.
What about the war time atrocities?
Most were myths, the rest questionable. The Sarajevo market bomb was not set by Serbs but by Bosnian Muslims, as the UN later confirmed. The skeletonic "concentration camp" victim was a hoax, as the BBC's John Simpson confirmed. The "10,000 deaths in Kosovo" was proved a complete myth. The Srebrenica "massacre of 8,000 Muslims" consists of some 2,000 bodies including Serbs who died in battle over a long period. Teenagers among the dead were commonplace especially among Croat and Bosnian army troops. The "International Community" never describes the massacres of Serb villagers around Srebrenica before the Yugoslav army moved in, nor the evil Muslim Commander Naser Oric who, Roland Keith testifies, carried out those raids and showed journalists video tape of the beheadings he ordered. Oric withdrew his troops from Srebrenica before the Serbs arrived. His army was later caught and badly defeated - which explains the origins of the Bosnian bodies found.
What about ethnic cleansing?
Why should the leader of Yugoslavia break up his own country? Only the Croats (who drove out 400,000 Serbs from the Krajina) and the Bosnians and Kosovo Albanians (who drove out a similar number of Serbs) had a reason to do so - and they did. It was in fact the federal Prime Minister of Yugoslavia who happened to be a Croat who ordered the army into Slovenia and Croatia. And it was another Croat President Tudjman who wrote a constitution which described the Serbs as an "alien minority". He then drove 40,000 Serbs out of Croatia - the first ethnic cleansing in Yugoslavia.
What about political bigotry?
Anyone reading Milosevic's historical speeches would recognise someone who lacked political, racial or religious bigotry - unlike the extreme bigotry of his opponents President Tudjman of Croatia ("genocide is a natural phenomenon commanded by the almighty in defence of Roman Catholicism") and President Izetbegovic ("There can be no peace or co-existence between the Islamic Faith and non Islamic institutions"). So why were Izetbegovic and Tudjman not put on trial in The Hague?
In the light of such hypocrisy it is not surprising that one of the most criminal war Commanders - General Agim Ceku, who at various times fought in the Croat and KLA armies, murdered hundreds (at the Medak Pocket) and ethnically cleansed hundred of thousands of Serbs (from the Krajina) and has been indicted at The Hague, is also on the payroll of the UN in the "Kosovo Protection Force"!!!!!!
For further evidence of the massive fascist attack on Yugoslavia over the years please read the following papers - all but the first one are on this website:
The Illegality of NATO's War against Yugoslavia www.ukconservatism.freeuk.com/archive27.html
Canadian Ambassador and Kosovo Commander explode myths of Yugoslav War
www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2004-10-14.html
John Kerry gets funds from Terrorist KLA
www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2004-10-18.html
The Carcass of Yugoslavia
www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2004-12-08.html
Illegal Yugoslav War a boost to Islamic Extremism
www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2005-08-15.html
Kosovo - German Imperialism to defy UN?
www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2005-09-03.html
The Vatican and Islam
www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2005-10-22.html
German Nazis aided Croat Fascists in 1990s.
www.freenations.freeuk.com/news-2006-03-15.html
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Tuesday, March 28, 2006
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March 27, 2006
New Europe: "Out of Milosevic" by Aleksandar Mitic
March 26- April 1, 2006. Issue Number 670
Page 2 - Opinion
Out of Milosevic
By Aleksandar Mitic
The EU Council of Ministers was right this week in promising strong support to Serbs in coming to terms with the legacy of Slobodan Milosevic, but in order to achieve this, Brussels must first free its current policies from the 1990s double standards and stereotypes about a "rogue Serbia".
Consider the timing of the current "pressure package" on Serbia. The Montenegrin government has been calling for independence for over five years now – but the referendum is scheduled at a time when the volative Kosovo status talks are heating up. Bosnia has filed a lawsuit against Belgrade in front of the International Court of Justice in 1993 – but the proceedings and the verdict will be given during the Kosovo negotiations. The "Dayton Peace Accord" in Bosnia had been in place since 1995, but the pressure on Republika Srpska to accept constitutional changes have stepped up only now, during the Kosovo talks. Former Bosnian Serb military commander Ratko Mladic had been indicted for war crimes since 1995 but Belgrade is being given a strict deadline to locate and to arrest the runaway general or face disruption of EU integration talks – you guessed it, exactly at the beginning of the Kosovo status talks.
One might argue that all this is pure coincidence based on unfinished business, but most will agree that the current approach towards the Kosovo status talks smells too much like bad timing and double standards.
With Pristina, it is a wholly different story -- as if Milosevic was still in power in Belgrade. Criminal activities are tolerated, controversial, "lesser evil" politicians are pushed to power, the lack of results on the ground is masked by rhetorical goodwill of the UN and the Kosovo leadership, while threats of violence by "frustrated Albanians" are tolerated and even used as arguments to speed up the status process. The pressure is put on the Kosovo Serbs instead.
Still living in enclaves and ghettos seven years after the war, the Kosovo Serbs have rejected further participation in the Kosovo institutions in protest over the persistent discrimination and attempts to use them as a "multiethnic decor". In the two years in parliament, not a single amendment they had proposed has been adopted. It seems highly unlikely that they will return to parliament now, just for the sake of "fulfilling the standards of multiethnic institutions". They do not see their place in the Kosovo assembly which ignores their legitimate interests, proclaims "independence as the only solution", puts portraits of war crimes indictee Ramush Haradinaj on its walls and elects Agim Ceku, a general suspected of war crimes, for Prime minister.
Kosovo Albanians, on the other hand, are praised for their "political maturity" even as all reports suggest international standards are far from being achieved. At the time of his death in January, Kosovo president Ibrahim Rugova was dubbed "the Gandhi of the Balkans", although he never genuinely condemned anti-Serb violence or ever stood for any other than his own fellow Albanians. Rugova's "pacifist" policy is praised as a model for Kosovo, but then a month later, it is the warlord and war crimes suspect Ceku who is elected Prime Minister.
And what about war crimes hypocrisy? Although Serbia extradited all of its Kosovo war crimes indictees to the The Hague tribunal, had the courage to open its mass graves and to organize local war crimes trials, the Albanians are still getting preferential treatment: nobody is pressuring them to face their own crimes, indictee Fatmir Limaj is freed of all charges, former Prime minister Ramush Haradinaj is set free until trial and allowed to participate in political life, and Agim Ceku, accused by Serbia of massive crimes against humanity in Croatia and Kosovo, is elected as Prime minister of Kosovo with the backing of the international community.
Moreover, statements urging the Serbs "to accept reality" abound. Some senior Western officials, including a foreign minister of a EU country, are suggesting that independence of Kosovo is inevitable, although the negotiations on the status itself have not even begun and despite the dangerous repercussions of such a precedent.
This is not the way to help Serbia's pro-European government and the democratic forces of a a country which Brussels sees as the future backbone of economic growth and political stability in the region.
Neither helpful are the extremely meager carrots offered to Serbia: selective softening of the Schengen visa regime, limited aid funds, a regional free trade agreement – way too little for the "crucial year in the Balkans".
And then came "absorption capacity"…
Aleksandar Mitic is the Brussels correspondent of the Tanjug news agency, a lecturer at the University of Belgrade and an analyst of the Institute 4S.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 27, 2006
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March 26, 2006
Indicted war criminal Agim Ceku still collects a UN paycheque
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 26, 2006
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"History will prove Milosevic right"
Latest news
http://news.google.be/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=milosevic
Canadian who have 'altered the course of history'
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20060323/wendy_crewson_feature_060323/20060324/
"They were afraid of pulling Russia into a larger war if they upset Milosevic, so NATO didn't want to step in to police this"
http://www.edmontonsun.com/Entertainment/Weekend/2006/03/24/1503348-sun.html
English translation of family letter read out at President Milosevic's funeral
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/ml031806.htm
"History will prove Milosevic right"
http://www.worldpress.org/Europe/2294.cfm
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 26, 2006
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Slobodan Milosevic coverage: When can we expect some truth from the CBC?
Saskatoon
24.3.2006
To: CBC Radio Sunday Edition
Dear Michael Enright and staff,
Your last Sunday's programme on Slobodan Milosevic’s death revealed a biased and propagandist approach to the whole tragedy of the systematic dismantling of Yugoslavia, You blame one man and one man alone, and label him “The Butcher of Balkansâ€, "a tyrantâ€, “a mass murdererâ€, and throw in the suggestion that he “murdered millions,†all this in the brief introduction to the interview of your equally biased interviewee, Mr. William Schabas. You make no attempt to offer proof; yours is a guilt-by-accusation approach.
Six years after the bombing of illegal, immoral and unjust US instigated and NATO conducted war on Yugoslavia you should have had plenty of time for second thoughts, particularly as the evidence is out there, easy to locate, that both Mr. Milosevic and the Serbs have been and continue to be falsely accused.
Back in ’99 I wrote a piece, "The Media and the demonization of Serbs," which I urge you to read with fresh and open eyes. (See below.)
Michael Parenti’s article of 2003, "The demonization of Slobodan Milosevic," adds more to the contarary evidence of Milosevic's and Serbs' "guilt" that you and your programme so completely ignore. (See below.)
To bring the point home about the absurdity of the claims against Milosevic, I am sending Swiftian piece by Jan Oberg from Sweden, " The real story: How Milosevic was more evil than you ever knew," which I hope will tickle your funny bone, and waken your (dormant) sense of honesty and truth in broadcasting. (See below.)
I will end with the hope, which is fast fading, that the CBC in general and your programme in particular, would pull away from the NATO/US dominant perspective on all matters regarding international affairs, ands start speaking truth to power, at last. Canadians have the right to expect more from our public broadcasting!
After William Schabas’ morally and intellectually lazy justification of the victor’s courts such as the one that has provided “judicial lynching†(in Edward L. Greenspan’s words) to Slobodan Milosevic, I would hope that you would soon do an in-depth interview with Professor Michael Mandel from York University’s Osgoode Hall, whose book, How America Gets Away with Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity, tells all, from the perspective of international law. (You can find a review of it by Edward Herman at http://zmagsite.zmag.org/JulAug2004/herman0804.html )
Sincerely
Marjaleena Repo
201 Elm Street
Saskatoon, SK
S7J 0G8
mrepo@sasktel.net
THE MEDIA AND THE DEMONIZATION OF THE SERBS
by Marjaleena Repo
Tuesday, March 30, 1999
The Yugoslavian government has just expelled some journalists from NATO countries from its territory. This is deplored by the media as “censorship,†but in some of us it has created a strange sense of relief: perhaps now there will be a ceasefire in the 10-year disinformation campaign about the Yugoslavian conflict in general and the Serbs in particular. Or at least the “journalists†(few actually deserve the name) have to declare that what they are talking about is unverified rumour and hearsay since they are nowhere near the scene. Up to this point they have been able to create the false impression that they have witnessed the events they report on.
The Western media's relentless demonization of the Serbs of Yugoslavia has, however, produced a very predictable (and no doubt, wished-for) result: a truly genocidal assault on the Serbian people by Western military might, Canada to its eternal shame participating, breaking every relevant international covenant and treaty.
The pack-journalism over the last ten years has also succeeded in hoodwinking many Canadians into thinking that what is at stake is the good-riddance of a Serbian Hitler who has attempted a "final solution" of sorts on assorted ethnic groups in Yugoslavia. A lot of well-intentioned people are cheering the bombing of yet another pariah nation into the Stone Age. With the accumulated effects of media rumour-mongering and willful disinformation, who can blame these folks for their barely controlled blood thirst? After all, because Hitler wasn't stopped in time, millions perished in concentration camps, goes the heart-felt argument.
Yet the labelling of Yugoslavia's Serb leaders as Hitlers — and the Serbs themselves as brutal, subhuman monsters — is a familiar trick from recent history. It has been perpetuated by the various hired hands, PR firms, who have worked overtime for the various ethnic groups pushing for secession which would utterly destroy the once well-functioning, multi-ethnic Yugoslavian federation and replace it with small nation-states which ethnically cleansed themselves (Croatia, for instance, expelled between 500,000 and a million Serbs from its territory.) The media has merely carried the message of these "hidden hands" of the Balkan conflict. The world was shocked to find out that a PR firm, Hill and Knowlton, had manufactured the "incubator babies" incident in Kuwait which precipitated the Gulf War: Iraqi soldiers ripping Kuwaiti babies out of incubators in a genocidal fashion. Phony eywitnesses to this atrocity tearfully testified in front of U.S. politicians and the media, adding to public support for the subsequent bombing of Iraq and contributing hugely to the demonization of the Iraqis, leaders and citizens alike. Even Amnesty International was taken in by the falsehood, which was later exposed as such, but only after the military damage was done.
Yet the shock of being duped soon wore off and gullibility returned. In no time another American PR firm, Ruder Finn, working for the Croatian and Bosnian separatists, publicly bragged that it had been able to turn world opinion against the Serbs. In April 1993 on French television, James Harff, the director of Ruder Finn, described his proudest public relations effort as having "managed to put Jewish opinion on our [Croatian and Bosnian] side." This was a "sensitive matter," he added, as "the Croatian and Bosnian past was marked by real and cruel anti-semitism. Tens of thousands of Jews perished in Croatian camps... Our challenge was to reverse this attitude and we succeeded masterfully. At the beginning of July 1992, New York Newsday came out with the article on Serb camps. We jumped at the opportunity immediately. We outwitted three big Jewish organizations.... That was a tremendous coup. When the Jewish organizations entered the game on the side of the [Muslim] Bosnians we could promptly equate the Serbs with the Nazis in the public mind. Nobody understood what was happening in Yugoslavia.... By a single move, we were able to present a simple story of good guys and bad guys which would hereafter play itself. We won by targeting the Jewish audience. Almost immediately there was a clear change of language in the press, with the use of words with high emotional content such as ethnic cleansing, concentration camps, etc, which evoke images of Nazi Germany and the gas chambers of Auschwitz. "
The PR firm was piling hoax upon hoax. The famous story of Serb concentration camps was built on a photo of a gaunt man surrounded by others, staring at the viewer from behind barbed wire; surely an image to chill one to the bones. It took years before a German journalist Thomas Deichman, in an article titled "The picture that fooled the world," described how the famous photo was staged by its takers, British journalists, who were photographing the inhabitants from inside barbed wire which was protecting agricultural products and machinery from theft in a refugee and transit camp; the men stood outside of it; and at no time was there a barbed-wire fence surrounding the camp. But by that time the image had done its deed, terminally slamming the Serbs as genocidal mass murderers.
There are countless other stories, all deliberately maligning the Serbs to further the ends of military intervention. These stories and photos of "genocide" and "ethnic cleansing" (a la Hitler) in a civil war, in which Serbs are guilty as sin and others are their innocent victims, are repeated ad nauseam by western reporters without the slightest evidence, and have provided the ground for the public's (hopefully only temporary) acceptance of the illegal and brutal war against the sovereign nation of Yugoslavia. They continue after NATO's bombing began, unabated, with new absurdities such as the suggestion that the Serbs are really bombing themselves! Perhaps in the war crimes court there will soon be a place for journalists and PR firms who with their inflammatory reporting and fraudulent actions cause wars to begin. THE END
http://www.counterpunch.org/disinfo.html
The Demonization of Slobodan Milosevic by Michael Parenti
December 2003
U.S. leaders profess a dedication to democracy. Yet over the past five decades, democratically elected governments---guilty of introducing redistributive economic programs or otherwise pursuing independent courses that do not properly fit into the U.S.-sponsored global free market system---have found themselves targeted by the U.S. national security state. Thus democratic governments in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cyprus, the Dominican Republic, Greece, Guatemala, Guyana, Haiti, Syria, Uruguay, and numerous other nations were overthrown by their respective military forces, funded and advised by the United States. The newly installed military rulers then rolled back the egalitarian reforms and opened their countries all the wider to foreign corporate investors.
The U.S. national security state also has participated in destabilizing covert actions, proxy mercenary wars, or direct military attacks against revolutionary or nationalist governments in Afghanistan (in the 1980s), Angola, Cambodia, Cuba, East Timor, Egypt, Ethiopia, the Fiji Islands, Grenada, Haiti, Indonesia (under Sukarno), Iran, Jamaica, Lebanon, Libya, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Portugal, Syria, South Yemen, Venezuela (under Hugo Chavez), Western Sahara, and Iraq (under the CIA-sponsored autocratic Saddam Hussein, after he emerged as an economic nationalist and tried to cut a better deal on oil prices).
The propaganda method used to discredit many of these governments is not particularly original, indeed by now it is quite transparently predictable. Their leaders are denounced as bombastic, hostile, and psychologically flawed. They are labeled power hungry demagogues, mercurial strongmen, and the worst sort of dictators likened to Hitler himself. The countries in question are designated as "terrorist" or "rogue" states, guilty of being "anti-American" and "anti-West." Some choice few are even condemned as members of an "evil axis." When targeting a country and demonizing its leadership, U.S. leaders are assisted by ideologically attuned publicists, pundits, academics, and former government officials. Together they create a climate of opinion that enables Washington to do whatever is necessary to inflict serious damage upon the designated nation's infrastructure and population, all in the name of human rights, anti-terrorism, and national security.
There is no better example of this than the tireless demonization of democratically-elected President Slobodan Milosevic and the U.S.-supported wars against Yugoslavia. Louis Sell, a former U.S. Foreign Service officer, has authored a book (Slobodan Milosevic and the Destruction of Yugoslavia, Duke University Press, 2002) that is a hit piece on Milosevic, loaded with all the usual prefabricated images and policy presumptions of the U.S. national security state. Sell's Milosevic is a caricature, a cunning power seeker and maddened fool, who turns on trusted comrades and plays upon divisions within the party.
This Milosevic is both an "orthodox socialist" and an "opportunistic Serbian nationalist," a demagogic power-hungry "second Tito" who simultaneously wants dictatorial power over all of Yugoslavia while eagerly pursuing polices that "destroy the state that Tito created." The author does not demonstrate by reference to specific policies and programs that Milosevic is responsible for the dismemberment of Yugoslavia, he just tells us so again and again. One would think that the Slovenian, Croatian, Bosnian Muslim, Macedonian, and Kosovo Albanian secessionists and U.S./NATO interventionists might have had something to do with it.
In my opinion, Milosevic's real sin was that he resisted the dismemberment of Yugoslavia and opposed a U.S. imposed hegemony. He also attempted to spare Yugoslavia the worst of the merciless privatizations and rollbacks that have afflicted other former communist countries. Yugoslavia was the only nation in Europe that did not apply for entry into the European Union or NATO or OSCE.
For some left intellectuals, the former Yugoslavia did not qualify as a socialist state because it had allowed too much penetration by private corporations and the IMF. But U.S. policymakers are notorious for not seeing the world the way purist left intellectuals do. For them Yugoslavia was socialist enough with its developed human services sector and an economy that was over 75 percent publicly owned. Sell makes it clear that Yugoslavia's public ownership and Milosevic's defense of that economy were a central consideration in Washington's war against Yugoslavia. Milosevic, Sell complains, had a "commitment to orthodox socialism." He "portrayed public ownership of the means of production and a continued emphasis on [state] commodity production as the best guarantees for prosperity." He had to go.
To make his case against Milosevic, Sell repeatedly falls back on the usual ad hominem labeling. Thus we read that in his childhood Milosevic was "something of a prig" and of course "by nature a loner," a weird kind of kid because he was "uninterested in sports or other physical activities," and he "spurned childhood pranks in favor of his books." The author quotes an anonymous former classmate who reports that Slobodan's mother "dressed him funny and kept him soft." Worse still, Slobodan would never join in when other boys stole from orchards---no doubt a sure sign of childhood pathology.
Sell further describes Milosevic as "moody," "reclusive," and given to "mulish fatalism." But Sell's own data---when he pauses in his negative labeling and gets down to specifics---contradicts the maladjusted "moody loner" stereotype. He acknowledges that young Slobodan worked well with other youth when it came to political activities. Far from being unable to form close relations, Slobodan met a girl, his future wife, and they enjoyed an enduring lifelong attachment. In his early career when heading the Beogradska Banka, Milosevic was reportedly "communicative, caring about people at the bank, and popular with his staff." Other friends describe him as getting on well with people, "communal and relaxed," a faithful husband to his wife, and a proud and devoted father to his children. And Sell allows that Milosevic was at times "confident," "outgoing," and "charismatic." But the negative stereotype is so firmly established by repetitious pronouncement (and by years of propagation by Western media and officialdom) that Sell can simply slide over contradictory evidence---even when such evidence is provided by himself.
Sell refers to anonymous "U.S. psychiatrists, who have studied Milosevic closely." By "closely" he must mean from afar, since no U.S. psychiatrist has ever treated or even interviewed Milosevic. These uncited and unnamed psychiatrists supposedly diagnosed the Yugoslav leader as a "malignant narcissistic" personality. Sell tells us that such malignant narcissism fills Milosevic with self-deception and leaves him with a "chore personality" that is a "sham." "People with Milosevic's type of personality frequently either cannot or will not recognize the reality of facts that diverge from their own perception of the way the world is or should be." How does Dr. Sigmund Sell know all this? He seems to find proof in the fact that Milosevic dared to have charted a course that differed from the one emanating from Washington. Surely only personal pathology can explain such "anti-West" obstinacy. Furthermore, we are told that Milosevic suffered from a "blind spot" in that he was never comfortable with the notion of private property. If this isn't evidence of malignant narcissism, what is? Sell never considers the possibility that he himself, and the global interventionists who think like him, cannot or will not "recognize the reality of facts that diverge from their own perception of the way the world is or should be."
Milosevic, we are repeatedly told, fell under the growing influence of his wife, Mirjana Markovic, "the real power behind the throne." Sell actually calls her "Lady Macbeth" on one occasion. He portrays Markovic as a complete wacko, given to uncontrollable anger; her eyes "vibrated like a scared animal"; "she suffers from severe schizophrenia" with "a tenuous grasp on reality," and is a hopeless "hypochondriac." In addition, she has a "mousy" appearance and a "dreamy" and "traumatized" personality. And like her husband, with whom she shares a "very abnormal relationship," she has "an autistic relation with the world." Worse still, she holds "hardline marxist views." We are left to wonder how the autistic dysfunctional Markovic was able to work as a popular university professor, organize and lead a new political party, and play an active role in the popular resistance against Western interventionism.
In this book, whenever Milosevic or others in his camp are quoted as saying something, they "snarl," "gush," "hiss," and "crow." In contrast, political players who win Sell's approval, "observe," "state," "note," and "conclude." When one of Milosevic's superiors voices his discomfort about "noisy Kosovo Serbs" (as Sell calls them) who were demonstrating against the mistreatment they suffered at the hands of Kosovo Albanian secessionists, Milosevic "hisses," "Why are you so afraid of the street and the people?" Some of us might think this is a pretty good question to hiss at a government leader, but Sell treats it as proof of Milosevic's demagoguery.
Whenever Milosevic did anything that aided the common citizenry, as when he taxed the interest earned on foreign currency accounts---a policy that was unpopular with Serbian elites but appreciated by the poorer strata---he is dismissed as manipulatively currying popular favor. Thus we must accept Sell's word that Milosevic never wanted the power to prevent hunger but only hungered for power. The author operates from a nonfalsefiable paradigm. If the targeted leader is unresponsive to the people, this is proof of his dictatorial proclivity. If he is responsive to them, this demonstrates his demagogic opportunism.
In keeping with U.S. officialdom's view of the world, Sell labels "Milosevic and his minions" as "hardliners," "conservatives," and "ideologues"; they are "anti-West," and bound up in "socialist dogma." In contrast, Croatian, Bosnian, and Kosovo Albanian secessionists who worked hard to dismember Yugoslavia and deliver their respective republics to the tender mercies of neoliberal rollback are identified as "economic reformers," "the liberal leadership," and "pro-West" (read, pro-transnational corporate capitalist). Sell treats "Western-style democracy" and "a modern market economy" as necessary correlates. He has nothing to say about the dismal plight of the Eastern European countries that abandoned their deficient but endurable planned economies for the merciless exactions of laissez-faire capitalism.
Sell's sensitivity to demagoguery does not extend to Franjo Tudjman, the crypto-fascist anti-Semite Croat who had nice things to say about Hitler, and who imposed his harsh autocratic rule on the newly independent Croatia. Tudjman dismissed the Holocaust as an exaggeration, and openly hailed the Croatian Ustashe Nazi collaborators of World War II. He even employed a few aging Ustashe leaders in his government. Sell says not a word about all this, and treats Tudjman as just a good old Croatian nationalist. Likewise, he has not a critical word about the Bosnian Muslim leader Alija Izetbegovic. He comments laconically that Izetbegovic "was sentenced to three years imprisonment in 1946 for belonging to a group called the Young Muslims." One is left with the impression that the Yugoslav communist government had suppressed a devout Muslim. What Sell leaves unmentioned is that the Young Muslims actively recruited Muslim units for the Nazi SS during World War II; these units perpetrated horrid atrocities against the resistance movement and the Jewish population in Yugoslavia. Izetbegovic got off rather lightly with a three-year sentence.
Little is made in this book of the ethnic cleansing perpetrated against the Serbs by U.S.-supported leaders like Tudjman and Izetbegovic during and after the U.S.-sponsored wars. Conversely, no mention is made of the ethnic tolerance and diversity that existed in President Milosevic's Yugoslavia. By 1999, all that was left of Yugoslavia was Montenegro and Serbia. Readers are never told that this rump nation was the only remaining multi-ethnic society among the various former Yugoslav republics, the only place where Serbs, Albanians, Croats, Gorani, Jews, Egyptians, Hungarians, Roma, and numerous other ethnic groups could live together with some measure of security and tolerance.
The relentless demonization of Milosevic spills over onto the Serbian people in general. In Sell's book, the Serbs are aggrandizing nationalists. Kosovo Serbs demonstrating against mistreatment by Albanian nationalists are described as having their "bloodlust up." And Serb workers demonstrating to defend their rights and hard won gains are dismissed by Sell as "the lowest instruments of the mob." The Serbs who had lived in Krajina and other parts of Croatia for centuries are dismissed as colonial occupiers. In contrast, the Slovenian, Croatian, and Bosnian Muslim nationalist secessionists, and Kosovo Albanian irredentists are simply seeking "independence," "self-determination," and "cultural distinctiveness and sovereignty." In this book, the Albanian KLA gunmen are not big-time drug dealers, terrorists, and ethnic cleansers, but guerrilla fighters and patriots.
Military actions allegedly taken by the Serbs, described in the vaguest terms, are repeatedly labeled "brutal," while assaults and atrocities delivered upon the Serbs by other national groups are more usually accepted as retaliatory and defensive, or are dismissed by Sell as "untrue," "highly exaggerated," and "hyperventilated." Milosevic, Sell says, disseminated "vicious propaganda" against the Croats, but he does not give us any specifics. Sell does provide one or two instances of how Serb villages were pillaged and their inhabitants raped and murdered by Albanian secessionists. From this he grudgingly allows that "some of the Serb charges . . . had a core of truth." But he makes nothing more of it.
The well-timed, well-engineered story about a Serbian massacre of unarmed Albanians in the village of Racak, hyped by U.S. diplomat and veteran disinformationist William Walker, is wholeheartedly embraced by Sell, who ignores all the contrary evidence. An Associated Press TV crew had actually filmed the battle that took place in Racak the previous day in which Serbian police killed a number of KLA fighters. A French journalist who went through Racak later that day found evidence of a battle but no evidence of a massacre of unarmed civilians, nor did Walker's own Kosovo Verification Mission monitors. All the forensic reports reveal that almost all of the forty-four persons killed had previously been using fire arms, and all had perished in combat. Sell simply ignores this evidence.
The media-hyped story of how the Serbs allegedly killed 7,000 Muslims in Srebrenica is uncritically accepted by Sell, even though the most thorough investigations have uncovered not more than 2,000 bodies of undetermined nationality. The earlier massacres carried out by Muslims, their razing of some fifty Serbian villages around Srebrenica, as reported by two British correspondents and others, are ignored. The complete failure of Western forensic teams to locate the 250,000 or 100,000 or 50,000 or 10,000 bodies (the numbers kept changing) of Albanians supposedly murdered by the Serbs in Kosovo also goes unnoticed.
Sell's rendition of what happened at Rambouillet leaves much to be desired. Under Rambouillet, Kosovo would have been turned into a NATO colony. Milosevic might have reluctantly agreed to that, so desperate was he to avoid a full-scale NATO onslaught on the rest of Yugoslavia. To be certain that war could not be avoided, however, the U.S. delegation added a remarkable stipulation, demanding that NATO forces and personnel were to have unrestrained access to all of Yugoslavia, unfettered use of its airports, rails, ports, telecommunication services, and airwaves, all free of cost and immune from any jurisdiction by Yugoslav authorities. NATO would also have the option to modify for its own use all of Yugoslavia's infrastructure including roads, bridges, tunnels, buildings, and utility systems. In effect, not just Kosovo but all of Yugoslavia was to be subjected to an extraterritoriality tantamount to outright colonial occupation.
Sell does not mention these particulars. Instead he assures us that the request for NATO's unimpeded access to Yugoslavia was just a pro forma protocol inserted "largely for legal reasons." A similar though less sweeping agreement was part of the Dayton package, he says. Indeed, and the Dayton agreement reduced Bosnia to a Western colony. But if there was nothing wrong with the Rambouillet ultimatum, why then did Milosevic reject it? Sell ascribes Milosevic's resistance to his perverse "bunker mentality" and his need to defy the world.
There is not a descriptive word in this book of the 78 days of around-the-clock massive NATO bombing of Yugoslavia, no mention of how it caused the loss of thousands of lives, injured and maimed thousands more, contaminated much of the land and water with depleted uranium, and destroyed much of the country's public sector industries and infrastructure-while leaving all the private Western corporate structures perfectly intact.
The sources that Sell relies on share U.S. officialdom's view of the Balkans struggle. Observers who offer a more independently critical perspective, such as Sean Gervasi, Diana Johnstone, Gregory Elich, Nicholas Stavrous, Michel Collon, Raju Thomas, and Michel Chossudovsky are left untouched and uncited. Important Western sources I reference in my book on Yugoslavia offer evidence, testimony, and documentation that do not fit Sell's conclusions, including sources from within the European Union, the European Community's Commission on Women's Rights, the OSCE and its Kosovo Verification Mission, the UN War Crimes Commission, and various other UN commissions, various State Department reports, the German Foreign Office and German Defense Ministry reports, and the International Red Cross. Sell does not touch these sources.
Also ignored by him are the testimonies and statements of members of the U.S. Congress who visited the Balkans, a former State Department official under the Bush administration, a former deputy commander of the U.S. European command, several UN and NATO generals and international negotiators, Spanish air force pilots, forensic teams from various countries, and UN monitors who offer revelations that contradict the picture drawn by Sell and other apologists of U.S. officialdom.
In sum, Sell's book is packed with discombobulated insider details, unsupported charges, unexamined presumptions, and ideologically loaded labeling. As mainstream disinformation goes, it is a job well done.
MICHAEL PARENTI received his Ph.D. in political science from Yale University. He is an award winning author and activist who has published some 250 articles and 19 books, including Superpatriotism (2004), and The Assassination of Julius Caesar (2003) which won the “Book of the Year Award†(nonfiction) from Online Review of Books. His most recent book is The Culture Struggle (2006). Various works of his have been translated into some twenty languages. For further information, visit his website: www.michaelparenti.org
The real story:
HOW MILOSEVIC WAS MORE EVIL THAN YOU EVER KNEW
By Jan Oberg, TFF director
"The media call him a butcher and compare him with Stalin, Mao and Hitler. That's right, but too diplomatic. They don't give us the the broader picture. At his death I choose to tell you how I believe Slobodan Milosevic single-handed caused all the troubles. And I met him and many of his opponents.
Here, for the first time, the Milosevic' Master Plan is revealed and analysed in depth. When you hear that he caused four wars and ruined millions of lives, THIS tells you how he actually did it.
Here is the conclusive evidence that every massacre, all ethnic cleansing, every village that was torched and any woman who was raped all happened because of his personal cruel Master Plan and on his order. I can no longer keep silent. My findings substantiate the general media image of the YU drama.
History, economy, the activities of other actors in former YU don¹t mean a thing. He is guilty of it all and we should not be afraid of saying it aloud just because he has died. Indeed, I've found reasons to believe that he can be tied to the genocides in Rwanda and Burundi too.
It doesn't matter what the Hague trial might have concluded. U.S. ambassador Richard Holbrooke is right that world public opinion have already found the dictator guilty. That's what counts.
This path-breaking document concludes that we would all have lived in Greater Serbia had the U.S., the EU, NATO and the leaders of Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosova not stood up as one for their deeply held beliefs in justice, peace, human rights and democracy. Indeed, they saved Europe from this new dictator who might even have dwarfed Hitler," says the author.
The analysis is in 3 parts, begin here:
http://www.transnational.org/forum/meet/2006/Oberg_Slobo_1.html
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 26, 2006
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March 25, 2006
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC: Death and the rain
GRANMA INTERNATIONAL/Cuba
Havana. March 24, 2006
SLOBODAN MILOSEVIC
Death and the rain
BY ELSA CLARO—Granma International staff writer—
THERE are inopportune suspicions as to the real cause of the death of Milosevic (the fourth of Serbs imprisoned in The Hague) which, even if it was the most natural of all, leaves behind it a trail of reservations as to the legitimacy of the court that has held him for more than four years and that subjected him to a trial whose probity is questionable. Even with motives for having put him on trial for faults committed, that should have happened within his country, where legislation prevents the extradition of prisoners, and of having decided to make an exception: the placing in cells adjoining his of those who forced events into a one-way street or made themselves the decisive participants in a matter that was beyond their competence, thus rarefying results that, at the end of the day, have not turned out for the best.
There was no cleanness in the way in which the former head of state was taken to the Dutch capital. First he was pulled out of his residence and incarcerated in Belgrade. That was an initial step to facilitate his kidnapping via a nocturnal operation organized by the CIA (possibly with the help of other European secret services) and with the complicity of the then Prime Minister Zoran Djinic, who ended up being a priori assassinated by the mafia that he likewise betrayed, according to conjectures.
Djinic’s motive was to get rid of Milosevic – who continued having followers – and at the same time to obtain Western financial aid, supposedly to pull Yugoslavia out of the economic strangulation to which it was subjected by the United States and the European Union with lengthy trade sanctions. For those pieces of silver he sold the former statesman, going over the head of Vojislav Kostunitca, president of the country at that time (June 2001), in an act so contemptible and self-seeking that he broke the existing government coalition and created anarchy out of what was an already highly delicate situation for Yugoslavia at the end of 10 years of dismemberment as a country and almost three months of intensive NATO (read the United States) bombardments.
ARIADNE’S THREAD
In 1991 Slovenia affirmed its decision to become independent of Yugoslavia. The German government headed by Helmut Kohl hastened to recognize it in early January 1992, thus forcing the EU to act likewise. The United States, with Bush Sr. experiencing the hangover of the first Gulf War, did not appear to have approved that secession among his plans, perhaps because of certain fears of the conflictive and immature process of the Socialist bloc’s re-conversion or because one of his advisers had warned him that it was not a healthy idea to establish new borders in Europe.
Croatia followed the Slovenian impulse and, almost at the end of the same year, the Croats and Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina did likewise. To that point, a certain coexistence had been attained in Bosnia with power sharing among the three human groups that inhabited it, to an extent similar to that established by Marshall Tito when he legislated that the presidency of Yugoslavia should rotate as a way of avoiding setbacks, jealousy or envy of any of the leaders of this human mosaic.
Nevertheless, the first confrontations occurred on February 4, 1992. Almost immediately, Brussels and Washington accepted the sovereignty of Bosnia-Herzegovina, while withholding support for the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, recreated that same month (April 1992) and made up of Serbia and Montenegro, as the legal inheritors of the former.
In the face of an imminent triumph which could have resulted in the area asking to be annexed to the semi-proscribed Yugoslavia, the West entered the scenario, affording itself the right of military intervention in an alien civil conflict. It did outside of the UN and in violation of its precepts of international law.
The NATO bombardments were directed at Serb positions in order to twist the existing reality, without having any mandate or credible excuses, but by spreading macabre stories that are still repeated to justify the unacceptable.
In spite of the power of the Western allies there was no alternative but to accede to negotiations to halt what they were contributing to make worse and which could easily have reached a civilized outcome. However, to tell the truth, that was difficult, because Washington also utilized people of the likes of Osama Bin Laden in this episode to attract to the conflict extremist Muslims (including Talibans), who participated in this allegedly ethnic war but what was one of a political-economic nature before anything else.
The reasons? In the first place they were frightened of the existence in the very heart of Europe of a state that called itself socialist, although the unique experience of the Yugoslavs was distinct from that of Eastern Europe or the Soviet Union, and Slobodan Milosevic had already been forces to accept conditions imposed in the context of financial strangulation.
The Dayton Accords fabricated a government that is unable to function or to have resolved anything to date, given that troops are still in place in Bosnia and the scenario is one of total anomaly.
Something does seem to have occurred and is still occurring in the Serb province of Kosovo, where certain chapters of the same story have been barefacedly repeated.
The culminating point occurred in 1999 when, after giving support to the separatist Albanian Kosovars, the Clinton government ordered bombardments that continued for three months under the pretext that Belgrade was undertaking "ethnic cleansing." Strangely, enough since then and to date they have neither defended or helped the Serb Kosovars from whom they stole houses and possessions or whom they have killed and humiliated, even though the troops stationed in the area are supposedly neutral.
Those three months of 1999 and their collateral damage inflicted on individuals and civilian targets, with U.S. and NATO cluster bombs – what’s the difference – will not go down in history through the gate of decorum.
PROVISONAL EPILOGUE
The special court financed and manipulated by the United States and various of its multinationals in which Milosevic was tried is usually confused with the International Court of Justice in The Hague created by the UN in 1947 and which judges states, not individuals. There are also people who confuse it with the International Criminal Court created in Rome in July 1998. The latter is the one that George W. Bush threatened with an armed assault if it extradited even one of its soldiers, however much of a torturer or genocidal killer he might be.
The fact that it is one of the many White House falsifications admitted by its partners is borne out by what Jaime Shea stated as spokesman for the military alliance commanded by Washington:
"The International Criminal Tribunal (ICT) will only investigate (NATO crimes) if we permit it." He was alluding to charges in Yugoslavia against that military pact but above all indicates the feeling of impunity with which it acts.
Neither the first or only arbitrariness was committed with Milosevic, other equally terrible legal procedures have been experienced, but if justice is as impartial as it is enshrined to be, governments on both sides of the Atlantic that helped to destroy a country and to increase the volume of victims via illegal interventions, them should all stand trial and in authentic courts, not one fabricated by "conquerors;" in other words, the new empire.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 25, 2006
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CDSM: Letter of Complaint to the BBC
-----Original Message-----
From: Ian Johnson [mailto:i-johnson@lineone.net]
Sent: 23 March 2006 22:43
To: Undisclosed-Recipient:;
Subject: CDSM: Letter of Complaint to the BBC
Dear Friends,
Please find below a copy of the Letter of Complaint that has been filed
against the BBC in regard to their coverage of the death of Slobodan
Milosevic. IJ.
BBC Complaints Department,
Glasgow,
BBC Information,
P.O. Box 1922,
Glasgow G2 3WT
22nd March 2006
Dear Sir/Madam,
We, the undersigned, would like to make a formal complaint about the very
one-sided BBC coverage of the death of former Yugoslav President Slobodan
Milosevic.
From the moment his death was announced on Saturday 11th March, the BBC
seemed determined to paint a biased and factually incorrect portrayal of
Milosevic. A succession of virulently anti-Milosevic 'experts' and
politicians were wheeled out- (Lord Ashdown seemed to be permanently camped
in the BBC studios) all parroting the same 'Butcher of Belgrade' line.
Ashdown claimed that Milosevic's death provided us with 'closure'. But how
impartial a commentator was Ashdown? Only last autumn, when appearing as a
witness at the Hague Tribunal, Ashdown was exposed by Milosevic to be a
liar
(his testimony can be found at the url :
hague.bard.edu/past_video?09-2005.html). Milosevic also played a video tape
in court which showed Ashdown inspecting a Kosovan Liberation Army weapons
cache in 1998 and in which he could be heard saying he would 'do his best'
to procure the drug-running terrorist group assistance. Why did those
asking
for Ashdown's opinion on Milosevic not mention these revelations when
interviewing him?
We did not see or hear a single commentator on the BBC who put forward a
different viewpoint on Milosevic. Two of our number, the journalist Neil
Clark and Dr John Laughland of the British Helsinki Human Rights Group have
been asked to appear on the BBC before to talk about Milosevic and the
Hague
Tribunal, but this time they received no invitation. There were plenty of
other speakers the BBC could have asked too to get a better balance in its
coverage.
For example, Professor Mark Almond, a Balkans expert from Oriel College,
Oxford; Ian Johnson of the British branch of the International Committee
for the Defence of Slobodan Milosevic, Misha Gavrilovic of the British Serb
Alliance; former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, who has conceded that
the Western powers deliberately engineered the break-up of Yugoslavia and
George Kenney, former official of the US State Department, who was due to
testify in Milosevic's defence at The Hague. Why did the BBC not invite any
of these people to give their verdict on Milosevic?
In the week following President Milosevic's death a number of lies were
repeated on the BBC.
The first was the statement, which appeared in News bulletins and on the BBC
News website that 'few will mourn Milosevic'. This was clearly nonsense-and
may we say racist- the world is not just people in the corridors of power
in
the US and Europe- but a much larger place. In many countries, like China,
where one-fifth of the world's people live, Milosevic was regarded as a
hero
of the anti-imperialist struggle, ditto in India, Africa, South America and
the Middle East. Why was this global opinion not reflected in your
coverage?
If the BBC had taken the trouble to read the comments posted on its news
blog- it would have seen that there are plenty of people throughout the
world who do not hold the standard Western governments line on Milosevic.
We
enclose two tributes to Milosevic from your news blog, from a Kosovan
Albanian and a Sri Lankan.
(1) "I say - Rest in peace my friend, Milosovich, be happy. You surpassed
this cruel, corrupt, hypocritic world". Sridhara Senarath, Colombo & Sri
Lanka.
(2) "With all due respects to people in various parts of the world, the
strong condemnation of this man is solely based on what the media has
dished
out to them, how a hostile media can turn people with no connection to be
so
damning about the only man of that region who tried to hold it together. As
a Kosovo Albanian when he was in power we were in peace, now after Nato we
are left with a similar fate of Iraq. Rest in peace mr President." rexep
rexepi, Hobart.
Then there was the claim that President Milosevic was a 'dictator'.
This term was used by Kim Barnes in her video report of Milosevic's funeral
on the BBC News website on 18th March. Milosevic won three democratic
elections in a country where over twenty-one political parties freely
operated. Even Adam Lebor, in his hostile 2002 biography of Milosevic
concedes that the use of the word 'dictator' is factually incorrect. So why
on earth did the BBC's correspondent use it?
Barnes also claimed in her report that 50,000 people attended Milosevic's
funeral ceremony in Belgrade. The ceremony's organisers claimed 500,000 were
present (a figure supported by Focus News Agency), whereas the Serbian
authorities themselves put the figure at 100,000. Gavin Hewitt in the BBC1
News that evening talked of 80,000. From which source did Kim Barnes obtain
her figure of 50,000?
Neil Clark mentioned BBC's one-sided coverage of Milosevic's death in an
interview he gave for Sky News on 12th March. He also made a telephone
complaint on the same day to the BBC line 'Newswatch'.
His complaint was featured by Raymond Snoddy in his Newswatch programme
of 18th March, but in a most unsatisfactory manner.
Snoddy introduced the programme by asking "How should news coverage reflect
the death of a man who was universally reviled"! The whole point is that
Milosevic was not 'universally reviled'. His complaint was then glossed
over
by the BBC Obituaries correspondent and a correspondent who both said that
'the weight of evidence' pointed to Milosevic's guilt. This again, was
simply not true. A four year trial in which over 100 prosecution witnesses
were called failed to produce a single scrap of compelling evidence that
Milosevic was guilty of the crimes he was charged with.
The 'weight of evidence' supports Milosevic's innocence- not his guilt- yet
one would never have thought so from the BBC's coverage.
On the day of Milosevic's funeral, Saturday 18th March, BBC News again
showed its bias. Reporter Gavin Hewitt, in his report shown on BBC1's
10.15pm bulletin said that Milosevic's funeral seemed 'more like a rally
for Serb nationalism' -despite the picture of communist era Yugoslav flags
flying in the foreground. Rather than concentrate on these visible
demonstrations of pro-Yugoslavism- the BBC cameras instead zoomed in on
one,
isolated placard showing Milosevic with Karadzic and Mladic- which Gavin
Hewitt commented on to back up his thesis. And when the pictures of
Milosevic's coffin being loaded into the ground were shown, Hewitt
commented
'some of the mourners were indicted war criminals'. Were they? Can he
produce evidence for this assertion?
Milosevic's burial was attended by a large crowd of mourners, many in tears.
Yet rather than comment on the genuine sadness that those who were present
at the burial felt- Hewitt instead preferred to make unsubstantiated jibes
about 'war criminals'.
Overall, we believe the BBC's coverage of the death of President Milosevic
to have been totally disgraceful. A man who enjoyed widespread support, not
just in the former Yugoslavia, but around the world, was demonised and
treated as if he had already been found guilty of the charges the NATO
powers laid against him.
Yours faithfully,
Neil Clark, Name & Address supplied
Countersigned:
Dr John Laughland, Name & Address supplied
Zsuzsanna Clark, Name & Address supplied
Roy Clark, Name & Address supplied
Joan Clark, Name & Address supplied
Julia Hammett, Name & Address supplied
Kim Cooling, Name & Address supplied
Stuart Carr, Name & Address supplied.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 25, 2006
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A MYSTERY AT THE HAGUE by Srdja Trifkovic
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi/The%20Balkans/A_Mysterious_Death_.html?seemore=y
ChroniclesExtra! Friday, March 24, 2006
A MYSTERIOUS DEATH AT THE HAGUE
By Srdja Trifkovic
The mainstream Western media coverage of the death of Slobodan Milosevic,
while predictably relentless in its clichés (the "Butcher of the Balkans,"
guilty of "starting three wars" and ordering ethnic cleansing and genocide
in his pursuit of a "greater Serbia," etc.), has ignored the unresolved
mystery surrounding the event itself. Having spent a week in Belgrade
talking to a score of well-placed individuals at different ends of the
political spectrum, I can present to our readers the facts of the case that
are deemed unfit to print by their Gannett, Tribune, NYT, or Knight Ridder
outlets.
Milosevic was found dead in his cell at the International Criminal Tribunal
on the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) detention unit near The Hague on Saturday,
March 11, at 10:05 in the morning. His death came less than a week after
another indicted Serb-the former President of the Krajina Serb Republic
Milan Babic-hanged himself in another wing of the same UN detention
facility. It also came a week after the Tribunal formally rejected his
petition for temporary leave to travel to Moscow for medical treatment.
Far more remarkably, Milosevic's death came a day after he wrote a letter in
longhand to the Russian foreign ministry, warning foreign minister Sergei
Lavrov that his life was in danger:
"[T]he 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 active, willful steps were taken to destroy my
health throughout the proceedings of the trial, which could not be hidden
from Russian specialists . . . [O]n January 12th (i.e., two months ago), an
extremely 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 these five years that I've been in
their prison. Throughout this whole period, neither have I had any kind of
infectious illness (apart from flu). Also the fact that doctors needed 2
months [to report this fact to me] cannot have any other explanation than we
are facing manipulation. . . . [by] those from which I defended my country
in times of war and who have an interest to silence me . . . , I am
addressing you in expectation that you help me defend my health from the
criminal activities in this institution, working under the sign of the U.N.
. . ."
Within hours after Milosevic's death was announced, his legal advisor Zdenko
Tomanovic filed an official request to the Tribunal to have the autopsy
carried out in Moscow, "having in mind his claims yesterday that he was
being poisoned in the jail." This was rejected by the Tribunal and an
autopsy was carried out by a Dutch team, in the presence of Russian and
Serbian doctors. No overt signs of poisoning were found, but the head of the
Bakulev Cardiovascular Surgery Centre, Academician Leo Bokeria, who attended
the autopsy, said that the medicines given to Milosevic might have
exacerbated the situation: "We indicated how the patient could be cured, but
no steps were taken. We warned for more than two years that something might
happen to the patient, but the leadership of the tribunal avoided facing
this." Russian diplomats at the UN described the report from The Hague as
"disturbing" and demanded a full report from the UN Secretariat.
Suspicions of foul play were fuelled by the ICTY chief prosecutor Carla del
Ponte's strange demeanor in the immediate aftermath of Milosevic's death.
She appeared almost gleeful on March 12 when she declared that Milosevic's
death may have been a suicide, and speculated that he might have wanted to
thwart the impending guilty verdict in his trial. The theme of "Milosevic
cheating justice" was duly picked up by the media pack and establishment
politicians and repeated thousands of times, creating the impression that
the trial was going well for the prosecution.
Anyone who had met Milosevic at The Hague-myself included-knew that del
Ponte's speculation was absurd. He was conducting his defense effectively
and at times brilliantly, and he was positively looking forward to the rest
of the trial-not because he expected a "not guilty" verdict (no such luck at
The Hague), but because he believed that he was contributing to setting the
record of history straight.
Canada's former ambassador in Belgrade James Bissett was one of the last
defense witnesses to see Milosevic alive. He told me in Belgrade earlier
this week that, in the course of their long meetings on February 21 and 22,
Milosevic struck him as the man least likely to contemplate suicide at the
ICTY, the prosecution team included:
"He was perfectly relaxed, not in the least depressed, and seemed to be in a
good health. He was busy trying to prepare for my testimony and he struck me
as being content with the way the trial was going. The following day,
however, around five o'clock-after we'd worked for 2 or 3 hours-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 OK and explained that
although his blood pressure was under control, he had these constant ringing
and echoing sounds in his head. This was caused, he said, by a problem with
an artery in his ear. He complained about it before to the Dutch doctors who
simply said it was psychological. But after increasing demands they gave him
a MRI test and found that indeed he was right there was a problem with the
artery in his ear. Artery had a "loop" in it and to correct it, surgery
would be necessary. That is why he wanted to go to Moscow to a clinic that
specializes in this type of ailment, but the Tribunal refused it."
Bissett was especially sorry to hear of Milosevic's death because it means
that the historical record that he had wanted to set down during his trial
will be incomplete: now we are not going to hear the Milosevic's story but
only the media spin, as all of the evidence in his favor has been censored:
"He knew his material. He has done a very good job of cross-examining the
prosecution witnesses and destroying many of them who appeared before the
Tribunal. He has discounted much of the case against him but the public
hears none of this because there seems to be a deliberate news blackout on
anything recorded in his favor . . . There is a sense of relief at The
Hague, because the Tribunal was having a very hard time bringing forth any
hard evidence to prove that there was genocide in Kosovo or that Milosevic
entered into the criminal conspiracy to establish a 'Greater Serbia.'
Nevertheless they would have found him guilty. He was under no illusion
about that but he wanted to put the facts on the historical record.
Unfortunately this is no longer possible and so it will be NATO's
interpretation of events that the world will have."
According to the former Yugoslav foreign minister Zivadin Jovanovic, who
served at the time of the NATO bombing, the issue is not so much whether
Milosevic was poisoned, as many Serbs still believe, but whether his death
was made more likely by the Tribunal's willful negligence. He and his
colleagues from the Belgrade Forum, an NGO critical of the ICTY, note that
there has been no serious attempt by any major Western media outlet to
examine the facts of the case, and ask who exactly stood to profit from his
death.
The suspicion of deliberate negligence is shared by many Serbs who had never
been sympathetic to Milosevic, politically and personally. They complain
that Western journalists have accepted a tad too blithely the Tribunal's
claim that Milosevic was illicitly taking powerful antibiotics that had
neutralized his blood pressure medication, allegedly in order to create the
impression that the therapy ordered by Dutch doctors was ineffective and
that therefore he should be allowed to travel to Moscow for treatment. Even
if Milosevic had been willing to risk his life by taking a powerful
antibiotic, Rifanticin, which would have rendered blood pressure medication
useless, the claim is unconvincing for three reasons:
1. Milosevic's very public alarm about the antibiotic's traces, evident in
his letter to Lavrov, does not tally with his allegedly illicit scheme to
self-medicate the drug;
2. Milosevic's premises were under surveillance and subject to detailed
searches;
3. All visitors and their possessions (briefcases, papers) are subjected to
a thorough search by the detention unit staff.
As for the assertion that Milosevic "escaped justice," impartial observers
were of the opinion that Carla del Ponte was the one losing the legal
battle. The charges against Milosevic-genocide, crimes against humanity,
"joint criminal conspiracy" to create a "Greater Serbia"-have always been
political, and they are collective by definition. They remain unproven and,
by the standards of any normal court in a normal country, would have been
deemed discredited by now. Neil Clark, who used to cover the ICTY for the
Guardian, noted that "not only has the prosecution signally failed to prove
Milosevic's personal responsibility for atrocities committed on the ground,
the nature and extent of the atrocities themselves has also been called into
question." In the worst single atrocity ascribed to Milosevic's ultimate
responsibility, that in Srebrnica in July 1995, Clark says that del Ponte
and her team "produced nothing to challenge the verdict of the five-year
inquiry commissioned by the Dutch government-that there was 'no proof that
orders for the slaughter came from Serb political leaders in Belgrade.'"
John Laughland noted that the trial had heard more than a hundred
prosecution witnesses by late last year, "and not a single one has testified
that Milosevic ordered war crimes." In Julia Gorin's view, an attempt to
create an Islamic "Greater Albania" was confused with one to create a
"Greater Serbia":
"Surely if the latter were Slobodan Milosevic's goal, he would have started
by ethnically cleansing the nearly 300,000 Muslims of Serbia. Though he
built his career in whatever dirty ways Tito's Yugoslavia allowed, he was
the least of the Balkans' villains. For most Serbs, he was not a hero until
he was called upon to defend an entire nation at The Hague. Now that
Milosevic is dead, we are spared the worldwide riots that would have ensued
had the tribunal mustered the courage to issue a verdict based on the
evidence. And we can all sleep comfortably as the disproved charges are
accepted as history."
The circumstances surrounding Milosevic's death will be brought to light
sooner or later, and the verdict will not be to the credit of the
"international community" or the concept of transnational justice. He was
guilty of many sins and errors, but they were a matter between him and his
people. The Hague was the wrong court trying to find him guilty of the wrong
crimes, and it has always been motivated by all the wrong reasons.
The verdict of history on Milosevic himself will be ambiguous because there
had been more than one "Milosevic" in his 64 years (1941-2006). His career
can be divided into four periods of unequal duration and significance. The
first, from his birth in 1941 until his meteoric rise to power in Serbia in
early 1987, was the longest and the least interesting. The only unusual
element in his early biography was the suicide of both his parents, who had
separated when he was a child. At 24 he married his only sweetheart, Mirjana
Markovic, illegitimate daughter of a high-ranking communist official. She
was neurotic, uncompromisingly hard-Left in her politics, ambitious, and
able to dominate "her Sloba" until the very end. Unstable to the point of
clinical insanity, more than any other person she had contributed to his
serious errors of judgment and eventual loss of popularity and power base.
To all appearances, until 1987 Milosevic was an unremarkable apparatchik.
His solid Communist Party credentials-he joined the League of Communists as
a high school senior in 1959-were essential to his professional advance.
After graduating from Belgrade's school of law in 1964 he held a variety of
business administration posts, eventually becoming director of a major bank
and, briefly, its representative in New York. By the early 80s he
increasingly turned to politics and made his way up the Party ladder by
forging alliances and friendships that were pragmatic rather ideological.
His name remained relatively unknown outside the ranks of the nomenklatura.
Then came the turning point. As president of the League of Communists of
Serbia, in April 1987 Milosevic traveled to the town of Kosovo Polje, in the
restive southern Serbian province of Kosovo, to quell the protests by local
Serbs who were unhappy with the lack of support they were getting from
Belgrade in the face of ethnic Albanian pressure. When the police started
dispersing the crowd using batons, Milosevic stopped them and uttered the
words that were to change his life and that of a nation. "No one is allowed
to beat you people; no one will ever hit you again," he told the cheering
crowd.
Used to two generations of Serbian Communist leaders subservient to Tito and
reluctant to advance their republic's interests lest they be accused of
"greater Serbian nationalism," ordinary Serbs responded with enthusiasm. The
word of a new kind of leader spread like wildfire. Milosevic's populism
worked wonders at first, enabling him to eliminate all political opponents
within the Party leadership of Serbia at a marathon 30-hour Central
Committee session in September 1987. A huge rally in Belgrade's Confluence
Park (1988) and in Kosovo to mark the 600th anniversary of the historic
battle (1989), reflected a degree of genuine popularity that he enjoyed in
Serbia, Montenegro, and Serbian-inhabited part of Bosnia and Croatia in the
late 1980s.
Far from proclaiming an agenda for expansion, as later alleged by his
accusers, his speech at Kosovo was full of old ideological clichés and
"Yugoslav" platitudes:
"Equal and harmonious relations among Yugoslav peoples are a necessary
condition for the existence of Yugoslavia and for it to find its way out of
the crisis and, in particular, they are a necessary condition for its
economic and social prosperity . . . Internal and external enemies . . .
organize their activity against multinational societies mostly by fomenting
national conflicts. At this moment, we in Yugoslavia are behaving as if we
have never had such an experience."
The precise nature of his long term agenda was never stated, however,
because it had never been defined. He was able to gain followers from widely
different camps, including hard-line Party loyalists as well as
anti-Communist nationalists, because they all tended to project their hopes,
aspirations and fears onto Milosevic-even though those hopes and aspirations
were often mutually incompatible.
The key issue was the constitutional framework within which the Serbs should
seek their future. They were unhappy by Tito's arrangements that kept them
divided into five units in the old Yugoslav federation. Milosevic wanted to
redefine the nature of that federation, rather than abolish it. Then and
throughout his life he was a "Yugoslav" rather than a "Greater Serb." In
addition he was so deeply steeped in the Communist legacy of his formative
years-and so utterly unable to resist the pressure from his doctrinaire
wife-that even after the fall of the Berlin Wall he kept the old insignia
with the red star, together with the leadership structure and mindset of the
old, Titoist order.
The tensions of this period could have been resolved by a clear strategy
once the war broke out, first in Croatia (summer 1991) and then in Bosnia
(spring 1992). This did not happen. In the third phase of Milosevic's
career, from mid-1991 until October 5, 2000, a cynically manipulative Mr.
Hyde had finally prevailed over the putative national leader Dr. Jekyll. As
the fighting raged around Vukovar and Dubrovnik, he made countless
contradictory statements about its nature, always stressing that "Serbia is
not at war" and thereby implicitly recognizing the validity of Tito's
internal boundaries.
Anticipating the onset of the second stage even before it became fully
apparent, and to many raised eyebrows in Washington, I opined that
"Milosevic is cynically exploiting the nationalist awakening to perpetuate
Communist rule and his own power in the eastern half of Yugoslavia." (U.S.
News & World Report, 18 June 1990), that he "needs outside enemies to halt
the erosion of his popularity." (U.S. News & World Report, 12 November
1990). In the end, for Serb patriots it turned out that "trusting Milosevic
is like giving a blood bank to Count Dracula" (the Times of London, 23
November 1995).
By blithely recognizing the secessionist republics within Tito's boundaries,
the "international community" effectively became a combatant in the wars of
Yugoslav secession. Its "mediators" accepted a role that was not only
subordinate, but also squalid. Lord David Owen, prominent among them,
conceded that Tito's boundaries were arbitrary and should have been redrawn
at the time of Yugoslavia's disintegration: "to rule out any discussion or
opportunity for compromise in order to head off war was an extraordinary
decision," he wrote, "to have stuck unyieldingly to the internal boundaries
of the six republics within the former Yugoslavia as being the boundaries
for independent states, was a folly far greater than that of premature
recognition itself." But in all his deeds he and a legion of other mediators
nevertheless stuck, unyieldingly, to that formula.
Milosevic's diplomatic ineptitude and his chronic inability to grasp the
importance of lobbying and public relations in Washington and other Western
capitals had enabled the secessionists to have a free run of the media scene
with the simplistic notion that "the butcher of the Balkans" was
overwhelmingly, even exclusively guilty of all the horrors that had befallen
the former Yugoslavia. At the same time, far from seeking the completion of
a "Greater Serbian" project while he had the military wherewithal to do so
(1991-1995), Milosevic attempted to fortify his domestic position in
Belgrade by trading in the Western Serbs (Krajina, Bosnia) for Western
benevolence. It worked for a while. "The Serbian leader continues to be a
necessary diplomatic partner," the New York Times opined in November 1996, a
year after the Dayton Agreement ended the war in Bosnia thanks to
Milosevic's pressure on the Bosnian-Serb leadership. His status as a
permanent fixture in the Balkan landscape seemed secure.
It all changed with the escalation of the crisis in Kosovo, however. His
belated refusal to sign on yet another dotted line at Rambouillet paved the
way for NATO's illegal bombing of Serbia in the spring of 1999. For one last
time the Serbs rallied under the leader many of them no longer trusted,
aware that the alternative was to accept the country's open-ended carve-up.
For one last time they were let down: Milosevic saved Clinton's skin by
capitulating in June of that year, and letting NATO occupy Kosovo just as
the bombing campaign was running out of steam and the Alliance was riddled
by discord over what to do next.
The ensuing mass exodus of Kosovo's quarter-million Serbs and the torching
of their homes and churches by the KLA terrorists did not prevent Milosevic
from pretending that his superior statesmanship, embodied in the
unenforceable UN Security Council Resolution 1244, had saved the country's
integrity. The ensuing reconstruction effort in Serbia was used as a
propaganda ploy to improve the rating of his own socialist party of Serbia
and his wife Mirjana Markovic's minuscule "Yugoslav United Left" (JUL).
For many Serbs this was the final straw. Refusing to recognize the change of
mood, in mid-2000 Milosevic followed his wife's advice and called a snap
election, hoping to secure his position for another four years. Unexpectedly
he was unable to beat his chief challenger Vojislav Kostunica in the first
round, and succumbed to a wave of popular protest when he tried to deny
Kostunica's victory in the closely contested runoff.
His downfall on October 5, 2000, followed a failed attempt to steal yet
another election. It nevertheless would not have been possible if the
military and the security services had not abandoned him. There had been
just too many defeats and too many wasted opportunities over the previous
decade and a half for the security chiefs to continue trusting Milosevic
implicitly. Their refusal to fire on the crowds-as his half-demented wife
allegedly demanded on that day-sealed Milosevic's fate. After five months'
powerless isolation in his suburban villa he was arrested and taken to
Belgrade's central prison. On June 28, 2001, Prime Minister Zoran Djindjic
arranged for his transfer to The Hague Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, in
violation of Serbia's laws and constitution.
The final four years of Milosevic's life were spent in prison. During this
time a haughty and arrogant know-all of previous years rapidly evolved into
a hard-working and efficient lawyer who conducted his own complex defense.
He was helped by an indictment that was hastily concocted by del Ponte's
predecessor Louise Arbour at the height of the bombing campaign in May 1999
to serve political, rather than legal purposes.
In preparing his defense Milosevic was initially guided by personal motives.
By the end of 2003 or early 2004, however, he came to realize that,
regardless of his own destiny, what he was doing had a wider historic
significance. He was accused of "genocide," a crime that places collective
stigma on a nation, not just its leader. Furthermore, the accusation of a
"joint criminal conspiracy" with the purpose of creating a "Greater Serbia"
was expanded by the Tribunal into an attempt to misrepresent two centuries
of Serbia's history as an open-ended quest for aggressive expansion, with
Milosevic but the latest link in that chain. As John Laughland wrote in the
Spectator last year, even more than the gross abuses of due process which it
is committing, the Milosevic trial has shown the futility of trying to
submit political decisions to the judgment of criminal law:
"Because it seeks to comprehend war as the result of the decisions of
individuals, and not as the consequence of conflict between states, modern
international humanitarian law sees trees but no wood. In the Milosevic
trial, the role of the other Yugoslav leaders in starting the war especially
those who declared secession from Yugoslavia is grossly obscured, as is that
of the countless Western politicians and institutions who were intimately
involved at every stage of the Yugoslav conflict, and who encouraged the
secessions."
Finally grasping the extent to which his trial was also the trial of the
Serbian nation as a whole, Milosevic succeeded for the first time in his
life to transcend the limitations of ideology and egotism that had blinkered
him for so long. He turned the trial, heralded by the Western media class as
a new Nuremberg, into a political embarrassment for "the international
community." His defense, effective and at times brilliant (one prosecutor
acknowledged that "there's no doubt who's the smartest guy in the
courtroom"), finally blended Milosevic's personal interest with the interest
of his people. When I met him at his cell in June 2004 he told me that he
may never get out of there, but he was certain his "refutation of [chief
prosecutor Carla] del Ponte's ridiculous indictment would set the record of
history straight."
Milosevic's death makes that certainty well justified, even if "the record
of history" comes too late to alter the unjust and untenable temporary
outcome of the wars of Yugoslav succession. It is to be feared that those
who had collectively invented a fictional character bearing the name
"Slobodan Milosevic" in the 1990s will use the historic man's death as a
welcome opportunity to put the finishing touches on the caricature, and
promote it as the final, approved and unalterable likeness.
********************
Dr. S. Trifkovic, Foreign Affairs Editor
CHRONICLES, 928 N Main Street, Rockford, IL 61103, USA
voice (815) 964-5054 fax (815) 964-9403 cell (312) 375-4044
http://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/cgi-bin/newsviews.cgi
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 25, 2006
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The legacy of the ICTY trial
March 23, 2006
Slobodan Milosevic and the Dead-Sure Tribunal
NATO's War of Aggression in Yugoslavia: Who are the War Criminals?
David Binder : '93 Pulitzer Should Be Revoked
Former NY Times Reporter: '93 Pulitzer Should Be Revoked
By Sherrie Gossett
CNSNews.com Staff Writer
March 22, 2006
Washington (CNSNews.com) - Castigating the press for "journalistic
crimes" committed during its reporting on the Balkans wars of the
1990s, retired New York Times reporter David Binder claims the 1993
Pulitzer Prize for International Reporting awarded to both the Times
and New York's Newsday "should, in all fairness and honesty, be
revoked."
Binder was speaking at a press conference for the release of a new book
criticizing the war reporting. Binder wrote the foreword to the book by
Peter Brock, titled "Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, Journalism and
Tragedy in Yugoslavia."
"What we're looking at here is a series catalogued by Peter Brock of
journalistic crimes," said Binder. Before mentioning the reporting of
the Times' John F. Burns and Newsday's Roy Gutman, Binder evoked the
memory of what he called Walter Duranty's "phony reporting" for the New
York Times in the 1930s as an example of an undeserved Pulitzer.
Duranty was criticized for having been too deferential to Joseph Stalin
and his plan to industrialize the Soviet Union.
"What Peter [Brock] has unraveled and disclosed in this book involves
at least a couple of Pulitzer prizes that should in all fairness and
honesty be revoked." Binder confirmed to Cybercast News Service that he
was referring to the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting,
awarded to Burns of the New York Times and Gutman of Newsday for their
reporting in the Balkans. Brock devotes considerable space in his book
to criticizing the reporting of Burns and Gutman.
Binder noted that the Times has gone through "agony" in recent years
over the "terrible professional behavior of its staff members" and with
"what has gone on under its masthead."
"[E]xposure is the best remedy," said Binder.
"I think Peter Brock's book helps a great deal to confront these
egregious crimes of journalism. I think it should be shoved under the
noses of editors all across the press, at least the editors who are
dealing with foreign news ..." said Binder.
The Pulitzer Board at first voted to award the prize solely to Gutman,
according to Binder. "The New York Times got so agitated that John
Burns was passed over that they started lobbying the board. The
Pulitzer is an extremely political award in many if not all cases.
There are all kinds of backstage manipulations that go on."
The centerpiece of Burns' Pulitzer entry was a seven-hour interview
with a captured Bosnian Serb -- Borislav Herak -- who in graphic
statements to Burns, confessed to dozens of murders, including eight
involving rape. Burns' Nov. 27, 1992, article was described by the New
York Times as offering "insight into the way thousands of others have
died in Bosnia."
However, more than three years after the publication of Burns' story,
the Times on Jan. 31, 1996, described Herak as "slightly retarded" and
reported that Herak had retracted his confession and claimed it had
been beaten out of him by guards.
"I was tortured, forced to confess," said Herak. By that time his
testimony already had been used to convict Sretko Damjanovic for the
killing of two Muslim brothers who were later found alive. Both Herak
and Damjanovic, who also said he had been "tortured" into providing a
false confession, were sentenced to death by firing squad.
Author Peter Brock described Burns' interview with Herak as "a
manipulated confession and interrogation in which Burns was the key
participant." Brock faults Burns for failing to tell readers that the
interview took place with a Sarajevo video production crew present and
that "interrogations were conducted by [government] investigators and
by Sarajevo film director Ademir Kenovic."
He also argues that "vital pieces" of Herak's story were missing.
"[T]here was no evidence, corpses or victims, or eyewitnesses to
implicate Herak, except for hearsay from Bosnian government
'investigators,'" Brock writes.
Brock also faults Newsday's Roy Gutman for being unduly influenced by
government propagandists including one source who operated under four
different aliases. Gutman was criticized for not exercising enough
scrutiny before repeating allegations of atrocities and statistics of
the dead and tortured.
Gutman won his Pulitzer partly for "electrifying stories about
'concentration camps'," notes Brock, who criticizes the reporter for
the prominence of "hearsay" and "double hearsay" in his stories, as
well as gratuitous use of the language of the Nazi Holocaust.
Gutman's first five stories about the alleged Omarska concentration
camp in Bosnia were actually filed from Zagreb, in Croatia, Brock
complains. It was Gutman's sixth story on the subject that finally
carried an Omarska dateline, Brock wrote, and that was after the prison
had been shut down.
Both Binder and Brock accuse the press of falling into "pack
journalism" and playing the role of "co-belligerent." The reliance on
Croat and Bosnian Muslim propaganda resulted in distorted reporting
that exaggerated the Serb role in the three-sided conflict and ignored
ethnic cleansing of Serbs, according to Binder and Brock.
Brock went so far as to say the $3,000 Pulitzer Prize money awarded to
Burns and Gutman was "blood money."
"What we're talking about in terms of what I call crimes of journalism
was only ten years ago," said Binder. "It wasn't so long ago that
these, I think revolting things, were happening -- revolting bias,
revolting suppression of other sides of the story."
During his recent appearance at the National Press Club in Washington,
D.C., Binder said it would take "at least a decade" before historians
"clear out that wretched underbrush of lies and concoctions" from
"despicable" politicians "like Richard Holbrooke," an international
negotiator during the administration of former President Bill Clinton
and "certainly the journalists" criticized in Brock's book. The rise of
blogs and media watchdog groups offers a "corrective" for the public
now, Binder contended.
In his call for the revocation of the Pulitzer Prize Peter Brock said
that "in all fairness, if [the Pulitzer board] is not going to revoke
the prize, they ought to give Janet Cooke's Pulitzer back." Cooke was a
Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer for a fabricated 1980 story
about an eight-year old heroin addict.
http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewSpecialReports.asp?Page=\SpecialReports\archive\200603\SPE20060322a.html
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 23, 2006
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March 20, 2006
Belgrade team on the 2nd meeting in Vienna
BelgradeSatisfied with Second Round of Decentralization Talks in Vienna
The second round of talks between the Serb and Albanian delegations on decentralization of Kosovo in Vienna has not produced any final agreement, but the Belgrade negotiating team is satisfied with the Vienna talks. "The conclusion of Albert Rohan, who presided over the meeting, is in accordance with our hopes. There are still many things to talk about. We have taken a step forward and there can be no going back. For example, as regards to the need of the Serb municipalities to have ties with Belgrade," assessed the Serbian PM Advisor Slobodan Samardzic. He added that the talks had been satisfactory and that the result could be very favourable for Belgrade. In an interview with Vecernje Novosti Leon Kojen, the member of Belgrade negotiating team and the Political Advisor to the Serbian President said that, except for the issue of establishing new municipalities in Kosovo, the discussion on decentralization, which included broader powers of the Serb municipalities, their horizontal ties and direct ties with Belgrade, has been rounded up. According to him, in case that an agreement is reached it remains to be seen when it will be implemented: "We urged that it should be implemented right away, and I think we shall have the support of the international community on this, whereas the Albanians will urge that it be implemented as late as possible. They have already mentioned 2008 and 2009, and even that it will be implemented one day after the Kosovo status is defined. We will also insist that the reached decentralization concept is included in the future Kosovo constitution," said Kojen. The member of the Belgrade negotiating team Goran Bogdanovic told Vecernje Novosti that the Serbian side must continue to insist on substantial decentralization of power in Kosovo and ties between Serb municipalities and Belgrade. He voiced satisfaction with the understanding that Albert Rohan had expressed toward the Belgrade delegation. The Deputy of the UN S-G Special Envoy for future status process in Kosovo Albert Rohan told the press following the second round of Vienna talks that financing of Kosovo municipalities must be transparent. According to him, the municipalities can cooperate in areas within their jurisdiction, adding that no one among the participants had challenged the legitimacy of ties between the Serb municipalities with Belgrade in certain areas, like education and healthcare. Rohan has announced that the international negotiators would try to identify solutions that could be acceptable to both sides and send this document to Belgrade and Pristina. He has announced that the next meeting has been scheduled for 3 April. Albanian negotiators opposed direct financial ties between Belgrade and Serbian municipalities. RTS reported from Vienna that Pristina delegation insisted that Belgrade could assist the future municipalities, but only if this assistance would be directed through the Kosovo Government, while ties between Serb municipalities and Belgrade, according to Pristina, could only be of informal kind.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 20, 2006
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March 19, 2006
The Real Butchers Of Serbia: Clinton, Clark, NATO
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 wellâ€â€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.â€Â
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.
http://www.infowars.com/articles/world/milosevic_real_butchers_of_serbia_clinton_clark.htm
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 19, 2006
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Kosovo May Explode - Here
Kosovo May Explode -- Here
By Julia Gorin
CNSNews.com Commentary
March 16, 2006
The War on Terror suffered a major blow three years before it was ever announced. It happened when the people of this democracy were misled into attacking the sovereign, emerging post-Communist democracy of Yugoslavia, over rumors of genocide and ethnic cleansing that proved false. In so doing, we delivered the Balkans to al Qaeda.
Today we are being asked to seal that historical blunder, the repercussions of which are still escalating seven years later. The people we "rescued" have turned their weapons against United Nations and NATO forces.
While NATO spends most of its time rooting out terror cells in Kosovo and Bosnia, which served as the planning bases for the London and Madrid bombings, the 2006 deadline to complete our eagerly forgotten debacle and determine the province's final status is fast approaching.
To persuade the international community that only one final status will be acceptable, our Albanian "rescuees" have been stepping up the violence. This is a message to the West that it has only one possible exit strategy: grant unconditional independence -- without border compromises with Serbia and without protection guarantees for what's left of the non-Albanian minorities.
If we allow this to happen, the peacekeepers will have to leave, and with them so will our eyes and ears in this terror haven and thruway. Still, congressional, U.S. State Department and U.N. sentiment seem to be tilting toward self-determination and the logic that if you've dug yourself into a hole, keep digging.
Here is the size of that hole so far: In November, 2001, what should have been an explosive article appeared in the European edition of the Wall St. Journal. Headlined "Al Qaeda's Balkan Links," it read: "For the past 10 years ... Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden's second in command) has operated terrorist training camps [and] weapons of mass destruction factories throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia ... Though the Clinton administration had been briefed extensively by the State Department in 1993 on the growing Islamist threat in former Yugoslavia, little was done to follow through ..."
A December 2003 article in Britain's Sunday Mirror also registered barely a blip: "Posing as members of the Real IRA, we ... made our deal in Kosovo, a breeding ground for fanatics with al-Qaeda links. Our contact was the deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army Niam Behljulji ... [who allegedly supplied] terrorists across Europe and has been accused of massacring Serbian women and children during the war. He even posed grinning for a photograph, holding the severed head of one of his victims."
Even the high-minded among us may soon become nostalgic for the days when ethnic profiling was even possible. Because while the world wept for Bosnia, bin Laden and Iran were recruiting thousands of blonde, blue-eyed Bosnian Muslims for suicide missions -- "White al Qaeda," according to Yossef Bodansky, security expert and author of "Bin Laden: The Man Who Declared War on America."
But to perpetuate the version of events we were sold from the beginning, all these connections have gone purposefully unmade by our nation's "journalists," who were gung-ho supporters of our 1999 offensive against a historical ally.
How many Americans know that the terrorists who carried out a spate of suicide attacks in Iraq in August 2004 were trained in Bosnia, or that al Qaeda's top Balkans operative -- al-Zawahiri's brother Mohammed -- had a high position with our terrorist KLA "allies"?
And who wants to bring up what former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia James Bissett has, that in Bosnia we fought alongside at least two of the 9/11 hijackers. We won't learn the details of how Bosnia has become the European "one-stop shop" for all the terrorism needs -- weapons, money, shelter, documents -- of Chechen and Afghan fighters passing through Europe before heading to Iraq.
We will lack information about an al Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan, where U.S. forces recovered one Albanian Kosovar's application, reading: "I have Kosovo Liberation Army combat experience against Serb and American forces. ... I recommend operations against parks like Disney."
Despite the media's blackout on the subject of Balkans terror, more and more Americans have been scratching their heads, wondering why we forcibly precluded what the Serbs were doing in their own backyard, and continue to mischaracterize it, even as we've gone halfway around the globe to do the same thing.
For the past four years The Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has been finding what multiple international forensics teams have found, that claims of Serb "atrocities" were exaggerated and often invented. It turns out we confused an attempt to create an Islamic "Greater Albania" with one to create a "Greater Serbia." But Milosevic's sudden death this week spares us from the worldwide riots that would have ensued had the tribunal mustered the courage to issue a verdict based on the evidence.
"If you break it, you fix it." We've heard much of that refrain throughout our Iraq debates, including from the self-same architects of the Kosovo offensive, Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Hillary Clinton and Wesley Clark.
Their prescription for fixing what they broke? Bury it. Clark warned that "a violent collision may occur by year-end" if we don't do what the Albanians want, and this four-star general advocated doing just that. After all, "unrest" in the region shines an unwelcome spotlight on his "successful war." Clark even suggested pummeling the Serbs again if Belgrade got in the way; it's easier than fighting his terrorist Albanian campaign donors.
As U.N. human rights observer Jiri Dienstbier notes, "If NATO and the U.N. can't defeat terrorism in an area the size of one-eighth of the Czech Republic, how do they expect to confront global terrorism?"
Balkans author Vojin Joksimovich seconds the question: "Although the intelligence community is fully aware of the threat, political leaders are denying it and the media are silent. Given this cover-up, it's fair to ask whether we are able to prevent yet another major terrorist act."
Indeed, can you fight terror with one hand while abetting it with the other?
It's long past time to set the record straight on what we "achieved" in the Balkans, and change course. If a commission was set up to determine whether a presidential administration did all it could to prevent kamikaze attacks on 9/11, good God, what of an administration that committed the might of the U.S. Air Force to bomb Europe for a legacy beyond sexual harassment, and lied about genocide to achieve it?
Testifying at the Milosevic trial in September 2004, former Senate Republican Policy Committee analyst James Jatras quoted the 9/11 Commission's finding that it was in 1990s Bosnia that the "groundwork for a true terrorist network was being laid." That network is known as al Qaeda.
The Balkans were the early, key prize that Iran and Osama bin Laden sought as a terror corridor into the West. We delivered it to them. Why?
As the world closes in on the Serbs again this year, handing bin Laden an unequivocal victory by severing Kosovo -- Serbia's version of Jerusalem -- and officially establishing a terror state in Europe, we can know from Madrid and London that we'll pay for it with our own blood.
Indeed, we already have.
(Julia Gorin blogs at JuliaGorin.com and is a contributing editor to JewishWorldReview.com, where she has been chronicling the enduring fallout from the Balkan wars.)
<http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewPrint.asp?Page=\Commentary\archive\200603\COM20060316a.html>
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 19, 2006
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'Thank you for coming'
The Spectator
A chat with Milosevic
by John Laughland
18 March 2006,
I was one of the last Western journalists to meet Slobodan Milosevic. It was early last year. A fierce wind was whipping the cold rain straight off the sea and through the ugly streets of Scheveningen as I unbundled from my pockets the various secret cameras and recording devices which I had in vain hidden there, and made my way through the security checks at the United Nations Detention Unit. A series of doors clanged open and shut and there was a friendly hubbub and a fug of cigarette smoke as stubbly men lounged, chatting in their long flat vowels as if it were an ordinary weekday morning in a Belgrade café. Holland dissolved behind me and I had arrived back in Yugoslavia.
The Hague tribunal is like Dover in Act V of King Lear — nearly all the main surviving protagonists of the Balkans wars are assembled in this improbable place. In a rare moment of postwar Yugoslav unity, the inmates once joined forces to protest about the tasteless food produced by the Dutch caterers, and so cevapcici are now delivered instead from a Croat restaurant in town. The colour inside is dark grey, a cross between a prison and an office. At the end of the corridor, I was shown into a room with a big window and a table covered in papers, books, dirty ashtrays, used plastic cups and open packets of Marlboro. Behind it sat Slobodan Milosevic, the butcher of the Balkans, wearing a zip-up grey cardigan and an open-necked shirt. He rose to greet me and smiled. ‘It is very nice to see you,’ he said, extending his hand. ‘Thank you for coming. Will you have some coffee?’
His demeanour was upbeat and his manner open and friendly. He spoke slowly and in a deep voice, occasionally with humour and contempt for his accusers. ‘The indictment against me is based on lies and contradiction,’ he said in his fluent if accented English. ‘It is a political trial, a show trial, designed to cover up the crimes committed against my country. I am accused when others are guilty. But we will fight. They cannot win. Freedom is a universal value. They have no evidence against me. That Geoffrey Nice [the prosecuting counsel] is stupid, very stupid. He is a king’s jester.’
This was the culmination of a long odyssey for me. Having once been a supporter of the standard party line on foreign policy, my conversion occurred on the night of my own father’s death, as I watched the hideous television images of bombers taking off from British bases and US aircraft carriers to attack Yugoslavia. I began to question the arguments used to justify the Kosovo war. I visited Belgrade during the bombing and went to sleep to the sound of air-raid sirens and explosions; I travelled to Kosovo numerous times and observed how the West had helped Mafia gangsters and drug-runners to become kings of the castle in this fetid and teeming province. Having spent much time behind the Iron Curtain as an active Cold Warrior, my own logic had now led me to become a dissident in the new world order, hence my visit to The Hague as a potential witness and my hour-long chat over a fag and a coffee with Slobo.
According to his closest assistant, Milosevic remained bullish to the end. In the final weeks, he complained about painful pressure behind his eyes, presumably the result of his deteriorating heart condition, but otherwise he was happy with the way the trial was proceeding. He was certainly bullish when I met him. He had marshalled an impressive array of defence witnesses who helped him rubbish the prosecution’s case — not that you would know it from most of the media, which rapidly lost interest once the initial attraction of the atrocity stories had worn off. In his conversation with me, he repeated the central planks of his defence. ‘There was never any plan to expel the Albanians from Kosovo,’ he said, ‘and no order to that effect was ever given. There was never any genocide in Kosovo. They have exhumed 2,000 bodies in total, of all different nationalities, and the causes of their deaths include Nato’s own bombs.’
On Croatia and Bosnia, Milosevic was no less indignant. ‘The indictment is full of contradictions,’ he said. He picked up a sheaf of papers and pointed to bits he had underlined. ‘Look here. In paragraph 85 of the indictment, it says that from 8 October 1991 the conflict in Croatia was international in nature, not internal, yet in paragraph 110 it says that the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia existed as a sovereign state until 27 April 1992. These two statements cannot both be true. The indictment itself does not make sense.’ His apparently technical point is important because, broadly speaking, jurisdiction for the laws of war kicks in only when a conflict is international. ‘In any case,’ he went on, ‘the indictment also says that fighting broke out when the secessionist states declared independence from Yugoslavia. But am I supposed to have pursued a joint criminal enterprise by sponsoring armed secession from the state I wanted to see preserved? It is ridiculous.’
However self-serving these statements may appear to a sceptical reader, it remains the case that Slobodan Milosevic was not in charge of Yugoslavia when it was falling apart. The initial order for the Yugoslav National Army to fight the secessionists was given by the federal prime minister, Ante Markovic, an ethnic Croat, but the federal authority was weak and the army largely a law unto itself. It is also a fact that the Serbs in Serbia (where Milosevic was president) and the Serbs in Bosnia were living in different states; Milosevic broke with the Bosnian Serb leadership in 1993, having never controlled them in the first place, while what political influence he may have had does not stack up, in law, to criminal responsibility for their acts. Certainly, few Bosnian Serbs regard Milosevic as their master; when I visited a Bosnian Serb village near Sarajevo in 2001, in whose graveyard lay the bodies of hundreds of villagers killed by Muslims, the people looking after the church proudly showed me photographs of Radovan Karadzic and Ratko Mladic nestling among the icons, men who are accused of the worst atrocities in Bosnia’s civil war. But they dismissed Milosevic with contempt as a man who had betrayed them by helping to bring the fighting to an end at Dayton in 1995.
To be sure, Milosevic bore some political responsibility for the Yugoslav wars, but so did the other Yugoslav leaders and so does the West, which was intimately involved with the very minutiae of the conflict from the outset and which in many ways encouraged it. Our interference was especially damaging over Bosnia: with the backing of our troop presence there since 1992, we pressed on the accelerator and the brake simultaneously by incoherently insisting both that the multi-ethnic Yugoslav state must be dismantled and also that the multi-ethnic Bosnian state must be preserved. Our foreign policy therefore spun around in circles and we prolonged the killing for years.
Demonisation and denunciation are infectious viruses which can engulf large numbers of people very quickly. They are parasites on one of the core human vices, pride, because they give the denunciator an intoxicating sense of superiority over the object of his attack. Political trials, as Stalin discovered, tap into this. Milosevic is the seventh defendant to die in The Hague’s tender care, following a trial in which almost every established precept of jurisprudence and international law has been violated by the judges there. If the legacy of his death is the de facto legitimisation of the gross abuses committed in the name of international justice by this kangaroo court, then all our liberties are at risk.
http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php?id=7485&issue=2006-03-18
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 19, 2006
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March 18, 2006
Milosevic Legal Adviser:UN Report Into Death "Scandalous"
| 17 Mar 2006 16:38 GMT |
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| Copyright © 2006, Dow Jones Newswires |
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BELGRADE (AP)--Branko Rakic, legal adviser for Slobodan Milosevic during his war crimes trial, Friday called a U.N. report into the former Serbian leader's death "scandalous".
Milosevic died last weekend at a detention center near the U.N. war crimes tribunal in The Hague, Netherlands, which was trying him on 66 counts of war crimes, including genocide.
Questions and accusations have swirled this week about Milosevic's death. His widow and her son say the former leader was poisoned.
"No evidence of poisoning has been found," Tribunal President Judge Fausto Pocar said in The Hague, reading the preliminary results of a Dutch toxicological report. A number of prescribed medications were found in his body, "but not in toxic concentrations," he said.
"Today, such a huge array of falsehoods has been presented, indicating that someone's conscience obviously isn't clear," Rakic said in Belgrade.
"Those who were in a position of monopoly over Milosevic's health, denied him proper and adequate treatment," Rakic said. "If Milosevic had been in a hospital, he would have been alive today."
Flown home Wednesday, Milosevic is to be buried Saturday at a family estate in his home town of Pozarevac, about 50 kilometers southeast of Belgrade.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-17-06 1138ET
Copyright (c) 2006 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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http://framehosting.dowjonesnews.com/sample/samplestory.asp?StoryID=2006031716380014&Take=1
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 18, 2006
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If this man is a war criminal where is all the evidence?
If this man is a war criminal where is all the evidence?
by John Laughland
24 August 2002, Mail on Sunday
In the great film with Marlene Dietrich and Charles Laughton, the “Witness for the Prosecution†appears in court and gives exactly the opposite testimony from what was expected. You would not know it from our media - which passed over the event in silence - but the same thing happened at The Hague recently, in the most important war crimes trial since Nuremberg, that of the former Yugoslav president, Slobodan Milosevic. One of the prosecution’s star witnesses said precisely the opposite of what he was supposed to say, dealing what seemed like a fatal blow to a prosecution case which was already reeling from several previous blunders.
The star witness in question was Rade Markovic, the former head of the Yugoslav secret services. Before he appeared in the witness box, the media universally hailed him as the insider who would finally give the clinching testimony that Milosevic had personally ordered the persecution of the ethnic Albanian population of Kosovo. This is the single issue which NATO uses to justify its otherwise illegal attacks on Yugoslavia: without it, the moral justification for NATO's war in 1999 completely disappears.
The urge to hear Markovic's testimony was all the greater because the prosecution's last "star witness" had been a severe embarrassment. Ratomir Tanic had presented himself as another "insider", and had claimed that he had actually been present when Milosevic gave the genocidal order. Under cross-examination, however, Tanic was shown to be an agent of the secret services of various Western countries, and to be so unfamiliar with the corridors of power that he could not even say what floor in the presidential palace Milosevic's office had been on.
The embarrassment over Tanic was equalled only by that caused when an Albanian witness produced a list of names, which he alleged was of Albanians whom the Serb police were to execute. On closer examination, the list turned out to be a fake: the spelling mistakes were so numerous that only an Albanian could have written them.
Enter, therefore, Radomir Markovic, the secret police chief who knew more about what was going on in Yugoslavia than anyone else. But, in painstakingly detailed testimony lasting nearly three hours, he told the court that Milosevic had never ordered the expulsion of the Albanian population of Kosovo; that the former president had repeatedly issued instructions to the police and the army to respect the laws of war, and to protect the civilian population, even if it meant compromising the battle against Albanian terrorists; and that the mass exodus of Albanians during the Nato bombing was caused not by Serb forces but instead by the Kosovo Liberation Army itself, which needed a constant flow of refugees to maintain the support of Western public opinion for the Nato campaign.
"Did you ever get any kind of report," Milosevic asked him,"or have you ever heard of an order, to expel Albanians from Kosovo?" "No, I never heard of such an order. Nobody ever ordered for Albanians from Kosovo to be expelled," Markovic replied. "Did you receive any information about any plan, suggestion or de facto influence that Albanians were to be expelled?" asked Milosevic. Reply: "No, I never heard of such a suggestion to expel Albanians from Kosovo." "At the meetings you attended, is it true that completely the opposite is said, namely that we always insisted that civilians be protected, and that they not be hurt in the process of anti-terrorist operations?" "Certainly," said the witness. "The task was not only to protect Serbs but also Albanian civilians." "Is it not true that we tried to persuade the flow of refugees to stay at home, and that the army and police would protect them?" the former president asked. "Yes, that was the instruction and those were the assignments." "Do you know that the Kosovo Liberation Army told people to leave, and to stage an exodus?" "Yes," said Markovic. "I am aware of that."
The media greeted this stunning evidence with complete silence. Indeed, it even failed to report the most extraordinary assertion of all made by Markovic, namely that he had effectively been tortured by the new pro-Western authorities in Belgrade, in order to make him testify against Milosevic. Markovic claimed that the new Minister of the Interior in the Western-backed government in Belgrade had taken him out to dinner and offered him release from prison - where he has been incarcerated for over a year now - and a new identity in a country of his choice, if only he would agree to testify against his former boss at The Hague. As Slobodan Milosevic tried to point out in his cross-examination - until he was interrupted by the judge, that is - it clearly falls under the terms of the United Nations' definition of "torture" to imprison someone in order to force them to co-operate. Markovic also alleged that the Tribunal's own prosecutors had falsified and embellished the written statement he had given them.
These were amazing allegations. With them, the whole prosecution case seemed to crumble. But even more stunning was the reaction of the British presiding judge, Sir Richard May. A judge is supposed to be a neutral arbiter between the prosecution and the defence: May, by contrast, has distinguished himself throughout the trial by his belligerence towards Milosevic, who is conducting his own defence, and in particular for his habit of interrupting Milosevic, even sometimes switching off his microphone, whenever the former Yugoslav leader's cross-examination shows up inconsistencies in a witness' evidence.
As May listened to Markovic, he tried desperately to stop him making these allegations against the Prosecutors and their allies in Belgrade. When Markovic began to describe his ordeal at the hands of the new Yugoslav government, May silenced him, saying to Milosevic, “This does not appear to have relevance to the evidence which the
witness has given here. We are not going to litigate here with what happened to him (i.e. Markovic) in Yugoslavia when he was arrested." And when Milosevic insisted that the Tribunal's own investigators had falsified Markovic's written evidence, May interrupted him tartly by saying, "That is not a comment which it is proper for you to make." In Judge May's book, therefore, it is irrelevant if the prosecution is lying, or if it is an accomplice to torture.
Judge Richard May is no stranger to political activity, like the prosecutor, Geoffrey Nice, he is a committed Socialist: he stood as a Labour Party candidate for Finchley in the general election in 1979, where his Conservative opponent was none other than Margaret Thatcher. As a judge on the Midlands Circuit in the 1980s, he would dine out on this story, for which he enjoyed the admiration of his left-wing colleagues. But even this happy admission of political bias could not have prepared anyone for the way he would react to Markovic's shocking claims.
It gets worse. The Tribunal's priorities now seem so distorted that they see Milosevic's "political crime" of resisting NATO as worse than the crimes of physically torturing people to death. On 31st July, the Tribunal ordered the release from custody of a man called Milojica Kos. Kos had served four years of a six-year sentence for murder, torture and persecution as a guard at the notorious Omarska camp in Bosnia, which was compared at the time to a Nazi concentration camp. But the president of the Tribunal, Claude Jorda, said that Kos would be released early because of "his wish to reintegrate himself into society, his determination not to re-offend, his irreproachable conduct in detention, his attachment to his family, and the possibility of exercising a profession again." No such tolerance will be shown to Milosevic.
These events have provided spectacular proof of what critics have always said - that the International Criminal Tribunal is a political kangaroo court in the hands of the West. But political manipulation can work both ways. Tony Blair has been a vigorous supporter of a clone of the Yugoslav tribunal, the new International Criminal Court. But why shouldn't the new court be as politicised as the present one? Plenty of anti-Western countries, like Iran, Sudan and Zimbabwe, have signed the new ICC treaty. If they decided to prosecute Tony Blair for attacking Iraq, say, there is little to stop them - especially since the ICC defines "aggression" as a war crime. On his next trip abroad, therefore, Mr. Blair might be wise to pack his toothbrush.
http://www.bhhrg.org/default.asp
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 18, 2006
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March 16, 2006
Milosevic Dead. Now We'll Never Have to Know the Truth
Milosevic Dead. Now We'll Never Have to Know the Truth
By Julia Gorin
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
The people of the world can breathe a collective sigh of relief; now for sure they'll never be asked to understand what actually happened in the Balkans.
No doubt this is only the second or third time you're hearing anything about the all-important "Second Nuremberg" trial in the four years it has been proceeding. That's because it wasn't going too well - for the prosecution, which Milosevic embarrassed on a daily basis. The UN's kangaroo court even had journalists snickering at the prosecution's flimsy evidence and performance. Journalists--those people who built their careers in the 1990s as co-belligerents against the Serbs in the avoidable but media-ensured Balkan wars.
Though Milosevic's conviction was a foregone conclusion (we wouldn't want any more rampaging Muslims than there need to be), he was creaming the Court (the Court and the prosecution are essentially one), such that six months ago prosecutor Geoffrey Nice admitted (transcript) he was no longer sure what, exactly, the case against the former strongman was. Everyone wondered why a trial would be taking four years for someone who was the undisputed "Butcher of Belgrade." The answer is that there's been an unintended benefit to the otherwise bad idea of an international court: the historical record was being set straight.
But look for a renewed wave of propaganda about the alleged "crimes" of Milosevic from the media anyway, now that they are confident the truth will stay buried longer. (No, I'm not a fan of Milosevic, as I am an anti-socialist.) You won't find the kinds of glowing obituaries that the domestic and international press gave our friend, the late Bosnian President and fundamentalist Muslim Alija Izetbegovic, who turned down the 1992 Lisbon plan that would have avoided the Bosnian war.
But to sum up, here is all that Americans need to know about that confounding, dreaded subject that we so aggressively ignore, the Balkans:
The Serbs have admitted to not being innocents in those civil wars. Problem is, they were less guilty than their enemies - the Croats (a people Germanized since the 1500s and nostalgic for the 1930s), the Bosnian Muslims, and the Albanian Kosovo Muslims. Funny that none of these others have admitted to anything at all, despite their much more dastardly roles in sparking the Balkan wars--most relevantly that last group. As Canadian former UN Commander Major General Lewis MacKenzie wrote in a National Post article titled "We Bombed the Wrong Side?":
"The Kosovo-Albanians have played us like a Stradivarius. We have subsidized.their violent campaign for an ethnically pure and independent Kosovo. We have never blamed them for being the perpetrators of the violence in the early '90s and we continue to portray them as the designated victim today in spite of evidence to the contrary. When they achieve independence with the help of our tax dollars combined with those of bin Laden and al-Qaeda, just consider the message of encouragement this sends to other terrorist-supported independence movements around the world."
Increasingly active separatist movements from the Caucuses to Southeast Asia in the seven years since we lent our Air Force to terrorists have been testament to that.
When Bill Clinton misled us into an obscure region called Kosovo to stop a genocide that wasn't happening, he told us it would stabilize the region, keep the conflict from spreading. This is precisely what Milosevic was doing. Like clockwork, within months of our intervention, the Albanians moved on to terrorize Macedonia, and now they are fighting for parts of Southern Serbia, Montenegro and Greece--to form the Greater Albania that had been their nationalistic and Islamic vision all along. Meanwhile, as UN human rights observer Jiri Dienstbier has said, "Kosovo is an infinitely more dangerous place than it was before" the U.S.-led NATO intervention. What we managed to do, if you can imagine, was destabilize the notoriously unstable Balkans.
Indeed, we mistook for Nazis people who were fighting the Nazis' real heirs. Once we approve independence for Kosovo this year and Albanian borders revert to what they were under Hitler, it'll be worth recalling that an Albanian SS Skanderbeg Division and a Bosnian-Muslim SS Handzar Division fought alongside Hitler, and that Croatia killed 750,000 Serbs and Jews in concentration camps - in ways that humbled the Nazis. By looking for holocausts under every bed, we picked a staged one, and set the stage for a real one; the Serbs were only the Balkans' first victims. New York, Madrid, London and Netanya followed soon after.
For some reason, fate intends the Serbs to be maligned to the end. Croatian President Franjo Tudjman died before the Hague could hand down an indictment for his war crimes - which would have exposed the damning Croatian role in the Balkan wars; Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic was being quietly investigated and died before the indictment came down (which would have been damning to the Bosnian Muslims)--and now Milosevic has died before he could get through his list of defense witnesses, many of whom threatened to further expose the hoax that started a war.
In case you've been obliging both the mainstream and alternative media by not following the Milosevic trial as the accused debunked one charge after another, catching "witness" after "witness" in a lie, here's what you missed--with particular emphasis on the Albanian Islamo-fascist narco-terrorists on whose behalf we declared war on a multi-ethnic European nation:
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 16, 2006
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Milosevic � his gradual, prolonged and protracted murder
Pravda
Front page / Opinion / Columnists
Milosevic – his gradual, prolonged and protracted murder
16.03.2006
Source: URL: http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/77338-Milosevic-0
Callous irresponsibility of the International Penal Court amounts to
wanton murder and a gradual and purposeful process of torture, which
eventually cost Slobodan Milosevic his life.
The International Penal Court at The Hague is in serious trouble,
having breached international law on the human rights of prisoners and
the legally afforded processes for sick persons in its control.
However, in today's world, where rules and conventions and agreements
and laws and charters can be broken capriciously, where any common
rules of decency from yesteryear are swept away by a clique of elitist
barons who pull the world's economic strings, what to expect?
What to expect from a "Court" whose chief prosecutor, Carla del Ponte,
stated publicly that Slobodan Milosevic was guilty before the case had
even started? What to expect from a "Court" which held Slobodan
Milosevic in a state of illegal imprisonment after he had been
kidnapped against the laws of Serbia and Yugoslavia ?
What to expect from a "Court" which denied Slobodan Milosevic the
right to conditions and treatment which would have saved his life?
Denying him this right is tantamount to protracted torture and
eventually, murder.
The law
At the First UN Congress on the Prevention of Crime and Treatment of
Offenders, Annex 1A, Rule 22(2) it is stated that "Sick prisoners who
require specialist treatment shall be transferred to specialised
institutions or to civil hospitals".
The case
Nico Varkevisser, the Vice President of the International Committee to
Defend Slobodan Milosevic, applied to the IPC for "the specialised
medical care he requires (and)…an additional adjournment for the
complete recovery of the defendant". This was on 5th November, 2002.
The reason was because Slobodan Milosevic was physically at risk,
suffering from chronic malignant hypertension and angina pectoris, as
pronounced by a council of medical experts, conditions made worse by
stress. The condition is so serious that untreated, 75% of patients
die within one year.
Yet what conditions did the IPC apportion to him?
He was forced to opt between taking a breath of fresh air or eating a
sandwich in the basement for nourishment;
The chief prosecutor had years to prepare her case, giving her an
unfair advantage since Mr. Milosevic had far less time to prepare and
present his defence even though the Statute of the Tribunal provides
for adequate time and facilities for the preparation of the defence.
Mr. Milosevic was not apportioned these (she callously stuck over
100.000 pages of documents and 600 video cassettes before Milosevic
for him to defend himself);
Slobodan Milosevic was pursuing his fundamental right under the
International Covenant for Civil and Political Rights to defend
himself, yet the IPC did not give him equal conditions under fair
legal practice to do so;
The IPC Unit did not provide an adequate custodial setting for
Slobodan Milosevic to conduct his defence fairly and worse than this,
provided a stimulus for an increase in dangerous levels of stress,
since the conditions were not consistent with what would be reasonably
expected for an adequate defence at such a massive trial, at which he
was fighting alone against massive resources which he did not have and
which he was denied;
The IPC was aware of this since both Mr. Milosevic's personal
physician, Zdravko Mijailovic, MD, PhD and other medical experts had
warned the authorities as to the precarious and dangerous state of
health suffered by the defendant;
Mr. Milosevic was not allowed to travel to Russia for specialised
medical treatment which would have saved his life.
Mr. Milosevic's last message
Mr. Milosevic's last written message was delivered to the Russian
Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 8th March. It was a request for help.
In the letter he claims:
"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…"
"On January 12th (i.e. two months ago) an extremely 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 five years that I'm in their prison".
Why did it take two months to report this? Why was it kept a secret?
Who treated Mr. Milosevic with this drug (which we now discover was to
counter the effects of his treatment)?
In his last letter, Mr. Milosevic spoke of "those who have an interest
to silence me".
Whether or not they managed to silence Mr. Milosevic depends on the
members of the international community, those who defend the state of
law, those who believe in justice and fairness and those who stand for
a world ruled by right and reason, not bullying, belligerence and the
bullet.
The death of Slobodan Milosevic was part of the cabal which has seen
criminal actions of state terrorism become the norm, along with a
callous disregard for common decency and human rights, based upon a
unilateralist Anglo-Saxon Alliance of self-righteousness and sheer
arrogance.
Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
http://www.slobodan-milosevic.org/news/smo031506.htm
DEBUNKING THE CONSPIRACY THEORY: MILOSEVIC COULD NOT HAVE ESCAPED BY
GOING TO THE MEDICAL CENTER IN MOSCOW
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - March 15, 2006
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
On the occasion of Slobodan Milosevic's death, the Hague Tribunal and
the Western media have concocted an elaborate conspiracy theory in an
apparent effort to absolve the tribunal of responsibility.
According to this conspiracy theory, Milosevic secretly took a drug
called Rifampicin to block the effectiveness of his high blood
pressure medicine, which in turn created a fake medical condition that
he used to justify his request to go to Moscow under the pretext of
obtaining medical treatment, however obtaining medical treatment
wasn't Milosevic's real objective that was just a ruse so that he
could make his escape.
Dr. Donald Uges, a professor of clinical and forensic toxicology at
the University of Groningen, was the first to advance this theory in
the media. He told the New York Times "It's like a James Bond story",
and on that score he's absolutely correct it's exactly like a James
Bond story – it's fiction.
Dr. Uges told the New York Times: "There was one escape for Milosevic
out of prison, and that was to Moscow where his wife and son, and
friends were. He wanted to go to Moscow on a one-way trip."
Moscow was never an avenue of escape for Milosevic. On January 18th
the Russian Government gave the Hague Tribunal assurances that it
would guarantee "Milosevic's personal security during his time in
Russia and his return to The Hague within the timeframe specified by
the Tribunal." Milosevic would have been under armed-guard the whole
time he was in Russia. There was absolutely no chance that he could
escape by getting medical treatment Moscow.
Dr. Uges was all over the media, acting more like a politician than a
doctor, he told the Irish Times that Milosevic "took Rifampicin
himself, not for suicide, only for his trip to Moscow." Of course Dr.
Uges is a toxicologist, and not a mind reader. He can't possibly know
what was going on in Milosevic's thoughts, but he didn't let that get
in his way.
Rifampicin is odorless and tasteless, and as such could have been
mixed into Milosevic's food without his knowledge. He was administered
all of his medicine by guards at the prison dispensary. He took the
medicine that they gave him. The drug could have easily been added
into one of his medicine capsules.
Clearly, Dr. Uges can't know whether Milosevic took the drug knowingly
or not, but we can find a clue in the letter that Milosevic wrote to
the Russian Foreign Ministry on March 8th:
"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, willful 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 extremely 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."
"Throughout this whole period, neither have I had any kind of
infectious illness (apart from flu)."
"Also the fact that doctors needed 2 months (to report to me), can't
have any other explanation than we are facing manipulation. In any
case, those who foist on me a drug against leprosy surely 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."
In his interview with the New York Times Dr. Urges confirmed that
March 7th was indeed the day that Milosevic learned the drug had been
found in his blood.
Clearly, the detection of the drug is what motivated Milosevic to
write the letter. As the text of the letter makes plain Milosevic was
not knowingly taking the drug.
The letter raises some serious questions: Why did it take the
tribunal's medical staff two months to tell him that the drug had been
found in his blood? If they knew in January, then why wasn't an
investigation launched immediately to determine how the drug was
getting into his system? Why was this information concealed from him
for two months?
The conspiracy theory being advanced in the media by Dr. Uges and
certain "unnamed sources" at the Hague Tribunal just doesn't hold
water. The conspiracy would have to involve: Milosevic, the Russian
Government, the doctors at the Bakulev Medical Center in Moscow, the
person who was procuring the drug and sneaking it in to him, the
doctor who was advising him on how to take it, etc…. It's all just too
far-fetched to be true.
The fact that the tribunal is floating such a stupid story tells you
right off the bat that they're guilty as sin for Milosevic's death.
Milosevic had no motive to sabotage his own health. A trip to Moscow
for medical treatment would not have allowed him to escape. The
Russian Government guaranteed all the way back in January that it
would return him within the timetable set by the tribunal.
If Milosevic had been sabotaging his health he would have been running
the risk of handing his defense over to Mr. Kay. Anybody who followed
the trial proceedings knows that he would have never done that.
The trial was not going well for the prosecution. They had not
presented a stitch of evidence to show that he ordered or condoned the
commission of a single crime. The prosecution spent a great deal of
time trying to prove that crimes were committed, but they never made a
link between any of the alleged crimes and Milosevic.
At the end of the trial the judges were going to have to write a
judgment based on the evidence presented in court. Writing a credible
judgment convicting Milosevic on the evidence would have been
impossible, because the prosecution never managed to link him to a
crime.
The Milosevic trial was an embarrassment for a lot of very powerful
people, which is why the media very rarely covered the proceedings. He
was using the trial as a platform to expose the crimes committed in
Yugoslavia by various Western governments and political officials.
Milosevic had an extremely long list of enemies. A person would have
to be an fool to think that nobody wanted to kill him. It is a
well-known fact that MI6 was plotting his assassination in 1992.
It isn't hard to believe that one of his many enemies wanted to shut
him up so badly that they poisoned him. Maybe they didn't want to kill
him outright; maybe they just wanted him to be sick enough that Mr.
Kay could take over his defense.
At any rate, it's a lot easier to believe that a foreign intelligence
agency, or a corrupt tribunal official, was able to infiltrate one guy
into the prison who mixed the drug into Milosevic's food or into some
of his other medicines.
Whatever their intentions might have been, Milosevic is dead, and
those responsible must be held legally accountable. Clearly, Mr.
Robinson, Mr. Kwon, and Mr. Bonomy bear the most responsibility
because it was their decision that denied him the medical care he
urgently needed in Moscow.
The doctors who knew that the Rifampicin was in his blood, but didn't
tell him for two months must also be held accountable, and the prison
officials who allowed the drug to be smuggled into the prison must
also be held responsible. If nothing else they were negligent in their
duty to keep non-prescribed drugs out of the prison.
Serbian News Network - SNN
news@antic.org
http://www.antic.org/
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 16, 2006
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He lived and died for us and for a better world
"If we cannot convict you on our lies, we will at least make sure you don't
get out alive"
http://blog.lewrockwell.com/lewrw/archives/010149.html
'''''''''''''''''''
To the Family of President Slobodan Milosevic:
When I heard the news that Slobodan Milosevic had died I did not want to
believe it. I did not want to believe that evil had triumphed over good, or
that the evil that had been done to this brave and beautiful man could have
finally killed him. When I heard it again on the news, my heart sank and I
was deeply sad. His spirit and brilliant mind were indomitable, but his body
was destroyed by the conditions of his arrest and the willful decision by
the Hague Tribunal to let him die in prison rather than receive the medical
treatment they knew he needed. And why proceed with a trial in which he had
already proven his innocence? So in the end this is how the Hague Tribunal
has made its mark on history - with the negligent homicide of Slobodan
Milosevic.
Slobodan Milosevic was not easy to destroy; Slobodan Milosevic was killed
three times. The first time was when they destroyed the country he loved and
lived for - Yugoslavia. The second time was with character assassination,
the preferred weapon of nameless cowards, criminals and liars. The trial
itself did not kill him. He vindicated himself, his country and his people.
He lived and died for us. What more can you say about a man? But ultimately
with no better option before it, the ICTY decided to choke the life out of
him by depriving him of the essential medical care he needed to survive.
My father was also killed by negligence and so I know the bitterness one
feels after such an event. But you can take solace in the fact that Slobo
died a martyr's death. He fought to defend his country, his nation, and a
progressive socialist vision of humanity against the onslaught of a
militarist and imperialist alliance of puppets and puppeteers. He was killed
not because he was a nationalist, but precisely because he believed in
multinationalist unity and justice and a just economic order inimical to the
interests of multinational corporations and their financial and political
institutions. He is the most famous and most courageous Serb of our time.
And in light of the evidence presented at his trial, history will have to
acquit him of all of the monstrous allegations made against him which the
ICTY would not do even though they knew he was not guilty as charged.
Finally, as you know, I had the privilege of meeting President Milosevic
several times. He had great intelligence, warmth, sense of humor and wit,
wisdom, kindness and charm that I will never forget as long as I live. He
was so strong and energetic despite his illness. The prison nurses came
frequently during my visits and reported the news - 240 over 80 or worse.
How did he survive it so long? He was amazing in every way. And then there
was his smile and his penetrating stare which gave you detailed messages
with a single look.
As I said before, he lived and died for us and for a better world. I know
you are proud of him. I feel the same way. And one day I hope the whole
world will feel this way too. If there is a better future, it will.
Barry Lituchy, New York City, 11 March 2006
''''''''''''''
Slobo back to Belgrade
http://today.reuters.com/tv/videoStory.aspx?isSummitStory=false&storyId=2be1
029ead5363bb7c05ed6a9c8442804ae9a0d6
Belgrade getting ready to bid final farewell to Slobodan Milosevic
http://www.itar-tass.com/eng/level2.html?NewsID=4630027&PageNum=0
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 16, 2006
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Scabegoat RIP (J Bisset)
National Post (f/k/a The Financial Post) (Canada)
March 15, 2006 Wednesday
All but Toronto Edition
ISSUES & IDEAS
HEADLINE: Scapegoat, R.I.P.
BY: James Bissett, National Post
Slobodan Milosevic's obituaries are damning. In death, as in the last years
of his life, the former Serbian president is being blamed for all of the death
and destruction that accompanied the breakup of the Yugoslav Federation in the
early 1990s. He has been described as the "Butcher of the Balkans." He is
accused of masterminding four wars, of committing genocide and ethnic cleansing.
These charges have been repeated so many times that they have become part of
received wisdom. Yet the facts tell a different story.
Two weeks ago I travelled to The Hague to appear as a witness in defence of
Milosevic at his war-crimes trial. We met in his cell for two days, going over
my testimony.
On the first day, he seemed relaxed and in good health. On the second day,
following several hours of discussions, he suddenly became flushed and appeared
to be ill. I asked if he was alright, and he said he was OK, but then explained
that he suffered from a terrible ringing in his ears. The prison doctors had
told him it was "psychological," but finally agreed to a MRI, which revealed
that an abnormal artery was affecting his hearing. He told me he did not believe
he was getting adequate medical attention in the prison, and wanted to get
specialist treatment in Moscow, but tribunal officials had refused.
He regarded the presiding body -- the UN's International Criminal Tribunal
for the Former Yugoslavia -- as a political court set up to make him the
scapegoat for everything that had gone wrong in Yugoslavia. He was aware that
there was, in effect, a Western news blackout of anything revealed during the
trial that was favourable to his case. And he was also resigned to the reality
that he would be found guilty.
I have been asked often why I was willing to appear as a witness for a man
branded by the media as another Hitler. The answer is simple. His prosecution
was the most important war-crimes trial since the Nuremberg Trials of leading
Nazis following the Second World War. It was important that the presumption of
innocence be maintained, and it was equally important that those with relevant
information appear at the court so that their evidence could be heard. I was in
Belgrade as Canada's ambassador during the critical early stages of the Yugoslav
breakup drama, and I was not prepared to remain silent about what I observed.
Even in the early days, it was apparent that most of the media reporting
about the cause and course of the Yugoslav fighting was biased. In effect, the
Serbs had been branded as the bad guys, and any news developments were
interpreted on that basis.
But it was not the Serbians and "Slobo" who started the wars in Yugoslavia.
The fighting started because Slovenia, then a Yugoslav republic, declared
unilateral independence and used force to seize customs posts along the Austrian
border.
The federal prime minister of Yugoslavia, Ante Markovic, who happened to be a
Croatian, ordered the army into Slovenia to restore order. The army was met by
armed resistance and retired to barracks in Croatia to avoid further bloodshed.
The Croatian security and paramilitary forces then surrounded the federal
barracks and fighting broke out in Croatia. At this time, Milosevic, as
president of Serbia, had no control over the federal army. (Incidentally, the
federal minister of defence at the time was also a Croatian, as was the foreign
minister.)
Later, when the army lost all of its non-Serbian soldiers, it did become a
Serb-dominated force. But when the federal government collapsed, it was none
other than Milosevic who ordered all Serbian soldiers out of Bosnia. (At the
time I was asked to call upon him to congratulate him for this decision.) From
the outset of the violence sweeping across Yugoslavia, Milosevic was a key
player in all of the peace plans that were proposed. Had it not been for him,
the 1995 Dayton peace agreement could not have taken place. He was heralded then
by U.S. secretary of state Madeline Albright as a man of peace.
Although the war crimes Tribunal was set up in 1993, it was not until the
bombing of Kosovo five years later that a hurried indictment was issued against
Milosevic on charges of genocide. Yet the forensic teams that searched for
evidence of this genocide in Kosovo have so far discovered fewer than 3,000
bodies -- bad enough, but not genocide.
Milosevic was a communist party boss. He was an apparatchik and an
opportunist interested in holding on to his power, prestige and privileges. He
was not an ardent Serbian nationalist and I believe had little interest in a
"greater Serbia." As the president of Serbia, he was forced to display sympathy
to his fellow Serbians in Bosnia and Croatia, but he did not have authority over
them. He was prepared to help them battle brutally for land and power, but he
was also prepared to sell them out if it was to his own advantage.
There are many Serbians who despise him for that. It is unfortunate that he
died before being given the chance to set down his side of the story. Now we
only have his opponent's version of events.
GRAPHIC: Black & White
Photo: Eric Miller, Reuters; From left, president Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia,
president Alija Izetbegovic of Bosnia-Herzegovina and president Franjo Tudjman
of Croatia sign the Dayton peace accord on Nov. 21, 1995.
Copyright 2006 National Post
All Rights Reserved
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 16, 2006
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MILOSEVIC'S DEATH: A Political Assassination Blamed on the Victim
MILOSEVIC'S DEATH: A POLITICAL ASSASSINATION BLAMED ON THE
VICTIM
By Sara Flounders
Co-Director, International Action Center
In the summer of 2004 I met with former Yugoslav President
Slobodan Milosevic in Scheveningen prison when I was
approved as a defense witness. Before I could get in, I
had to pass four totally separate check points, unable to
take in anything but papers. Each level of security was
more rigid than the one before.
No one who has met with President Milosevic over the past
four years would believe he would risk killing himself
rather than finishing his trial. And no one who visited
Scheveningen in The Hague would believe the outlandish
claims that somehow he was able to smuggle in
un-prescribed medications on a regular basis. They would
instead suspect that the authorities were desperately
trying to cover up their own crimes.
My role as witness was based on my trip to Yugoslavia in
the spring of 1999, during the 78-day U.S./NATO bombing. I
visited bombed schools, hospitals, heating plants and
market places, recording the harm done to civilians. In
addition, I had written since 1993 on the
behind-the-scenes U.S. role in the strangulation and
forced dismemberment of Yugoslavia.
Even after my name was accepted as a defense witness, it
was a complicated and lengthy procedure to make the visit.
Though all was approved on the day of the visit, it still
took four hours to get through the checkpoints into the
special unit inside the prison where the defendants for
the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) were kept totally segregated from
general population and closely monitored.
Scheveningen prison is a maximum-security high-tech
facility. Milosevic and other indicted prisoners are
housed in a special prison unit within the larger prison.
This section is spread over four floors with 12 cells
each. The unit is specially patrolled by United Nations
guards. Cameras are everywhere. Every movement of the
prisoners is monitored and controlled. When the president
was first placed in his cell, lights were kept on 24 hours
a day and every motion was monitored.
WHERE DID RIFAMPICIN COME FROM?
Now the Dutch authorities claim that Milosevic was taking
a rare, difficult-to-acquire antibiotic used to treat
leprosy or tuberculosis that has the unique ability to
counteract the medicine he was taking to control his high
blood pressure. How did this medicine, rifampicin, get
into Milosevic's system? He was held in a maximum security
prison in triple lock down in a special contained unit
within a larger Dutch prison once used by the Nazis to
detain Dutch resistance fighters.
When rifampicin was found last Jan. 12 in Milosevic's
blood, the ICTY kept the report of the blood tests secret,
even from Milosevic and his doctors, who were complaining
that something terribly wrong was damaging the defendant's
health. While the prisoner and his defense committee and
assistant lawyers were demanding health information, the
ICTY officials sat on this report. If ICTY officials
responsible for Milosevic's health really believed he was
sneaking toxic medications into the prison, why hadn't
they publicized this report much earlier?
DELAYS HURT MILOSEVIC
Equally outlandish are the claims that Milosevic staged
his illness to delay the trial. The prosecution delayed
the trial, first by adding charges against the president
regarding Croatia and Bosnia when they realized they had
no war-crimes case on the original Kosovo charges, then by
bringing hundreds of witnesses to generate 500,000 pages
of prosecution testimony from February 2002 to February
2004.
Each time Milosevic was too sick to continue in court, the
prosecution moved to impose counsel and to take away the
prisoner's right to present his own defense. Milosevic was
determined to use the trial as a platform to defend not
only himself but the people of Yugoslavia, and to indict
the U.S., Germany and the NATO powers for their role in
the criminal destruction of his country. He welcomed the
trial as the only platform where he could make the
historical record. In his words to the court he constantly
described why, despite his bad health, he was determined
to continue.
When I met Milosevic it was in the special room that was
the only place where the ICTY allowed him to work or have
the court papers to prepare for his defense. Whenever his
blood pressure rose and he was unable to continue the
court sessions, he was also barred from any access to his
defense materials.
During each step of the trial Milosevic's cardiovascular
problems, especially his high blood pressure had resulted
in several delays in the trial. At each step the ICTY
officials tried to use the issue of his health in constant
efforts to deny him the right to conduct his own defense.
Neither the illness nor the delays helped his defense.
The ICTY charged that Milosevic was secretly medicating
himself and avoiding taking prescribed medicines.
Milosevic answered this charge himself for the court
record on Sept. 1, 2004: "You probably don't know the
practice in your own Detention Unit. I take my medication
in the presence of guards. I'm given them. I take them in
the presence of the guard, and the guard writes down in
the book the exact time when I ingested those medicines."
Despite the life-threatening cardiovascular risk raised in
every dispute with the prosecution, tribunal officials
refused even to secure regular check-ups of the
president's health condition. They also denied access for
months to specialists who were willing to come to
Scheveningen, delaying his care.
The president's own explanation of his problem was more
consistent and credible than the ICTY's. In a letter
addressed to the Russian Embassy two days before he died,
Milosevic writes that he has taken no antibiotics in more
than four years. He asks why the medical report on the
discovery of rifampicin was kept secret from him for
almost two months. He writes that he believes that "active
steps are being taken to destroy my health." He warns that
he is sure he is being poisoned and that his life is in
danger.
A POLITICAL TRIBUNAL
The ICTY's handling of President Milosevic's death has
been like its handling of the entire trial: an attempt to
blame the victim for the crime.
The ICTY is not a real international court, with the
ability to try any accused war criminal. It is a political
court set up by the UN Security Council at the insistence
of Secretary of State Madeline Albright in 1993 in
violation of the UN Charter. Its scope is limited to
trying the peoples of the former Yugoslavia and the vast
majority of prisoners are Serbs. It is a propaganda
apparatus and internment camp for political prisoners
disguised as an unbiased court. It aims to punish the
victims for the crimes committed against them and to
absolve the imperialist powers who invaded, bombed,
dismembered and forced the privatization of the Socialist
Federation of Yugoslavia.
When Milosevic discussed the trial with me, his scope of
historical knowledge, his energy despite his illness, cut
through my own jet-lag and fatigue from the four-hour
entrance hurdle and allowed us to finish the interview
with enthusiasm for the next step of the tribunal.
Now the world is asked to believe that Milosevic is
responsible for his own death. It is a scenario so
incredibly complex, an elaborate suicide story that is as
improbable as the charges he was facing. The
bought-and-paid-for corporate media is accepting and
propagating the story of his death in the same servile
fashion they accepted the very existence of this illegal
court and the justification for the destruction of
Yugoslavia.
Milosevic is now gone. But his summation answering two
years of the prosecution case and his opening defense
speech live on. He has left a ringing indictment of U.S.
and European big-power intervention in the Balkans in a
historic document in an "I accuse" format. His speech,
which contains extensive documentation and factual detail,
has been published in Serbian, Greek, French, Russian and
English. This response, "The Defense Speaks-for History
and the Future," (IAC 2006) will stand long after the
tawdry war propaganda has collapsed.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 16, 2006
0 Comments
Russia: Milosevic's Death Sparks Fury With UN Tribunal
Russia: Milosevic's Death Sparks Fury With UN Tribunal
By Claire Bigg
Milosevic's wife, Mira Markovic, lives in Russia
(epa)
The lower house of Russia's parliament on March 15 lashed out at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague, blaming it for the death of late Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic and calling for its dissolution. Over the past few days, a number of high-ranking political figures have spoken harshly against the court. What is behind Russian anger at Milosevic's death?
MOSCOW, March 16, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- Russian deputies unanimously approved a statement accusing the UN war crimes tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) of systematically applying double standards and bias since its creation in 1993.
The statement, which is not legally binding, dismisses the court as "useless" and says it is "essential" that it be immediately disbanded.
Konstantin Kosachyov, the head of the Duma's Foreign Affairs Committee and the man who drafted the statement, accused the international court of being anti-Serb.
"The problem with the Hague tribunal is that, in line with a higher political task given to it, it has established once and for all who the criminals are and that they are in Serbia, while NATO is -- like Caesar's wife -- above suspicion," Kosachyov said.
The statement came just days after the sudden death of Milosevic, who was found dead in his cell at The Hague on March 11. An autopsy has revealed he succumbed to a heart attack.
Charges
Milosevic had been in custody since 2001. He was standing trial on 66 charges that included genocide, war crimes, and crimes against humanity committed during the wars in Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, and Kosovo in the 1990s.
The death of Milosevic before the pronouncement of a final verdict came as a severe disappointment to many, not least his prosecutors and victims.
Russia, however, has other reasons for being upset at Milosevic's passing.
The former Yugoslav leader had fervent supporters among the Russian political establishment, particularly among nationalists and communists.
Speaking to RFE/RL's Russian Service, Communist Party leader Gennady Zyuganov cast serious doubt on the UN tribunal's legitimacy: "Even the most pro-American forces in Russia are now silent and ashamed, because they understand that today it's Milosevic, and tomorrow they may get to you. I think all responsible politicians and citizens are seriously asking themselves what kind of tribunal this is, what kind of mock trial, what kind of procedures these are, when one is interrogated hundreds of times for eight or 10 hours. This is enough to push anyone to a heart attack and to death."
On March 15, a group of communists in St. Petersburg wrote to President Vladimir Putin to request that a street be renamed after Milosevic and a bust of him be erected in the city.
Slav Brothers
Russia and Serbia have close historical ties, are both predominantly Orthodox Christian, and have been allies in most of the 20th century's armed conflicts. Business ties between both countries also run deep.
Testifying to these warm relations, Moscow is currently home to Milosevic's wife, son, and brother Borislav Milosevic, who served as Yugoslav ambassador to Russia between 1998 and 2000.
The Kremlin's strong aversion to international rights watchdogs, which it accuses of meddling in Russia's internal affairs, may also explain such passionate calls for the dissolution of the tribunal. Some suggest that the Russian authorities may also fear being hauled one day before The Hague tribunal for crimes against civilians in war-torn Chechnya.
Many in Russia blame the UN tribunal for Milosevic's death.
In its statement March 15, the State Duma called for an independent international inquiry into the circumstances of his death. Deputies accused the court of "negligence or malicious intent."
The statement echoed earlier comments by Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who on March 13 slammed the court for denying Milosevic permission to seek heart treatment in Moscow: "The Russian Federation provided the tribunal with 100 percent state guarantees that after the completion of the treatment Milosevic would return to The Hague. Those guarantees were examined during a special session of the tribunal, which found them insufficient. Essentially they did not believe Russia. This can only disturb us. It can only worry us that Milosevic passed away shortly afterwards."
Lavrov also said the late Yugoslav leader had sent a letter to the Foreign Ministry three days before dying. In the letter, he reportedly complained the treatment he was receiving in The Hague was harming him.
The foreign minister dispatched a team of Russian doctors earlier this week to check the findings of the official autopsy. The Russian medical team later endorsed those findings, but raised questions about what might have caused the heart attack that killed Milosevic.
Defense Witnesses
This storm of accusations is unlikely to come as much of a surprise to The Hague.
Anton Nikiforov, the chief adviser to the UN's chief war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte, told RFE/RL's Russian Service that Russia has consistently refused to cooperate with the tribunal: "We have asked Russia for certain documents connected to the Milosevic cases and to other cases, but we almost never received anything. Milosevic had high-ranking witnesses from Russia. When we asked these witnesses whether they were ready to show us some of the written documents supporting their testimonies -- since these documents obviously had an official or confidential character -- no one has been able to show them to us."
Three Russian defense witnesses appeared at Milosevic's defense trial -- two former Russian premiers, Yevgeny Primakov and Nikolai Ryzhkov, and General Leonid Ivashov, who once headed the Defense Ministry's International Department.
Milosevic was the sixth person charged with war crimes in the Balkans to die at The Hague. A week earlier, former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic, who had been a key prosecution witness against Milosevic, committed suicide in the same prison.
He had been sentenced in 2004 to 13 years in prison for crimes against humanity after pleading guilty to persecuting the non-Serb population in Croatia's Krajina region.
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/3/f7df23e5-42ee-4eff-987e-a74ac4a6265a.html
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 16, 2006
0 Comments
March 15, 2006
Medical mystery swirls around Milosevic
A ruse or poisoning?
Medical mystery swirls around Milosevic
By Elisabeth Rosenthal and Marlise Simons International Herald Tribune
THURSDAY, MARCH 16, 2006
Was Slobodan Milosevic a normal 64-year-old with manageable medical problems - from high blood pressure to hearing loss - that he manipulated and exaggerated in an attempt to gain his freedom? Or was Milosevic, as his supporters claim, perilously ill, in need of urgent medical evacuation from his detention center, mistreated by prison doctors and perhaps poisoned as well?
For months before his death last weekend, Milosevic and the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague had been sparring over the state of his health. His passing prematurely ended a war crimes trial that had dragged on over four years, but only deepened the medical mystery that was evolving as he lived.
Preliminary autopsy results found that Milosevic had died of a heart attack, although doctors who examined him just months ago did not feel he had significant heart disease. Likewise, blood work before he died detected the presence of a medicine he had not been prescribed, one that would have put him at grave risk by reducing the effectiveness of his blood pressure pills.
Court officials and some scientists have been quick to insinuate that Milosevic was secretly ingesting the extra medicine to exacerbate his medical problems so that he could be transferred to a clinic in Moscow, where his family now lives.
But some confidants, including doctors who spoke to Milosevic in his last weeks of life, said he was alarmed by his poor health and feared prison doctors, as well as Dutch specialist consultants. were providing inadequate treatment.
In any event, several doctors who recently examined Milosevic concluded that the tribunal, in its skepticism about his litany of ailments, at times failed adequately to investigate them.
"His medical condition was not good, so we asked for additional tests to evaluate his cardiac situation," said Dr. Florence Leclercq, a prominent French cardiologist who examined Milosevic for about three hours last November.
"But these investigations were never performed and now that's a problem."
Dr. Patrick Barriot, another French physician who visited Milosevic frequently - last in December - said the former Serbian leader was suffering from increasingly severe high blood pressure in the six months before his death, with symptoms including headaches, visual changes and a constant thrumming noise in his ears.
The pressure routinely read 180/110, the physician said, well above safe limits.
"Each time I saw him, he was clearly deteriorating, more and more tired," said Barriot, who came to know Milosevic when stationed in the former Yugoslavia, and who testified as a defense witness.
Although long-term high blood pressure strains the heart and increases the risk of heart attack, Milosevic did not have any classic symptoms of heart disease, such as chest pain, Leclercq said.
When she heard the autopsy verdict of heart attack, she was surprised.
Attempts to make sense of Milosevic's death are hampered by the fact that reams of medical exams, a list of the medicines he was taking and details of the autopsy are regarded as confidential by the court.
Doctors permitted to see him, or medical records, said they had to sign promises not to divulge details. A toxicology report is expected later this week.
What is clear is that recently Miloevic's blood pressure, a problem since the start of his trial, had became increasingly difficult to control, and prison doctors long suspected him of not taking his medicine, said Donald Uges, one of two Dutch toxicologists consulted on the case.
After several weeks of sleuthing, the toxicologists recently determined instead that he had ingested the antibiotic rifampicin, which would blunt the effect of his blood pressure medicine. Uges, as well as tribunal officials speaking on the condition of anonymity, suggested that the antibiotic was taken intentionally, smuggled in by visitors.
But Barriot dismissed the charge, saying that Milosevic had called him several times recently, "very anxious about his blood pressure" and whether detention-center guards were giving him the right medicine - a worry he brought up in court as well.
"He had no confidence in the drugs or the treatments that were given him in jail," Barriot said.
Leclercq said that when she examined Milosevic last Nov. 4 with two other physicians, "his cardiac situation was extremely difficult to evaluate."
Prison officials assured her that some cardiac tests, like an ultrasound, had been done and were "normal" but could not show her the actual test results, leaving her to conclude that more was needed, she said from her clinic at the Hôpital Arnaud de Villeneuve, in Montpellier, France.
"What was shocking was that in four years lots of tests and exams on his heart had never been done," said Dr. Vukasin Andric, a Serbian physician who also examined that day, noting that Milosevic had had thorough evaluations of organs.
Alexandra Milenov, a spokesperson for the tribunal, said Milosevic had been examined repeatedly by prison doctors and independent specialists, including cardiologists, and that medicine had to be taken under supervision, though in court papers doctors complained that they could not properly monitor Milosevic's medicine intake because of his relatively unen- cumbered access to visitors.
Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, said she knew Milosevic was ill and had a dossier of about 150 medical reports from various doctors concerning his case.
"If there was one person who was not overlooked it was Milosevic," she said.
Since Milosevic arrived in The Hague in 2001, neither side trusted the other's medical opinions, and debates about his health often eclipsed testimony.
Last Nov. 15, when Milosevic repeatedly interrupted trial proceedings with attempts to discuss a medical report, judges cut him short:
Judge Patrick Robinson: I do not wish to have it discussed now. Are you deaf? Call your next witness.
Milosevic: I probably am deaf.
Judge Robinson: Well if you are, we'll see about that. Call the next witness.
Last fall, because of concerns about his declining health - notably the severe phantom noise in his ears - Milosevic requested a consultation by the outside doctors, a review that Barriot helped to arrange. The experts included Leclercq, Dr. Margarita Shumilina, a Russian vascular specialist, and Dr. Vukasin Andric, an ear specialist.
Shumulina and Andric concluded that Milosevic's hearing problems were "symptoms of disordered brain circulation because of hypertension," according to a confidential report, part of which was read to a reporter.
In practical terms, the team suggested a six-week break in the trial to "reduce or at least stabilize" symptoms - an idea met with skepticism on the court, whose own experts had concluded that the hearing problems were not indicative of serious vascular problems, and that rest would have no effect.
After more than four years of proceedings, the judges were also under some pressure to bring the trial to an end.
Judge Iain Bonomy, in a scathing dissent, noted that the whole consultation was highly suspect because of political ties between Andric and Milosevic. Andric, who had practiced in Kosovo, was a defense witness at Milosevic's trial for war crimes, asserting that Muslim children in Kosovo had pretended to have been poisoned by Serbian troops.
On the day last December the court was to adjourn for a Christmas holiday break, Milosevic upped the ante, requesting permission to fly to Moscow for treatment, which was denied.
By January his blood pressure readings became increasingly erratic, with levels as high as 260/180, Andric has said in the Serbian press. Irate at charges that he had not been taking his medicine, Milosevic agreed to an examination in the prison infirmary, remaining under observation for hours after taking his pills.
"The test established that when I take medication under control, the level of that medication in my blood is far below the expected level," he told the court.
Ironically, it was in part that exercise that led prison doctors to suspect foul play, perhaps by Milosevic, Uges said.
Was there some substance that would nullify the blood pressure medicines?
"We realized that the only thing that could do this was rifampicin," he said. A blood sample was found to contain the compound.
Used commonly to treat tuberculosis, rifampicin is known to reduce the effect of other medicines, from oral contraceptives to blood pressure pills, by stimulating liver enzymes that break down a host of drugs.
But how did rifampicin get into his blood: Was Milosevic intentionally taking it? Or was someone with access to the prison trying to poison him, a charge his supporters and family make?
The drug is common in prison pharmacies in Russia and the United States, where tuberculosis is relatively common, but TB is rare in the Netherlands. Milenov could not say if rifampicin was stocked in the detention center.
In any event, some experts said rifampicin itself was unlikely to explain Milosevic's death, since he did not die of a stroke, a far more common problem with high blood pressure.
Also, its effects on blood pressure "could have simply been counteracted by increasing the dose of President Milosevic's medicine," as is commonly required in patients on rifampicin, said Joris Delanghe, a physician and toxicologist at the University of Ghent.
Skeptics point out that rifampicin is a difficult substance for anyone to use surreptitiously, since its effects are variable and it turns the urine red. And this 64-year-old with a history of smoking and high blood pressure may well have had undetected heart disease, doctors said.
"Refractory hypertension exists and some patients are hard to treat," Delanghe said. He added that for Milosevic, the mental stress of being imprisoned must have been "a major cardiovascular risk factor in itself."
Elisabeth Rosenthal reported for the International Herald Tribune, and Marlise Simons for The New York Times.
Was Slobodan Milosevic a normal 64-year-old with manageable medical problems - from high blood pressure to hearing loss - that he manipulated and exaggerated in an attempt to gain his freedom? Or was Milosevic, as his supporters claim, perilously ill, in need of urgent medical evacuation from his detention center, mistreated by prison doctors and perhaps poisoned as well?
For months before his death last weekend, Milosevic and the United Nations war crimes tribunal in The Hague had been sparring over the state of his health. His passing prematurely ended a war crimes trial that had dragged on over four years, but only deepened the medical mystery that was evolving as he lived.
Preliminary autopsy results found that Milosevic had died of a heart attack, although doctors who examined him just months ago did not feel he had significant heart disease. Likewise, blood work before he died detected the presence of a medicine he had not been prescribed, one that would have put him at grave risk by reducing the effectiveness of his blood pressure pills.
Court officials and some scientists have been quick to insinuate that Milosevic was secretly ingesting the extra medicine to exacerbate his medical problems so that he could be transferred to a clinic in Moscow, where his family now lives.
But some confidants, including doctors who spoke to Milosevic in his last weeks of life, said he was alarmed by his poor health and feared prison doctors, as well as Dutch specialist consultants. were providing inadequate treatment.
In any event, several doctors who recently examined Milosevic concluded that the tribunal, in its skepticism about his litany of ailments, at times failed adequately to investigate them.
"His medical condition was not good, so we asked for additional tests to evaluate his cardiac situation," said Dr. Florence Leclercq, a prominent French cardiologist who examined Milosevic for about three hours last November.
"But these investigations were never performed and now that's a problem."
Dr. Patrick Barriot, another French physician who visited Milosevic frequently - last in December - said the former Serbian leader was suffering from increasingly severe high blood pressure in the six months before his death, with symptoms including headaches, visual changes and a constant thrumming noise in his ears.
The pressure routinely read 180/110, the physician said, well above safe limits.
"Each time I saw him, he was clearly deteriorating, more and more tired," said Barriot, who came to know Milosevic when stationed in the former Yugoslavia, and who testified as a defense witness.
Although long-term high blood pressure strains the heart and increases the risk of heart attack, Milosevic did not have any classic symptoms of heart disease, such as chest pain, Leclercq said.
When she heard the autopsy verdict of heart attack, she was surprised.
Attempts to make sense of Milosevic's death are hampered by the fact that reams of medical exams, a list of the medicines he was taking and details of the autopsy are regarded as confidential by the court.
Doctors permitted to see him, or medical records, said they had to sign promises not to divulge details. A toxicology report is expected later this week.
What is clear is that recently Miloevic's blood pressure, a problem since the start of his trial, had became increasingly difficult to control, and prison doctors long suspected him of not taking his medicine, said Donald Uges, one of two Dutch toxicologists consulted on the case.
After several weeks of sleuthing, the toxicologists recently determined instead that he had ingested the antibiotic rifampicin, which would blunt the effect of his blood pressure medicine. Uges, as well as tribunal officials speaking on the condition of anonymity, suggested that the antibiotic was taken intentionally, smuggled in by visitors.
But Barriot dismissed the charge, saying that Milosevic had called him several times recently, "very anxious about his blood pressure" and whether detention-center guards were giving him the right medicine - a worry he brought up in court as well.
"He had no confidence in the drugs or the treatments that were given him in jail," Barriot said.
Leclercq said that when she examined Milosevic last Nov. 4 with two other physicians, "his cardiac situation was extremely difficult to evaluate."
Prison officials assured her that some cardiac tests, like an ultrasound, had been done and were "normal" but could not show her the actual test results, leaving her to conclude that more was needed, she said from her clinic at the Hôpital Arnaud de Villeneuve, in Montpellier, France.
"What was shocking was that in four years lots of tests and exams on his heart had never been done," said Dr. Vukasin Andric, a Serbian physician who also examined that day, noting that Milosevic had had thorough evaluations of organs.
Alexandra Milenov, a spokesperson for the tribunal, said Milosevic had been examined repeatedly by prison doctors and independent specialists, including cardiologists, and that medicine had to be taken under supervision, though in court papers doctors complained that they could not properly monitor Milosevic's medicine intake because of his relatively unen- cumbered access to visitors.
Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor, said she knew Milosevic was ill and had a dossier of about 150 medical reports from various doctors concerning his case.
"If there was one person who was not overlooked it was Milosevic," she said.
Since Milosevic arrived in The Hague in 2001, neither side trusted the other's medical opinions, and debates about his health often eclipsed testimony.
Last Nov. 15, when Milosevic repeatedly interrupted trial proceedings with attempts to discuss a medical report, judges cut him short:
Judge Patrick Robinson: I do not wish to have it discussed now. Are you deaf? Call your next witness.
Milosevic: I probably am deaf.
Judge Robinson: Well if you are, we'll see about that. Call the next witness.
Last fall, because of concerns about his declining health - notably the severe phantom noise in his ears - Milosevic requested a consultation by the outside doctors, a review that Barriot helped to arrange. The experts included Leclercq, Dr. Margarita Shumilina, a Russian vascular specialist, and Dr. Vukasin Andric, an ear specialist.
Shumulina and Andric concluded that Milosevic's hearing problems were "symptoms of disordered brain circulation because of hypertension," according to a confidential report, part of which was read to a reporter.
In practical terms, the team suggested a six-week break in the trial to "reduce or at least stabilize" symptoms - an idea met with skepticism on the court, whose own experts had concluded that the hearing problems were not indicative of serious vascular problems, and that rest would have no effect.
After more than four years of proceedings, the judges were also under some pressure to bring the trial to an end.
Judge Iain Bonomy, in a scathing dissent, noted that the whole consultation was highly suspect because of political ties between Andric and Milosevic. Andric, who had practiced in Kosovo, was a defense witness at Milosevic's trial for war crimes, asserting that Muslim children in Kosovo had pretended to have been poisoned by Serbian troops.
On the day last December the court was to adjourn for a Christmas holiday break, Milosevic upped the ante, requesting permission to fly to Moscow for treatment, which was denied.
By January his blood pressure readings became increasingly erratic, with levels as high as 260/180, Andric has said in the Serbian press. Irate at charges that he had not been taking his medicine, Milosevic agreed to an examination in the prison infirmary, remaining under observation for hours after taking his pills.
"The test established that when I take medication under control, the level of that medication in my blood is far below the expected level," he told the court.
Ironically, it was in part that exercise that led prison doctors to suspect foul play, perhaps by Milosevic, Uges said.
Was there some substance that would nullify the blood pressure medicines?
"We realized that the only thing that could do this was rifampicin," he said. A blood sample was found to contain the compound.
Used commonly to treat tuberculosis, rifampicin is known to reduce the effect of other medicines, from oral contraceptives to blood pressure pills, by stimulating liver enzymes that break down a host of drugs.
But how did rifampicin get into his blood: Was Milosevic intentionally taking it? Or was someone with access to the prison trying to poison him, a charge his supporters and family make?
The drug is common in prison pharmacies in Russia and the United States, where tuberculosis is relatively common, but TB is rare in the Netherlands. Milenov could not say if rifampicin was stocked in the detention center.
In any event, some experts said rifampicin itself was unlikely to explain Milosevic's death, since he did not die of a stroke, a far more common problem with high blood pressure.
Also, its effects on blood pressure "could have simply been counteracted by increasing the dose of President Milosevic's medicine," as is commonly required in patients on rifampicin, said Joris Delanghe, a physician and toxicologist at the University of Ghent.
Skeptics point out that rifampicin is a difficult substance for anyone to use surreptitiously, since its effects are variable and it turns the urine red. And this 64-year-old with a history of smoking and high blood pressure may well have had undetected heart disease, doctors said.
"Refractory hypertension exists and some patients are hard to treat," Delanghe said. He added that for Milosevic, the mental stress of being imprisoned must have been "a major cardiovascular risk factor in itself."
Elisabeth Rosenthal reported for the International Herald Tribune, and Marlise Simons for The New York Times.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Wednesday, March 15, 2006
0 Comments
FUNERAL OF PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC
FUNERAL OF PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC
Wednesday, 15 March 2006
Remains of President Milosevic arrived to Belgrade
Thursday, 16 March
Casket with remains of President Milosevic will be from 12:00 pm placed in the Museum "25 May" (Bulevar Mira, Belgrade) where the people will be able to pay their respect
Friday, 17 March
Casket with remains of President Milosevic will be whole day in the Museum "25 May" (Bulevar Mira, Belgrade) where the people will be able to pay their respect
Saturday, 18 March
Casket with remains of President Milosevic will be in the morning in the Museum "25 May" (Bulevar Mira, Belgrade) where the people will be able to pay their respect and then the casket will be moved to
12:00 Central commemoration - farewell rally in front of the Federal Parliament in Belgrade and finally to his home town Pozarevac for burial.
All people, all friends, supporters, ICDSM members, parties, organizations and officials from Serbia and abroad are welcome to attend all parts of the funeral.
Last minute changes of the above schedule are possible due to obstruction by the Belgrade puppet authorities.
To announce the arrival of the foreign guests or for any further inquiry that can ease their stay in Serbia on this sad occasion, please contact:
Vladimir Krsljanin of Sloboda/Freedom Association at
+381 63 8862 301
or
Branislav Popovic of SPS International Department at
+381 64 170 2869
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Wednesday, March 15, 2006
0 Comments
March 14, 2006
War Crimes: Goose and Gander
Truthout - Mar 13, 2006
http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/031306J.shtml
War Crimes: Goose and Gander
By Marjorie Cohn
t r u t h o u t | Perspective
Monday 13 March 2006
Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his jail cell at The Hague Saturday. Since 2001, he had been on trial for genocide in Bosnia, and war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo. Although many have already adjudged him guilty, we will never hear the official verdict of the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).
We will also never see a trial in the ICTY for Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright or Wesley Clark for the 1999 US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Nor will George W. Bush, Dick Cheney or Donald Rumsfeld be prosecuted by an international tribunal for their war crimes in Iraq.
NATO's invasion of Yugoslavia was a war of aggression that violated the United Nations Charter. It was not undertaken in self-defense nor did it carry the approval of the Security Council. Between 1500 and 2000 civilians were killed and many thousands injured. When I visited Belgrade a year after the NATO bombing, I saw schools, hospitals, bridges, libraries and homes reduced to rubble. The ICTY statute prohibits the targeting of civilians. And even though it also forbids the use of poisonous weapons calculated to cause unnecessary suffering, NATO used depleted uranium and cluster bombs, whose devastating character is widely known. NATO also targeted a petrochemical complex, releasing carcinogens into the air that reached 10,600 times the acceptable safety level.
The American Association of Jurists and a group of Canadian lawyers and law professors filed a war crimes complaint against NATO leaders in the ICTY. Yet that tribunal conducted only a perfunctory investigation of the serious charges. Both Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch criticized the ICTY for failing to thoroughly investigate.
By denouncing the International Criminal Court, Team Bush has ensured that US leaders will never be held to account for war crimes. Although virtually every Western democracy has ratified the statute under which the Court operates, the United States has thumbed its nose at this monumental international justice system.
Bush has reason to fear prosecution. He has used cluster bombs, depleted uranium, white phosphorous and napalm. And the torture of prisoners in US custody also constitutes a war crime. His war on Iraq is a war of aggression.
After the Holocaust, the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg called the waging of aggressive war "essentially an evil thing ... to initiate a war of aggression ... is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole." Associate United States Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson, one of the prosecutors at the Nuremberg Tribunal, labeled the crime of aggression "the greatest menace of our times."
For the first time, at Nuremberg, individuals were held criminally accountable for war crimes and waging a war of aggression. Japanese leaders were also tried for atrocities committed during World War II, in the Tokyo War Crimes Tribunal.
Yet US leaders who were responsible for some of the most heinous war crimes ever committed - the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fire bombings of Dresden, Tokyo and 66 other Japanese cities - were never brought to justice.
Only the vanquished Germans and Japanese were put on trial. Justice Radhabinod Pal of India, dissenting at the Tokyo Tribunal, called this "victor's justice."
Indeed, Robert McNamara, who participated in the bombing of Japan during World War II, admitted in the film Fog of War that he and General Curtis LeMay would have been tried for war crimes if the US had lost the war. He said, "LeMay said if we lost the war that we would have all been prosecuted as war criminals. And I think he's right. He ... and I'd say I ... were behaving as war criminals."
It is no accident that the Iraqi Special Tribunal where Saddam Hussein is currently on trial only has jurisdiction over Iraqi citizens for acts committed prior to May 1, 2003, the day the US-UK occupation of Iraq began. The United States opposed sending Hussein to an international tribunal, and manipulated the Iraqi tribunal to prevent any US leaders from being tried for their war crimes in Iraq.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander. But the leaders of the world's most powerful country continue to enjoy "victor's justice."
Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, President-elect of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists. She writes a weekly column for t r u t h o u t.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Tuesday, March 14, 2006
2 Comments
The Convenient Death of Slobodan Milosevic
The Convenient Death of Slobodan Milosevic
To: Mary Mostert <Mary@bannerofliberty.com>
Subject: The Convenient Death of Slobodan Milosevic
The Convenient Death of Slobodan Milosevic
By Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
March 13, 2006
Slobodan Milosevic, the last communist head of state for the former Yugoslavia, after four years of a trial conducted by the ICTY (International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia), died in his cell at the Hague, unattended and after much debate with his captors over his health problems. His trial for his alleged crimes has been going on for four years and was supposed to be coming to an end in a matter of weeks.
His death is being viewed as rather convenient by those who might have been embarrassed had he won the case. A Dutch news agency, citing an unidentified "adviser" to the Tribunal, reported that traces of a drug used to treat leprosy and tuberculosis, which would block medications prescribed for Milosevic's heart disease and high blood pressure, were found in his blood.
His attorney, Zdenko Tomanovic told reporters that his Milosevic feared he was being poisoned and requested that an autopsy take place in Moscow. The Tribunal refused that request as it did a recent request to allow Milosevic treatment in Russia for health problems.
During the past 10 years I've done a lot of research on the issues involving the break up of Yugoslavia. The disintegration of Yugoslavia was caused by a civil war that reminded me a great deal of America's own Civil War of 1861-1865. The outbreak of America's civil war was not caused by any one person, but arose largely because of a fundamental disagreement between the North and the South over what the U.S. Constitution says and over the slavery issue.
The South believed the Constitution limited federal sovereignty, and that the States retained their sovereign rights. The North believed Constitution made the federal government the keeper of the nation's sovereignty.
The second fundamental disagreement arose as the Northern States, all of which allowed slavery at the time of the Declaration of Independence, gradually eliminated slavery either because of moral concerns or simply because, in the economy of the North, it was impractical and expensive to maintain.
In American history, the President of the country who believed that the preservation of the Union was more important than states rights was Abraham Lincoln Although the Civil War was the bloodiest war in American history and left anger and resentments that have haunted America every since, today Lincoln is considered one of America's greatest presidents because he managed to preserve the Union.
On the other hand, Slobodan Milosevic's efforts to preserve the unity of Yugoslavia after the death of communist dictator Tito did not succeed - although it might have if US and British Air Forces had not bombed the Serbs for 79 days 1999.
Abraham Lincoln did not, all by himself, create the situation which led the Southern States to secede from the Union and Slobodan Milosevic did not, all by himself, create the situation which led first Slovenia and Croatia to secede from Yugoslavia on June 25, 1991 or Bosnia and Herzegovina to secede from Yugoslavia on October 15, 1991. As a matter of factTito preserved Yugoslav unity by harshly putting down a Croatian separatist movement in
1972 without any outside assistance.
In 1990 in the first multi-party election to be held in Serbia after World War II Slobodon Milosevic was elected President of Serbia. On July 23, 1997 he was elected President of all of Yugoslavia. He lost the election of October 5, 2000, after NATO had bombed the country for 79 days and on April 1, 2001 he was arrested on a charge of corruption and was imprisoned without specific charges.
On June 28, 2001 without any trial on charges in the arrest warrant, the newly elected Serbian leadership handed the previously elected president over to the ICTY to be imprisoned at the Hague.
This would be somewhat comparable to European powers arresting President Abraham Lincoln and hauling him off to Europe for trial. And, had it not been for the diplomacy of Lincoln's Secretary of State, William H. Seward, that might have happened over the Trent affair. The Confederacy had appointed two former US Senators as ambassadors to France and Britain during the Civil War. They went to Havana, caught the British mail steamer Trent for Europe. A Union frigate San Jacinto commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes halted and boarded the Trent, removed the two new Confederate ambassadors and took them to Boston, where they were tossed in prison.
This was considered an act of war by Britain, which promptly demanded reparation and an apology. Seward recommended just that to keep the British from declaring war on the United States. Had that happened, the Union probably could not have won the Civil War and Abraham Lincoln would probably not be honored as a great American president.
>From time to time over the past 4 years I've read some of the ICTY
>trial
transcripts which
<http://www.bannerofliberty.com/BosniaKosovo/OSKosovo-MasterTOC.html> are posted on my website along with other information on issues involving the former Yugoslavia. Frankly, it was becoming obvious to me that the prosecutors in the case had very poor arguments that were being regularly refuted by Milosevic and his defense lawyers. Although CNN reported and President Clinton believed that Milosevic had killed "over 100,000 Albanians," scores of forensic experts never found the bodies that the Albanians claimed were buried in "mass graves" in Kosovo.
With Milosevic now dead, the ICTY is "unable" to pronounce a verdict.
Technically, there can BE no "guilty" verdict. Under American law, he would have to be considered innocent, since no court of his peers ever declared him guilty. Milosevic is the third Serb to die while imprisoned at the Hague. If he had been a terrorist and the Hague was an American prison, the world media would be up in arms demanding an investigation.
Of course, that won't happen. Anyway, the Serbian Unity Congress (SUC) says the death of Slobodan Milosevic, "together with the passing of two other leaders responsible for the Yugoslav carnage, Croatian president Franjo Tudjman and Bosnian president Alija Izetbegovic, will lead to the final closing of an unfortunate chapter in Serbian, Yugoslav and world history."
All three men were signers of the Dayton Peace Accord in 1995 that was supposed to solve the Balkan problem..
SUC also observed Kosovo Albanian leaders of the most recent Balkan bloodbath are still at large. Former Prime Minister Ramush Hardinaj resigned when indicted for war crimes, and Agim Cheku, who was recently nominated to be Kosovo's prime minister, awaits his indictment for war crimes.
As long as key leaders of the Balkan bloodbath expect to be rewarded for their crimes by being given possession and made leaders of Kosovo, I rather doubt the chapter is closed on this story.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Tuesday, March 14, 2006
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March 13, 2006
Milosevic death adds new "unknown" in EU equation
By Mark John
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - The death of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic adds a potentially dangerous new "unknown" into the European Union's complex ties with membership hopeful Serbia, analysts said on Monday.
EU officials are quietly relieved that the death of the war crimes indictee in a United Nations tribunal cell has not so far stirred up a wave of nationalist sentiment in Serbia that could turn popular opinion against the bloc.
But they recognize it could complicate efforts to get other indictees such as Bosnian Serb general Ratko Mladic to the Hague tribunal, and could harm efforts to convince Serbs that the EU seriously sees a future for them within the bloc.
"We are all hoping that this shows Serbia has moved on. But it is a bit of a dangerous situation given all the other factors," said Gergana Noutcheva at the Center for European Policy Studies in Brussels.
Noutcheva said Milosevic's death was a complicating factor at a time of high pressure for Belgrade, embroiled in talks on the status of the Kosovo province and facing a referendum in its state union partner Montenegro on possible independence.
Apart from a weekend vigil by 100 diehard and mostly elderly supporters at the Socialist Party office, there has been little outpouring of emotion for Milosevic, who led Serbia into war, poverty and international pariah status.
"The reaction has been mixed. We suspect it could be closed quite quickly. It could even be cathartic," said one EU official, saying Brussels hoped it would enable Serbs to turn the page more quickly on the Bosnian wars of the 1990s.
"We must hope Milosevic will be quietly forgotten," echoed Croatia's pro-EU daily Jutarnji List, fearing that Milosevic's death might stir up unwelcome memories in the region.
WORST-CASE SCENARIO
EU foreign ministers meeting in the Austrian city of Salzburg on Saturday insisted Milosevic's death did not alter their demand that Belgrade arrest and hand over Mladic by the end of this month or risk derailing talks on closer EU ties.
Many said Milosevic's death before the end of his trial had cheated the families of Bosnian war victims of the satisfaction of seeing justice done, making it more urgent to bring Mladic and wartime Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic to trial.
But some EU officials acknowledged that Milosevic's prison death could make Mladic -- believed to be enjoying protection from loyalists in the security services -- more reluctant to hand himself in to the very same tribunal.
News of Milosevic's death upstaged what the EU intended as a message of reassurance from Salzburg, confirming that EU entry was the "ultimate goal" for the states of the former Yugoslavia.
Noutcheva said the worst-case scenario would be nationalist politicians using Milosevic's death to drum up sentiment against the West and the EU.
While Mladic's transfer to the Hague remains vital for any progress on Serbia's ties with the EU, analysts say it is time for the bloc to give more encouragement.
"If this really is the decisive year for the Balkans, the carrots offered by the EU are extremely thin," said Aleksandar Mitic, an analyst on south-east Europe and the EU.
Mitic, who also works for Serbian state news agency Tanjug, said the Salzburg statement would disappoint many in Serbia with its insistence on the EU's ability to absorb future members as a proviso to further enlargement.
The European Stability Initiative think-tank agreed. "This (Salzburg meeting) was an opportunity to reassure the region that its European prospects are not slipping into the distant future. This opportunity was missed," it said in a report.
Financial help and promises to make it easier for Serbs to obtain visas to travel to the EU had had little impact on public opinion so far, Mitic added.
Noutcheva also said it was time for the EU to reach out to Serbs more, suggesting it was vital that preliminary talks on a so-called "stabilization and accession agreement" -- a key rung on the ladder to entry -- were concluded this year.
"That would be a big boost (for the pro-EU camp in Serbia) and it could be done," she said.
-- by Mark John, Reuters
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# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 13, 2006
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Milosevic's demise a death sentence to Hague Tribunal
| Milosevic's demise a death sentence to Hague Tribunal |
| |
MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Pyotr Romanov.) - The death of Slobodan Milosevic, the former president of Yugoslavia, is a death sentence to the Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Milosevic was the main culprit for the prosecution team led by Carla del Ponte and it based its strategy accordingly.
They needed to pass a verdict of "guilty" on him to prove that he alone is to blame for the barbarous bombings of Serbia and to whitewash the Western "peacekeepers" in Kosovo, who had changed the pole of violence to its opposite. Before their deployment, Serbs were killing Kosovo Albanians; after it, the situation was reversed. And lastly, the West needed to put the blame on Milosevic so as to convince many Serbs that he is not a national hero but a ruthless dictator.
But the West and Carla del Ponte have lost this battle, which is not surprising. She used all of her cases for personal promotion rather than for the pursuit of truth. The whole of Western jurisdiction has lost a battle to one man. Opinions of Milosevic may differ, but he was a brilliant lawyer who spoke in court not as a defendant but as a prosecutor. Many of his arguments were more respectable than the words of Ms. del Ponte.
The Hague Tribunal has also suffered a moral defeat. Its reputation has been damaged by several suspected suicides and the death of the main defendant, who had asked for medical assistance many times. Moreover, all of the deceased were Serbs. The official cause of Milosevic's death has not been made public yet, but two of the aired possibilities sound as a death sentence.
If the version of poisoning is confirmed, it may be used as a reason for a serious investigation, especially because there was a motive. The trial had reached a blind alley, and quite a few people wanted Milosevic dead. The legal adviser of the deceased showed journalists a letter dated March 10, the day before Milosevic was found dead in his cell. In it the former Serbian leader claimed he was poisoned.
If the conclusion is a heart attack, the guilt of the Tribunal will be apparent. Milosevic regularly complained about feeling unwell and asked to be allowed to undergo medical treatment in Moscow.
Professor Dr. Leo Bokeria, chief cardiac surgeon of the Russian Health Ministry, who saw the medical case of Milosevic kept by the court medics, said it was confusing and the doctors' recommendations were not suited to the gravity of the defendant's disease. The Russian doctor said Milosevic had needed an emergency operation, and Russia was ready to perform it, though not because it loved the Serbian prisoner. Russia would have done it for humanitarian considerations and returned Milosevic to The Hague after a proper rehabilitation period.
The Tribunal rejected the offer and questioned the qualifications of Russian doctors and the intentions of the Russian government, thus publicly offending a permanent member of the UN Security Council. When Carla del Ponte was asked if she was sorry she had not allowed Milosevic to undergo medical treatment in Moscow, she replied: "Why should I be? There was a possibility that he would not return to The Hague for the trial. I have nothing to be sorry about."
Milosevic's conscience was not very clean, but the conscience of Western politics is not lilywhite either. There was a reason for putting Slobodan Milosevic on trial. But many Western officials should have been tried together with him for deliberately dismembering Yugoslavia and destroying and humiliating Serbs.
Likewise, Saddam Hussein should be tried together with those who launched the Iraqi war, used the prohibited chemical weapons to bomb Fallujah, kept prisoners at Guantanamo indefinitely, and turned the Abu Ghraib prison into inquisition cells, just as Saddam Hussein had done in his time.
A fair court carefully analyzes all circumstances of a case before formulating the verdict and charges everyone who is to blame irrespective of political considerations and rank. Otherwise it is not a fair trial but a kangaroo court.
The Hague Tribunal has died as a court one can trust.
The opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and may not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 13, 2006
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Claims Of Poisoning Raise Stakes Of Milosevic Autopsy
Claims Of Poisoning Raise Stakes Of Milosevic Autopsy
 |
| Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic (file photo) |
| (epa) |
PRAGUE, March 11, 2006 (RFE/RL) -- An autopsy has been ordered on former Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic, the so-called "butcher of the Balkans" being tried for war crimes, after he was found dead today in his prison cell. He was 64.
Dutch television reports that forensic experts will examine the body at the Dutch Forensic Institute in The Hague on March 12. A Serb doctor despatched by the Serbian government will reportedly attend the autopsy.
The UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague says that there are no indications that Milosevic committed suicide and believes that he died of natural causes. Milosevic suffered chronic heart ailments and high blood pressure.
However, Milosevic's lawyer, Zdenko Tomanovic, said that his client had feared that he might be poisoned, comments that will fuel speculation in Serbia and Montenegro about the death of the country's former president. The deputy head of Milosevic's Socialist Party of Serbia, Milorad Vucelic, has already blamed the tribunal for Milosevic's death, saying its decision to reject his request for treatment in Russia had killed him.
The Milosevic family has said it does not trust the UN tribunal to conduct the autopsy impartially.
Chief UN war crimes prosecutor Carla Del Ponte said she regretted Milosevic's death because she believed she would have won his conviction.
"I regret deeply what happened, first of all, because after more than three years of trials, we are reaching the end of the trials by the beginning of this summer, and I think that it is regrettable for all witnesses, for all survivors, for all victims, [who] are expecting justice, but we must expect now the result of the autopsy to see what is the cause of death," Del Ponte said.
Milosevic had been on trial since February 2002, defending himself against 66 counts of crimes, including genocide, in Croatia, Bosnia, and Kosovo. He was the first sitting head of state ever to be indicted for such crimes.
Supporters in Milosevic's homeland declared his death a "huge loss," while citizens of Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo said his death brought some justice to his victims.
The European Union, which has been urging Serbia and Montenegro to do more to capture the fugitive wartime leaders of the Bosnian Serbs Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic, said that Milosevic's death does not relieve Serbia of its responsibility to continue to hand over war crimes suspects.
The U.S. administration called Milosevic "the principal figure responsible for the violent dismemberment of Yugoslavia in the 1990s, including the outbreak of two horrific wars in Bosnia and Kosovo," and said that it continues to support the work of the International Criminal Tribunal in The Hague.
(compiled from news agencies)
Shortcut to:
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/03/ca06a7c5-1d4b-4677-a125-cb1d6d32f5c2.html
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 13, 2006
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Text of Milosevic Letter Sent to Russia
Text of Milosevic Letter Sent to Russia By The Associated Press ASSOCIATED PRESS
The text of a handwritten letter dated March 8, 2006, written by Slobodan Milosevic to Russia asking for its help. It was provided in an English translation by his lawyer Zdenko Tomanovic:
To the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation.
Dear ladies and gentlemen,
With my acknowledgment for the solidarity and understanding which you expressed by accepting to receive me to come for medical treatment and by giving guarantees, I would like to inform you about the following:
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, willful 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 extremely 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.
Throughout this whole period, neither have I had any kind of infectious illness (apart from flu).
Also the fact that doctors needed 2 months (to report to me), can't have any other explanation than we are facing manipulation. In any case, those who foist on me a drug against leprosy surely 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.
Dear Sirs, it is known to you that Russian physicians, who rank among the most respected physicians in the world, came to the conclusion that the examination and treatment of the vascular problems in my head are inevitable and urgent. I know very well that this is true, as I feel very bad.
I'm addressing you in expectation that you help me defend my health from the criminal activities in this institution, working under the sign of the U.N., and that I be enabled as soon as possible to get adequate treatment in your hospital, in whose physicians, as well as in Russia, I have absolute confidence.
Yours sincerely,
Slobodan Milosevic
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 13, 2006
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Milosevic to be buried in Belgrade
Milosevic may be buried in Belgrade
The Associated Press
MONDAY, MARCH 13, 2006
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 13, 2006
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Rest Easy, Bill Clinton: Milosevic Can't Talk Anymore
Jeremy Scahill
http://feeds.huffingtonpost.com/huffingtonpost/TheBlog?m=195
Slobodan Milosevic is characterized in the obituaries as the "Butcher of the Balkans." If that is the story you want to read about, please go to almost any other media outlet and read it again and again. Some are now suggesting that death is Milosevic's final revenge, that he "ended up cheating history" by dying before judgment was passed. But the world has already passed judgment on Milosevic and what is being cheated by his death is history itself.
What the corporate media overwhelmingly ignores in Milosevic's death is what they ignored in his life as well--his intimate knowledge of US 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 US 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.
Because of the rule of victors' justice in the ad hoc tribunal system (a poor and unfair substitute for a true international court), Milosevic's case would have been the only international trial to potentially expose the details of the illegal, US-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia for 78 days in 1999. While the US-backed court consistently tried to limit Milosevic's right to speak, stripping him of his right to self-representation, Milosevic battled regularly to raise US war crimes. Sadly, with Milosevic will likely die the last hope the victims of these crimes in Yugoslavia had of getting their day (if it could even be called that) in court--a tragic and unjust reality to begin with--that speaks volumes about the twisted state of international justice.
Milosevic's cause, regardless of what one thinks of it, was a casualty of 9/11--an event that relegated him and his trial to the annals of history before it was even over. Most people in the world--with the exception of those in the Balkans where the proceedings were broadcast live, daily--probably didn't even know Milosevic was still on trial in the Hague. It became an obscure sideshow to the blood and gore unfolding constantly on the international stage.
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. Now, there is almost certain to be no condemnation of the US bombing of Radio Television Serbia, killing 16 media workers, the cluster bombing of the Nis marketplace, shredding human beings into meat, the use of depleted uranium munitions and the targeting of petrochemical plants causing toxic and chemical waste to pour into the Danube River. There will be no condemnation of the bombing of Albanian refugees by the US or the deliberate targeting of a civilian passenger train or the bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Milosevic also would have discussed how the US supports a regime in Kosovo that has systematically expelled Serbs, Romas and other ethnic minorities from their homes and burnt down scores of churches. He would have discussed the role of the US in funding and arming the Kosovo Liberation Army, which operates like a death squad and how the new prime minister of Kosovo, Agim Ceku, is a US-trained war criminal who gained infamy in both the Bosnian war and the 1999 Kosovo conflict. And Milosevic would have talked of the US interference in the Yugoslav elections in 2000 and the ultimate neoliberal takeover that was the aim of Clinton's sanctions and 78 days of bombing. In reality, it would have fallen on deaf ears, but it would have been stated for the record.
It is ironic that Milosevic's last legal battle was an attempt to compel his old friend turned nemesis Bill Clinton to testify at his trial. If successful, Milosevic would have grilled the man who was US president through the entire Yugoslav war in what would have been a fiery direct examination. Clinton and Milosevic were once pals who talked collective strategy in the 1990s. Milosevic had many damning stories to tell and, without a doubt, uncomfortable questions to ask Clinton. The judges in Milosevic's case clearly worked to keep those moments from ever happening and the US government made clear its forceful opposition to such subpoenas of US officials, even considering invading a country that would put a US official on trial. With or without Clinton, Milosevic's defense would have brought to light some serious documentation of US war crimes and he died, muzzled, before he really got started.
Little attention, therefore, has been paid to Milosevic's long-term efforts--which predated 9/11, the 1999 NATO bombing and his own trial--to expose the presence of al Qaeda in the Balkans--from Bosnia to Kosovo. With 9/11, Milosevic's talk of al Qaeda was easily dismissed as laughable, pathetic opportunism. But those who followed Milosevic's career and more importantly the events of the 1990s in Yugoslavia know it was none of those. Those allegations were based on true events the US does not want discussed in an international court. Following the defeat of the Soviets in Afghanistan in the 1980s, many Mujahadeen eventually turned their sights on Yugoslavia where they went to fight alongside the Bosnian Muslims against the Orthodox Serbs and Catholic Croats. Once again, the US and bin Laden were on the same team. To this day there are reports of training camps in Bosnia, which remains under occupation. It is also a likely training ground for future blowback.
In his opening statement, Milosevic alluded to some of the information he would introduce during his defense. "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."
That, however, is unlikely and more so now that Milosevic is dead.
To be sure, there will never be indictments of these US 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 US 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.
It is a sad testimony to the state of international jurisprudence that after many attempts to find justice, the only hope for US victims in the Yugoslavia wars was the trial defense of a man many of those same victims despised. If there was an independent international court that was recognized and respected by the US, those responsible for bombing Yugoslavia would have been alongside Slobodan Milosevic in the docks these past years instead of having their responsibility being buried with him.
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# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 13, 2006
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March 12, 2006
H.E. JAMES BISSETT ON HIS LAST MEETING
To be published in the Voice of Canadian Serbs:
H.E. JAMES BISSETT ON HIS LAST MEETING
WITH THE FORMER YUGOSLAV PRESIDENT SLOBODNA MILOSEVIC
March 11, 2006 - Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has died in captivity, in his cell in The Hague on March 11. H.E. James Bissett, former Canada's Ambassador to Yugoslavia from 1990 to 1992, took the stand at the ICTY in The Hague, on February 23 - 24, as a defense witness in the trial of the former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic.
Bissett was the last high-ranking Western diplomat to meet and speak with president Milosevic. In his interview to CKCU's "Monday's Encounter", Bissett talks about his reaction to the news on Milosevic's death and about their last meeting.
"I was shocked and very sorry to hear the news on Milosevic's death," said Bissett. "It means that he will not be able to continue with his testimony and therefore the historical record that he would like very much to have set down during his trial will be incomplete. I am sorry that he died before he could get all the evidence out. Unfortunately now we are not going to hear the Milosevic's story. Anything that is said in his favor we don't hear about. The consequence of that we will only have the legacy that we hear today on BBC or through the Associated Press. The legacy that the US led NATO countries would like to have us believe was the legacy of the beast of the Balkans. We have had a news blackout on all of the evidence in his favor that has been disclosed at The Hague."
Bissett described the former Yugoslav president as quite relaxed and absorbed with his trial, when he last saw Milosevic at The Hague. .
"When I went to see him in the penitentiary in The Hague, said Bissett, "Milosevic was dressed very causally. When I walked into the open area of the prison he was mingling with other prisoners and they were joking and laughing. Actually Seselj was there. His wife and children were visiting him at this time. Milosevic broke away from that group and we carried out our interview in a private room. He was dressed in a simple white tee shirt covered by a plaid shirt, wearing soft slacks, a pair of slippers. He was perfectly relaxed and seemed to be in a good health. In fact during the visit a nurse came in to take his blood pressure. He took his blood pressure and it was 140 over 85. So there was no indication at the first meeting that he was suffering from ill health. 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 testimony and he struck me as being reasonable content with the way the trial was going. The following day, however, it was in the afternoon around five o'clock after 2 or 3 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 into 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.
This was caused, he said, by a problem with an artery in his ear. He complained about it before to the Dutch doctors who simply said it was psychological. But after increasing demands they gave him a MRI test and found that indeed he was right there was a problem with the artery in his ear. Artery had a "loop' in it and to correct it surgery would be necessary. That is why he wanted to go to Moscow to a clinic that specializes in this type of operation. But, as you probably know, the Tribunal refused to allow that," said Bissett.
Bissett added that Milosevic "seemed quite relaxed and absorbed with his trial. He told me that he never had to do any of his cocking in the prison or make his own bed or press his cloths because when he would come back from the Tribunal hearings all of that would have been done for him by his fellow prisoners. So it seemed to me that even in prison he commanded a good deal of respect from his fellow prisoners. He certainly did not seem to me in a depressed mood and was in full command in all of his facilities. He was working very hard to set the historical record down in such a way that he would not be made a scapegoat for everything that had gone wrong in the Balkans in the 90's," Bissett said.
Mr. Milosevic chose to defend himself because he did not recognize the authority of the Hague Tribunal.
"Milosevic never referred to judge Robinson as "Your Honor" he always referred to him as Mr. Robinson. His decision to defend himself was based on the fact that he did have legal training and was very intelligent man," said Bissett. "He felt that if he accepted a defense council in the form of a lawyer that he could not really get across the message that he wanted to convey without expressing it personally. He knew his material. He has done a very good job of cross-examining the prosecution witnesses and destroying many of them who appeared before the Tribunal. He has discounted much of the case against him but the public hears none of this because there seems to be a deliberate news blackout on anything recorded before the Tribunal in his favor. On the other hand I believe it was probably a mistake for him to handle his own defense. He was a politician and not a lawyer and I think that in the court setting he might have been better to have had a first class criminal lawyer represent him. A lawyer who would know all the tricks of cross-examination and the experience of court procedures," opinioned Bissett.
"On the first day he asked me good and short questions, but in the second day, as the day went on, I could see that he was tiring. He was beginning to ask leading and quite long rambling questions. This irritated the judge and he cut him off very often. The Judges accused Milosevic of wasting time and of asking leading questions and not getting to the heart of the matter.'"
said Bissett.
Mr. Bissett met with former president Milosevic in Belgrade several times in his capacity as Ambassador of Canada to Yugoslavia from 1990 -1992. Bisset was of the opinion that Milosevic was a very intelligent and shrewd politician.
"I have described him as someone who was not interested in "Greater Serbia", Bissett continues. "That [the notion that Milosvic worked on creating "Greater Serbia"] is a complete fantasy. He was not even particularly interested in the welfare of the Serbian people. He was a politician, an old apparatchik, and a communist party boss who had grown up during that period of Yugoslav history, when Tito was in power. He wanted to maintain his power, his prestige and his privileges for himself and his family. He was a very typical soviet- block, Eastern-European communist boss. The politics of those times were rough and not very democratic. There was lot of intrigue, a lot of back room maneuvering and a lot of corruption among the party faithful. Controlling the press and the media was taken for granted.
Milosevic was a product of his time and place. He was an opportunist but in my view certainly not a strong Serb nationalist- not as nearly as much as some of his political opponents. Not nearly as much as Vuk Draskovic was at that time. He was a communist apparatchik, making the reluctant and painful attempt at transition from a communist system to a more democratic form of socialism," said Bissett.
Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic worked hand in hand with Holbrook, Albright and other Western politicians in brokering peace deals in the war torn former Yugoslav republics. Bissett believes that Milosevic had no desire to see Yugoslavia break apart and got caught up in circumstances.
"Once Slovenia seceded and Croatia started to break away and violence erupted, the federal army was sent in to try in put the rebellion down.
Milosevic who was the president of Serbia at the time was kind of caught in the middle. He did not have a control of the federal Army in those early days. He had some influence, but he had no control over it. It was a federal institution," said Bissett. "The Army itself was very pro-Yugoslav and did not want to see Yugoslavia break up. It was the federal Prime Minister of Yugoslavia who happened to be a Croatian who ordered the army into Slovenia and Croatia When the republics of Slovenia and Croatia did break away and Bosnia and Macedonia left the federation, Milosevic was left in the position as the leader of Serbia, of having to support the cause of the Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia. With the legacy that those people had experienced during the Second World War the genocide of the Serbs in Croatia particularly but also massacres of Serbs in Bosnia by Croat and Muslim fascist forces, Milosevic had no choice. In the final analysis, however, there are many Serbs who feel that Milosevic let them down and betrayed them," said Bissett.
Milosevic, right from the very beginning, was the key person in the former Yugoslavia who was striving for a peaceful solution to the problems there.
Bissett stated that "Milosevic fully supported the EU initiative to intervene to protect the Serbs in Croatia and to stop the fighting that was going on there. When Milan Babic, who committed suicide just couple a weeks ago, reneged on the agreement to let the EU in, Milosevic disowned him and published a front page article in Politika condemning Babic and in effect forcing him to sign the agreement permitting the EU forces to separate the two sides and to bring the fighting to an end in Croatia. Milosevic was key figure in the negotiation of Vance-Owen plan, the Vance - Stoltenberg plan, and finally the peace agreement at Dayton. Part of the reason for much of the confusion about Milosevic's role is because Holbrook and Americans refused to negotiate directly with the Bosnian or the Croatian Serbs. This forced Milosevic to be interlocutor for those Serbs in Croatia and Bosnia.
This has caused many people to the feel that it was Milosevic who started the war and was responsible for the actions of the Croatian and Bosnian Serbs," said Bissett.
Former Canada's Ambassador to Yugoslavia expressed his dissatisfaction with mainstream media and their reporting about the war in the Balkans.
"When you read Associated Press report on his [Milosevic's] death, it is full of factual errors," continued Bissett. "They say for example that Milosevic sent tanks into Slovenia to secure the borders. He did not. It was Croatian federal PM Ante Markovic, who ordered it. The AP said that Serbs in Croatia were encouraged by Milosevic to take up arms. That is absolute nonsense. He did everything to stop the Serbs in Croatia from fighting with the Croatian forces. The AP said Milosevic responded by sending the Yugoslav army to intervene in Croatia, which was not in accordance with the facts.
Some reports say that he took away Kosovo independence but of course Kosovo never was independent. Many of the media representatives no longer do any research nor do they bother checking the facts. Most of them simply repeat what was said in the past and assume it was true," Bissett said.
At the end the West betrayed Milosevic.
"Holbrook and Albright championed him as the man of peace in 1995,"
continues Bissett. "There was no indictment against Milosevic until the bombing started over Kosovo (in 1999). I do not believe there was any intent to indict Milosevic, Tudgman or Izetbegovic for crimes committed in Bosnia.
When the bombing of Yugoslavia started and public opinion in some of the European countries began to turn against the bombing. The people realized that the whole infrastructure of Yugoslavia was being destroyed. Cluster bombs were dropped over the market place in the city of Nis, cigarette and automobile factories were destroyed, the electrical grid was knocked out, TV stations and passenger trains were targeted, the bridges on the Danube blown down. Public opinion, especially in Germany, began to turn away from the NATO bombing. The leaders of the NATO countries were desperate in trying to find the means of getting the public support back. That was why they persuaded Louse Arbour, the chief prosecutor of the Hague Tribunal to suddenly indict Milosevic for genocide in Kosovo and then later for crimes in Bosnia. It was a convenient thing to do because who could blame NATO for the bombing a country whose leader was a war criminal," Bissett said.
There is a sense of relief in Molosevic's death at The Hague, "because the Tribunal was having a very hard time bringing forth any hard evidence to prove that there was genocide in Kosovo or that Milosevic entered into the criminal conspiracy with Karadzic and Boban to establish a "Greater Serbia, " said Bissett. " Nevertheless they would have found him guilty of something you may be sure. He was under no illusion that the Tribunal would find him guilty but he wanted to put the facts on the historical record.
Unfortunately this is no longer possible and so it will be NATO's interpretation of events that the world will have."
"Milosevic will leave a mixed legacy. A lot of Serbs feel that he was the cause of lot of their misery. Whether he made mistakes or not, the people who are paying for those mistakes are indeed the Serbian people," concluded Bissett.
Interviewer BOBA BOROJEVIC
E-mail: ckcuboba@yahoo.ca
=========
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 12, 2006
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UN war crimes tribunal finds itself in dock over Milosevic death
UN war crimes tribunal finds itself in dock over Milosevic death
The UN war crimes court for the former Yugoslavia has found itself in the dock over the death of Slobodan Milosevic, coming under a barrage of criticism from his family and supporters.
But the Hague-based International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY) rejected responsiblity for the former Yugoslav President's death, the fourth detainee to die in custody and the key figure in all the Balkan's conflicts.
"The Hague tribunal has killed my husband," Milosevic's wife Mirjana Markovic was quoted as saying by CNN from Moscow.
The court's judges denied in February a request from the 64-year-old Milosevic, who was suffering from high blood pressure and heart problems, to undergo medical treatment in Moscow.
Despite guarantees from the Russian government that Milosevic would return to stand trial, the judges said there was a risk he would flee and said they saw no reason why Russian doctors could not treat him in the Netherlands.
Milosevic's brother Borislav said the tribunal's judges bore "full responsibility" for his death, according to Russia's Interfax news agency.
The ICTY "is totally discredited, judicially and morally," he said on Russian television.
Zdenko Tomanovic, a legal adviser of Milosevic, said the former Yugoslav president claimed to have been the target of an attempted poisoning.
"Mr Milosevic said there were attempts to poison him in the prison," he told journalists in The Hague.
The ICTY said Serbian experts were to participate in the autopsy Sunday, and Tomanovic said later that the court had approved a request from Milosevic's family for a Russian expert to be present as well.
The court denied it had any responsibility in his death and had neglected to give him adequate care.
"The tribunal has nothing to be blamed for," tribunal spokesman Christian Chartier told AFP.
"The International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) takes the utmost care of its indictees and of (Milosevic) in particular," he said.
"We cannot be blamed for negligence."
Milosevic had repeatedly complained the tribunal was trying to kill him, saying the court's doctors did not take good care of him.
His mammoth trial on more than 60 counts of war crimes and crimes against humanity for his role in the 1990s Balkan wars had been interrupted over a dozen times since it started in February 2002 because Milosevic fell ill.
The ICTY had come under steady criticism for allowing the trial, in which Milosevic defended himself, to drag on for so long and analysts said his death was a huge blow for the court's other cases.
"According to the indictment, Milosevic held the key to all the conflicts in the Balkans," Ana Uzelac of watchdog organisation Impunity Watch, who followed the Milosevic trial closely, told AFP.
Milosevic's death followed an embarrassment earlier in the week when it was announced that former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic had committed suicide in the detention centre.
Two other detainees have died in custody: one committed suicide in 1998 and another died of natural causes.
Milosevic's supporters blamed the UN court for his death.
"He was systematically killed by all the years he spent in The Hague and this is a great loss for Serbia, the Serbian people and the Socialist Party of Serbia," said Ivica Dacic, the current leader of Milosevic's Socialist Party.
Serbian newspapers lashed out Sunday, blaming the tribunal for the "murder" of Milosevic.
"The Hague killed Milosevic," said the front pages of both Press and Glas Javnosti, against black backgrounds bearing large pictures of the former Serbian strongman.
"Murdered," said Kurir, another of the Balkan state's lurid dailies.
A senior Russian lawmaker called on the ICTY's judges to resign.
"Those who refused Milosevic permission to come here for treatment should resign," Lyobov Sliska, a leading figure in the pro-Kremlin United Russia party, and a deupty speaker of parliament, was quoted as saying by the Ria-Novosti news agency.
Copyright © 2006 AFP
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 12, 2006
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How to Get Away With Murder:
The Death of Slobodan Milosevic
Submitted by David Peterson on Sat, 2006-03-11 16:13.
Today, Saturday 11 March 2006, Slobodan Milosevic was found lifeless on his bed in his cell at the United Nations Detention Unit in Scheveningen.
The guard immediately alerted the Detention Unit Officer in command and the Medical Officer. The latter confirmed that Slobodan Milosevic was dead.
I would have posted more....But....Right now, the nature of what's available from the English-language news sources to which we all have ready access in this Internet age is so predictably biased and, indeed, systematically distorted (e.g., Reuters quotes the French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy to the effect that "Milosevic conceived and planned" everything), I'm afraid to touch it, without also putting on a pair of gloves before doing so. Or a toxic waste disposal suit.
Just to give you one example of what I mean: Milosevic's corpse can't be more than a few hours cold, and the American Senator, leading light of the Democratic Party, and ranking Minority Member of the Senate International Relations Committee, Joseph R. Biden of Delaware, already has taken to the American airwaves to recapitulate the statement he issued way back on June 28, 2001---the day when certain Belgrade officials shipped Milosevic to the same Scheveningen Detention Unit where he just died.
Said Biden then: "We are witnessing one of the most significant events in postwar European history, where a nation has voluntarily turned over to an international tribunal for trial one of the most dangerous and maniacal European leaders since Hitler." Now. Tack on the French Foreign Minister's line about Milosevic having "conceived and planned" everything, and we have a pretty good foretaste of tomorrow's headlines.
Over the next several days, be on the lookout for statesmen and commentators and above all professional victims whose point of view will be indistinguishable from that of the Office of the Prosecutor at the Tribunal where Milosevic just died. Modern Hitler + Conceived and Planned Everything are the order of the day. The purpose of such historical engineering and revisionism-before-the-fact---indeed, the most egregious reaches as far back as 1990-1991---it's always best to stake-out one's claim to the record as early as possible---is, and always has been, to use the West's institutional machinery to impose an account of the breakup of Yugoslavia that hews to these revealed Truths.
As Michael P. Scharf, an American professor of international law and, as Michael Mandel tell us in his invaluable book, How America Gets Away With Murder (Pluto Press, 2004, p. 117ff), a "self-described 'insider' who was actively involved in the formulation of US war crimes policy, and who had a big hand in drafting the law governing the tribunal," wrote in the months following the U.S.-led war over Kosovo in 1999 ("Indicted For War Crimes, Then What?" Washington Post, Oct. 3, 1999):
From the beginning, the Security Council's motives in creating the tribunal were questionable. During the negotiations to establish the court--talks in which I participated on behalf of the U.S. government--it became clear that several of the Security Council's permanent members considered the tribunal a potential impediment to a negotiated peace settlement. Russia, in particular, worked behind the scenes to try to ensure that the tribunal would be no more than a Potemkin court.
The United States's motives were also less than pure. America's chief Balkans negotiator at the time, Richard Holbrooke, has acknowledged that the tribunal was widely perceived within the government as little more than a public relations device and as a potentially useful policy tool. The thinking in Washington was that even if only low-level perpetrators in the Balkans were tried, the tribunal's existence and its indictments would deflect criticism that the major powers did not do enough to halt the bloodshed there. Indictments also would serve to isolate offending leaders diplomatically, strengthen the hand of their domestic rivals and fortify the international political will to employ economic sanctions or use force. Indeed, while the United States and Britain initially thought an indictment of Milosevic might interfere with the prospects of peace, it later became a useful tool in their efforts to demonize the Serbian leader and maintain public support for NATO's bombing campaign against Serbia, which was still underway when the indictment was handed down.
Five years later, at the time Milosevic was scheduled (finally) to begin his defense, the master cynic returned to this theme ("Making A Spectacle of Himself," Michael P. Scharf, Washington Post, Aug. 29, 2004):
In creating the Yugoslavia tribunal statute, the U.N. Security Council set three objectives: first, to educate the Serbian people, who were long misled by Milosevic's propaganda, about the acts of aggression, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed by his regime; second, to facilitate national reconciliation by pinning prime responsibility on Milosevic and other top leaders and disclosing the ways in which the Milosevic regime had induced ordinary Serbs to commit atrocities; and third, to promote political catharsis while enabling Serbia's newly elected leaders to distance themselves from the repressive policies of the past. [Trial Judge Richard] May's decision to allow Milosevic to represent himself has seriously undercut these aims.
Confronted with material such as this, I'm afraid that we can but repeat the same response only so many times before turning blue in the face. Either one reads a Michael Scharf and instinctively recoils from the shameless commitment to Big Lying. Or one doesn't. For every person who has recoiled over the past 15 years, a thousand have applauded.
With Milosevic's death, we lose the opportunity that his trial provided us to hijack the institutional machinery of the Tribunal in the faint hope of countering the historical-engineers and party-liners and cynics-without-peer who populate World-NATO like so many busy little bees.
Decision on Assigned Counsel Request for Provisional Release (IT-02-54-T), Judge Patrick Robinson, Presiding, ICTY, February 23, 2006
"Slobodan Milosevic Found Dead in His Cell at the Detention Unit" (CC/MOW/1050ef), Press Release, ICTY, March 11, 2006
"Statement by the ICTY Prosecutor" (FH/OTP/1051e), Press Release, ICTY, March 11, 2006
"Milosevic dies in jail: UN Tribunal," Nicola Leske, Reuters, March 11, 2006
How America Gets Away With Murder: Illegal Wars, Collateral Damage and Crimes Against Humanity, Michael Mandel (Pluto Press, 2004)
The New York Times on the Yugoslavia Tribunal: A Study in Total Propaganda Service, Edward S. Herman and David Peterson, ColdType, 2004
"A Premature Death," George Kenney, ElectricPolitics.com, March 11, 2006
"The Trial of Slobodan Milosevic VI," ZNet, February 11, 2006
"The Death of Slobodan Milosevic," ZNet, March 11, 2006
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With Milosevic Dead, West Will Blame Serbians Collectively
http://regnum.ru/english/604047.html
Regnum (Russia)
March 12, 2006
Milosevic’s death “will let to preserve accusations against Serbians”
“Slobodan Milosevic’s death will cease the investigation of many episodes of ethnic clashes in the Balkans in the framework of the International Tribunal on former Yugoslavia, as the only accused in it was Milosevic,” prominent Serbian historian and columnist Miroslav Jovanovic.
According to Jovanovic, most charges against Milosevic had no solid evincive basis.
However, now, Serbia’s opponents can repeat these accusations once and again, and there will be no prosecution on these accusations.
By the way, as Jovanovic stressed, the accusations presented against Milosevic were mostly accusations against Serbians, and conviction of Milosevic were intended by many as conviction of Serbians as a whole.
....
Former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell in prison of the International Tribunal on former Yugoslavia on March 11.
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http://regnum.ru/english/604078.html
Regnum (Russia)
March 12, 2006
Milosevic wrote a letter to Russian foreign minister before death
Before his death, ex-President of Yugoslavia Slobodan Milosevic wrote a letter to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.
As Lenta.ru reports, legal assistant of the former Yugoslavian president Branko Rakic informed about it on March 11.
According to Rakic, on March 10, Milosevic sent a letter to Lavrov, in which he shared his concern that a campaign is held against his health.
“This last message of Milosevic was sent to Moscow, which demonstrates how strongly Milosevic believed in Russia and its officials,” says Branko Rakic.
According to the spokesman for the Russian foreign ministry Mikhail Kamynin, the ministry has received no letter yet.
Earlier, lawyer of the former Yugoslavian leader Zdenko Tomanovic announced that Milosevic could have been poisoned.
Milosevic was found dead in his cell of the Hague prison.
Milosevic suffered from high blood pressure and cardiovascular problems; however, he was not allowed to undergo medical treatment.
The reason of Slobodan Milosevic’s death has not been found.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 12, 2006
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George Kenney's comment on SM death
A Premature Death
For five hours in mid-August 2004, I met with Slobodan Milosevic in a cramped, improvised office, cluttered with papers and books, in a UN detention area within the huge Dutch prison at Scheveningen, a seaside suburb of the Hague. Outside, spotless townhouses provide normality; cyclists blithely cruise the flats past the prison's gates. Always known for posh mansions, a favorite of foreign diplomats, today Scheveningen's boardwalk and casinos are its big draws, elbowing aside the glittering sea.
I'd told you in the wrap-up of my March 9 podcast conversation with Linda Schade that I was standing by to return to the Hague imminently, to be a witness for the defense in Milosevic's trial at the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). With his death this morning in his cell that's not going to happen. So here are a few ramblings:
Casual, somewhat rumpled, Milosevic talked more than I did, chain smoking the entire time. Since he'd battled indictments for genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes for over two years I'd expected a chastened, worn out man but found him full of vinegar, determined to turn the tables on the court. "I will ruin them!" he told me.
When Milosevic's team asked me to be a defense witness I was of two minds. On the one hand I figured he should probably be in jail in Serbia (and I told him so), on the other the prosecution at the ICTY had never been able to provide a 'smoking gun' implicating Milosevic in any particular crime. Indeed, the prosecution saw ordinary grounds for dismissal as a plus: it cleared away facts and gave the court a chance to convict on a theory of history, thereby fulfilling its informal mandate to legitimize Nato's interventions in Yugoslavia's collapse. The prosecution alleged Milosevic had 'command responsibility' in a 'joint criminal enterprise' to start a civil war, wreck the Yugoslav state, and create a 'greater Serbia' from the rubble. Conviction would have applied in principle to Serbia as a whole, making its policy stance during the civil war illegal after the fact.
At least up through 1995—whether we liked him or not—Milosevic had been an indispensable partner in negotiating a settlement and indeed was a signatory to the Dayton agreement that ended the war. Setting the later Kosovo indictments aside (which I was not in a position to testify about), to chase after Milosevic for pre-Dayton activities seems to me illogical and would, in some substantive way, make all the negotiating partners complicit in the alleged crimes. Moreover, if the ICTY wanted to go after Milosevic in such a manner then fairness dictates that leaders from the top echalons on all sides should be indicted for similar 'command responsibility' for identical crimes. They were not.
Milosevic asked me, "Why did the US and Nato do this to us?" He was genuinely puzzled. I have thought a lot about the "whys" and ventured that in post-Cold War Europe no place remained for a large, independent-minded, socialist state that resisted globalization. He'd had such ideas too, and fell silent, slowly nodding his head with a wry smile. "We were too good," he said, and after a pause, "and too independent." I offered one further insight: How could it be that western elites coalesced so early, so easily, upon a narrative for Yugoslavia's civil war so at variance with known facts, and so impermeable to correction? The elite's ability to get things wrong still does not speak clearly for itself. A predisposition existed, I told him, that ascribes infallibility to claims of genocide if they were repeated often and loudly enough. Milosevic slouched over, listening, staring at the desk. When I finished he shook his head, 'no.' Perish the thought he should have added to his troubles yet for me it remains a worthy question.
The ICTY's maximum penalty is a life sentence. We didn't talk about the difficulties of coping with prison but I sensed he walked a fine line. "I am not a nationalist," he explained, in a digression that took over an hour. Or, on the subject of why Serbia kept paying Serbs fighting outside Serbia, "It was natural," "an obligation," and only "a minor matter." As the trial moved forward the drama of those conflicting priorities only partially played out.
Ex post facto justice never makes sense. Milosevic may have been guilty of something—indeed, he probably was—but it wasn't genocide, crimes against humanity or war crimes. Nor can any court determine the true history of a civil war, no matter its power. With such intellectual fallacies we make a poor exchange, replacing rational human relationships with arbitrary authority—something, in all its guises, genuinely to be feared.
The decent thing would have been to give Milosevic back to Serbia. The prudent thing now would be to pull the plug on the ICTY, before its tainted processes do permanent damage to our sense of justice.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 12, 2006
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PRAVDA: The Hague tries to conceal reasons of Slobodan Milosevic's death
 Slobodan Milosevic found dead in his prison cell |
 |
As usual, the West is incapable of looking beyond its nose and as usual, as with the case of Iraq, the West has got it fundamentally wrong. If Kosovo gains independent status, what happens elsewhere and what will the effects of this be in South Ossetia, Chechnya, Daguestan, Ingushetia, Nagorno-Karabakh, and Abkhazia in the Caucasus? Or Republika Srpska and the Albanian enclaves throughout the Balkans in Greece, in Serbia, in Montenegro, in Macedonia? |
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Sunday, March 12, 2006
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THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC�S DEATH
THE CIRCUMSTANCES OF PRESIDENT MILOSEVIC’S DEATH
www.slobodan-milosevic.org
March 11, 2006
Written by: Andy Wilcoxson
On several occasions prior to his death Milosevic, who suffered from high blood pressure and a heart condition, complained of severe headaches, intense pressure behind his eyes and ears, and ringing in his ears.
In late November 2005 doctors from the Bakulev Medical Center in Moscow traveled to The Hague and examined him. They determined that his condition could be treated, but only if they could administer treatment at their facility in Moscow.
On December 12, 2005 Milosevic asked the tribunal to allow him to receive medical treatment at the Bakulev Medical Center in Moscow.
The tribunal denied his request. They told him that the request was not made properly, and would not be considered unless they received guarantees that he would return to complete his trial.
On January 18, 2006 the Russian Government gave guarantees that Milosevic would be returned to The Hague to complete his trial if he were allowed to be given medical treatment in Moscow.
In spite of the guarantees of the Russian Government, and in spite of Milosevic’s own guarantee that he would return, on February 23, 2006 the trial chamber handed down a ruling denying Milosevic’s request to receive medical treatment in Moscow.
On February 24, 2006 Milosevic announced that he would appeal the tribunal’s decision.
Unfortunately, he did not live long enough to bring the issue before the appeals chamber. On March 11, 2006, Slobodan Milosevic was found dead in his cell at the UN Detention Unit in The Hague.
Responsibility for President Milosevic’s death can most likely be attributed to Mr. Patrick Robinson, Mr. O-Gon Kwon, and Mr. Iain Bonomy. If they had they not prevented him from receiving the medical treatment he needed, then he would probably still be alive.
It was a generally known fact that Milosevic could die without proper medical treatment. In the February 24th trial report I warned that “Denying Milosevic the medical treatment he needs could kill him.â€
Reacting to the tribunal’s decision in a February 24th interview to the Moscow-based Ekho Moskvy Radio, Milosevic’s brother Borislav said, “I do not know whether or not they will poison him but I do not rule this out altogether. I do not rule out that he might be even secretly liquidated. As far as his medical treatment is concerned, their moves do not give any grounds to believe that he is being treated in a fair and humane way. Their decision is negative. Incidentally, as I see the reasons behind the decision, I believe that it is not just inhumane, it simply violates human rights. At issue is an ailing man, a man aged 65. Despite the immaculate validity of the various components of this appeal, of this request, they turned it down.â€
Kwon, Bonomy, and Robinson knew that denying Milosevic medical treatment could cost him his life. Armed with that knowledge, they made a conscious decision that denied him the opportunity to receive the medical treatment he needed -- and now he’s dead.
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March 11, 2006
Milosevic's death casts shadow on war-crimes tribunal
Milosevic's death casts shadow on war-crimes tribunal
Dusan Stojanovic | Belgrade, Serbia-Montenegro
11 March 2006 06:32
The stock of Slobodan Milosevic had already been rising among Serbs who watched his feisty performances at his war-crimes trial at The Hague.
His death now makes him a martyr -- and brings into serious question Belgrade's future cooperation with the war-crimes tribunal.
A groundswell of emotion in Serbia for the fallen leader known in the West as the "Butcher of Belgrade" would create a political obstacle to handing former Bosnian Serb commander Ratko Mladic, and five other fugitive suspects, over to the tribunal -- just weeks before the deadline for extradition.
Milosevic's death and the suicide last week in prison of convicted former Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic, a star witness in the Milosevic trial, have created the impression in Belgrade of The Hague as a gallows for Serb nationalists -- a place where the West lets them rot away.
"How are they now going to explain to the Serbian public that Milosevic was not severely ill, as he had claimed, and that the Hague jail is safe for the Serbs?" asked political analyst Brace Grubacic.
Milosevic, who suffered from heart problems and high blood pressure, had recently demanded to be temporarily released to go to Moscow for treatment.
But presiding Judge Patrick Robinson refused, ruling that even with Russian guarantees to send him back, the court was "not satisfied ... that the accused, if released, would return for the continuation of his trial".
Ivica Dacic, the caretaker president of Milosevic's Socialist Party, echoed the views of many in Belgrade on Saturday when he said: "Milosevic did not die in The Hague; he was killed in The Hague."
He added that before dying, Milosevic "managed to defend the national and state interests of Serbia and the Serb people, and everybody should be grateful to him for that".
Toma Fila, Milosevic's family lawyer, said: "Milosevic's death will tear to shreds the tribunal's credibility, which has seriously been tarnished already. He is the sixth Serb to die at the hands of this court."
Former Czech foreign minister Jiri Dienstbier, who served as UN special envoy for human rights in Yugoslavia from 1998-2001, said: "I am afraid that his death will be misused by extremists [in Serbia] who will proclaim [Milosevic] a national hero."
Those fears took little time to materialise. The ultranationalist Serbian Radical Party, staunch Milosevic's wartime allies, said in a statement that "after Milosevic's death, nothing will be the same in Serbia".
"The Radical Party promises to the citizens of Serbia that it will no longer tolerate the harassment of the Serbian patriots and their families," citing alleged "harassment" by Serbia's pro-Western President Boris Tadic and Foreign Minister Vuk Draskovic.
Many observers both in Serbia and the West called into question the validity of the Hague war-crimes tribunal for other reasons -- suggesting the chance for a historical reckoning had been lost because the trial was allowed to drag on for years.
Former Swedish prime minister Carl Bildt, who served as the UN special envoy to the Balkans between 1999 and 2001, called Milosevic's death "seriously damaging to The Hague tribunal".
In a written statement to Swedish news agency TT, Bildt said that "despite years of trials we will never have a verdict, and thereby a conclusion regarding important questions of guilt".
Natasa Kandic, a leading human rights activist in Serbia who has provided evidence to the UN war-crimes prosecutors, said Milosevic's death before the end of the trial has caused "historic damage". -- Sapa-AP
http://www.mg.co.za/articlepage.aspx?area=/breaking_news/breaking_news__international_news&articleid=266454
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 11, 2006
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Milosevic Dies in Jail - U.N. Tribunal
Reuters
March 11, 2006
MILOSEVIC DIES IN JAIL - U.N. TRIBUNAL
By Nicola Leske
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic has died,
the U.N. tribunal said on Saturday, just months before his trial for
genocide and war crimes in the Balkans wars in the 1990s was expected to
conclude.
"Milosevic was found lifeless on his bed in his cell at the United Nations
detention unit," the tribunal said in a statement.
"The guard immediately alerted the detention unit officer in command and the
medical officer. The latter confirmed that Slobodan Milosevic was dead."
The U.N. court said the Dutch police and a Dutch coroner were called in and
started an inquiry. A full autopsy and toxicological examination have been
ordered. Milosevic's family has been informed, it added.
A tribunal spokeswoman said she could not comment on the cause of death
until the autopsy was completed, but added: "We have no indication that it
was suicide."
French Foreign Minister Philippe Douste-Blazy told reporters in Salzburg
that Milosevic had died of natural causes.
"I would like to spare a thought for all those who suffered so much from
ethnic cleansing, tens of thousands of men, women and children, which
Milosevic conceived and planned," he said.
Milosevic, 64, suffered a heart condition and high blood pressure which had
repeatedly interrupted his trial in The Hague on charges of genocide, crimes
against humanity and war crimes during the bloody disintegration of
Yugoslavia in the 1990s.
As news of the death swept through the Balkans, an official of Milosevic's
Socialist Party, Zoran Andjelkovic, said: "We expect the tribunal to explain
how was it possible, and why they did not let him have treatment in Russia".
Another Socialist party official, reached on his car phone, said simply:
"They killed him, the bastards."
ILLNESS
Cardiologists treating Milosevic in The Hague had warned he was at risk of a
potentially life threatening condition known as a hypertensive emergency,
when surges in blood pressure can damage the heart, kidneys and central
nervous system.
Last month, the tribunal rejected a request by Milosevic to travel to Russia
for specialist medical treatment, noting that his trial -- that has already
lasted four years -- was in the final stages and he might not return to
complete it.
Milosevic, who was overthrown in 2000 and sent to The Hague in June 2001,
said last month his health was worsening and he was hearing noises in his
head. A lawyer by training, Milosevic was defending himself.
Steven Kay, a lawyer appointed by the tribunal to help Milosevic prepare his
case, said the former Serb strongman had told him a few weeks ago he had no
intention of taking his own life after working so hard to defend himself.
"He knew the risk that he was taking," Kay told BBC television, adding the
pressure of defending himself raised his blood pressure but the case was
expected to wrap up soon.
"There was an end in sight."
Milosevic's brother lives in Russia and prosecutors suspect his wife and son
do too. The prosecution had opposed his release despite a promise by Russia
to return him, fearing he could say his health stopped him from travelling
back to The Hague.
Milosevic had used up more than four-fifths of the 150 days allotted for his
defence, suggesting the case could have been wrapped up in the next few
months barring any new delays. Judges would then need several months to
deliberate before a verdict.
Milosevic was charged with 66 counts of genocide, crimes against humanity
and war crimes in complex indictments covering conflicts in Bosnia, Croatia
and Kosovo in the 1990s. He had declined to enter a plea.
Last week, former rebel Croatian Serb leader Milan Babic committed suicide
at the tribunal's detention centre. Babic had testified against Milosevic
and was in The Hague to appear in the trial of another top Croatian Serb.
(Additional reporting by Douglas Hamilton in Belgrade)
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 11, 2006
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Serbia: Time to Just Say No
http://www.serbianna.com/columns/gordon/001.shtml
Serbianna
Views & Analysis
COMMENTARY
Serbia: Time to Just Say No
By Russell Gordon March 4, 2006 -- The former Mexican dictator Porfirio Diaz once said "Always tell the Americans yes -- but never say when." If indeed this delaying tactic is the current policy of the Serbian Government in dealing with American demands for the handover of Gen. Ratko Mladic, it is an admirable attempt at reclaiming some vestige of sovereignty. Even the casual observer notes the political nature of the trials at the ICTY in The Hague. However, a few minor policy vacillations hardly recompense for the absence of strategic vision among the Serbian nation for the last 15 years.
The various facets of the Serbian Government must be commended for their attempts to side-step out of the line of fire of American-led regional policy bias. American and Berlin-led policies have indeed wreaked physical and moral destruction upon the remains of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Republika Srpska). But whatever illusions one wishes to view the current scenario under, Serbia is on its knees, and has failed to achieve significant bargaining leeway, perennially out-maneuvered by Washington and their trans-Atlantic minions. The stick has been repeatedly brandished; the carrot forever forthcoming. Some of Serbia's current acquiescent policies are understandable, taking advantage of opportunities that arise to shift "moral responsibility" for past losses to past leaders and political systems (i.e.-Milosevic and communism). However, many in Serbia have gone to extremes, accepting blame for all alleged crimes in the Balkan wars of succession, and remaining silent about the real crimes committed by the Serbs' adversaries. One journalist who described his Soros-funded media outlet as "independent" demonized those who cast doubt on the exaggerated claims of the Srebrenica issue in an attempt to silence debate. Similarly, Serb writers at Western wire services and "think tanks" have joined in the fray of self-vilification. They have heard the piper, and know the tune. But like the Apaches who turned in Geronimo in return for privilege, yet died with him in the same squalid concentration camp, empire's gauleiters are soon dispensed with when their convenience has outlived utility.
Western "NGO's" such as the American Enterprise Institute, Open Society, European Policy Center, and the International Crisis Group (among others) have continued to rally for the amputation of Serbian territory (in reality, these institutes are often directly linked to the State Department and CIA, making them hardly "non-governmental."). Each step Serbia takes to show flexibility through dialogue is seen as complacency. The result is the expectation among Serbia's regional and trans-Atlantic adversaries that rhetoric aside, Serbia will capitulate to any demand made of her for territorial (or other) concessions.
Audible rumblings have been heard from Washington and Brussels alike on not only Kosovo and Bosnia, but Presevo, Sandzak/Raska, and Vojvodina. No sooner are Washington's Montenegrin jannisaries about to achieve independence, than some in the U.S. Congress called for the annexation of Albanian areas in Montenegro to Kosovo. If this is achieved, little could stop the unification of all Albanian areas from Macedonia to Montenegro, perhaps causing armed conflict to spread into the north of NATO member Greece. After achieving the re-creation of Hitler's territorial division, America would have a compliant Islamist-influenced vassal state (whose narco-mafia terrorists were under their tutelage) to secure their Caucasian oil pipeline through to Vlore. Much of American policy in Southeast Europe over the last 15 years was motivated by military base relocations, force projection to secure oil supply routes from the Caspian region, and subversion and subjugation of a potentially united rising Europe via NATO. The Serbs exacerbated their losses through an inability to rally their Diaspora as their opponents did, and their bitter historical divisions, since the time of the Ottoman Empire, when Serb jannisaries led Turkish forces against Serbs on the Field of Blackbirds. Indeed, Albanian crime and radical Islamism in Europe may be more than blowback, but rather intended policy. But such forces respect no frontier, and America has already paid for supporting Balkan terrorists. If indicators are born out, 9/11 may be only a prelude.
Serbian mystic Deda Milje is said to have predicted that in coming days "all Serbs will fit under one plum tree." Metaphors aside, unless a unified stance is taken towards national preservation, Belgrade south to Nis may be all that remains of Serbdom. The grand strategist Gregory R. Copley said "No one is [handed] Victory." The question remains of what is to be gained from potentially joining "civil" Europe, a Europe that starved, bombed, and lied - at enormous cost and little promise to the Serbian nation and its future.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 11, 2006
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March 10, 2006
Serbs reject independent Kosovo
Serbs reject independent Kosovo
Serbs reject independent Kosovo
Serbia's foreign minister has said his country can never accept a fully independent Kosovo, ahead of a meeting of European Union foreign ministers.
The province is still legally part of Serbia and Montenegro - but it has been under UN protection since 1999.
Ministers from Balkan states aspiring to EU membership are at the two-day talks in the Austrian city of Salzburg.
Delegates will also discuss how to keep the Palestinian territories functioning without funding a Hamas-led government.
Both the EU and the US are debating whether to stop donations after the militant group takes over following its election win.
Hamas does not recognise the right of Israel to exist and is regarded by many as a terrorist organisation.
Ministers are also expected to consider:
• The recent Danish cartoon row and ways in which the Christian and Islamic worlds can avoid such clashes in future
• EU policy on Iran in light of the recent referral to the United Nations Security Council over its nuclear activity
• The situation in the Ukraine and the forthcoming elections in Belarus.
However, correspondents say new policies will be thin on the ground as the meeting is informal.
'Humiliation'
Serbia's foreign minister told the BBC he planned to deliver a message to his European counterparts that Serbia could never accept a fully independent Kosovo.
Vuk Draskovic said the result would be a humiliation for Serbia, dangerous for the region and the whole of Europe.
Talks are due to resume about the status of Kosovo, with many in the international community preferring that it becomes a state in its own right.
Mr Draskovic also acknowledged that the Serbian army and police were shielding Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic, who is wanted for war crimes at the UN war crimes tribunal in The Hague.
The EU has warned Serbia its talks on closer ties with the Union would be disrupted if it failed to co-operate fully with the tribunal.
http://kosovareport.blogspot.com/2006/03/serbs-reject-independent-kosovo.html
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Friday, March 10, 2006
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Kosovo media
Rohan: Private messages about independence helped negotiations (Zëri)
Zëri reports that the Deputy Status Envoy Albert Rohan has said in an interview to VOA that the private messages sent to both talking sides by US, British, Italian and German officials that negotiations are likely to lead to independence for Kosovo, have helped the negotiations process. “This was very important because in fact sobered up both sides and moved them away from dreaming and makes them now have a more realistic approach,†said Rohan.
He said the first second round of talks between Kosovo and Serbian officials held last month in Vienna went better than expected and that the next meeting scheduled for 17 March will focus on concrete issues of importance to both sides. According to Rohan, these issues are to include decentralization, rights and responsibilities of minorities, religious and cultural sites, division of resources and debts, as well as the future of international presence in Kosovo.
Rohan also said that UN envoys and members of the Contact Group are determined to conclude Kosovo status negotiations in 2006. “There were some, especially Kosovo Albanians, that asked for a final settlement by summer of this year. We told them such a demand is not realistic. There were others who asked for negotiations to last for two or three years but this was also not realistic,†Rohan said in the interview.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Friday, March 10, 2006
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Serbia and Montenegro: Serbia�Financial System Stability Assessment,
Serbia and Montenegro: Serbiaâ€â€Financial System Stability Assessment,
including Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes on
the following topics: Monetary and Financial Policy Transparency,
Banking Supervision, and Payment Systems
http://www.reporter.gr/bd/download/xls/IMFreport060308.pdf
''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
Reporter: Hipol Sale Contract Signed w/Italian Co.
http://news.serbianunity.net/bydate/2006/March_09/16.html
'''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''''
http://www.marketwatch.com/News/Story/Story.aspx?guid=%7B9999DBD1%2D34A4%2D4E4B%2D9646%2D8409C506AD0D%7D&dist=newsfinder&siteid=google&keyword=
MarketWatch
Serbia to sell banks, telecoms, aims for 6% growth
By John W. Miller
Last Update: 3:45 PM ET Mar 9, 2006
BELGRADE (MarketWatch)- Riding a strategy of aggressive privatization,
Serbia expects a 6% gross domestic product growth rate in 2006,
finance minister Mladjan Dinkic told Dow Jones Newswires in an
interview.
Serbia boasts dozens of valuable factories and state-owned companies
despite a decade of sanctions and a bloody civil war. The sectors most
attractive to foreign investors so far have been tobacco factories,
cell phone operators and banks. Both Serbia and tiny Montenegro are
members of the Yugoslav federation, but Montenegro has its own finance
ministry and is preparing to vote on independence this spring.
Serbia faces big challenges, including taming high inflation and
unemployment. It's still a developing country: its an annual gross
domestic product is around EUR25 billion, and the economy is less than
a tenth the size Belgium, which has a similar population. But the
minister says its biggest problems are political, not economic. GDP
growth was 7.2% in 2004 and 6.5% in 2005. The E.U., which has accepted
neighboring Romania and Bulgaria, has refused to begin talks on
Serbia's joining the 25-nation trading bloc until the government in
Belgrade arrests General Ratko Mladic, who is wanted as a suspected
war criminal for the massacre of Muslims in Bosnia in 1995. At
EUR2,750, GDP per capita "is higher than in Romania and Bulgaria,"
Dinkic said. The minister said Serbia will be ready economically to
join the E.U. by 2012, but he's not in a hurry.
"When a country joins the E.U., its wages go up, so we're happy to
have several years to attract foreign companies with low wages," he
said.
Privatization is key to his plans. The biggest interest from foreign
companies has been in banks, Dinkic said. Hyper-inflation during the
Milosevic era triggered a slowdown in banking.
"We became an economy where people put money under their pillow,"said Dinkic.
With peace and more stability, that is now changing. Serbs now have
EUR2.3 billion in savings, and that figure is growing by EUR100
million a month, Dinkic said. Banks are issuing 30 times more loans
than in 2001. Serbia now has 3.8 million credit cards.
Foreign banks have helped restore faith in credit. Serbia last year
sold Jubanka to Greece's Alpha Bank (ALPHA.AT) for EUR152 million, and
currently has three other banks on the table, including the biggest
domestic player, Vojvodkanska.
An Austrian bank, Raiffeisen International Bank Holdins (RIBH.VI), is
the market leader in Serbia. The premiums for former state-owned banks
are rising, Dinkic said. He expects a 6-to-1 price-to-asset ratio.
The government has already sold off two tobacco factories, to Philip
Morris, owned by Altria Group Inc. (MO), and British American Tobacco
PLC (BTI). Japan Tobacco International (2914.TO) is paying EUR25
million for another factory.
Serbia attracted them by locking in low excise taxes until 2011,
Dinkic said. Real taxes on cigarettes in Serbia are only 30% of cost.
A pack of Marlboros costs only EUR1.25 in Belgrade, a quarter the rate
in most Western European countries. Serbia is also selling off
mobile-phone operator Mobtel. After seizing the company from tycoon
and Milosevic ally Bogoljub Karic, and charging him with bribery and
embezzlement, Serbia is set to float the company in April, Dinkic
said.
The starting price will be EUR700 million. The government will receive
82%, and the rest will go to Austrian entrepreneur Martin Schlaff, who
bought a stake last year.
"This will be a test" for Serbia's privatization process and the
establishment of rule of law, Dinkic said. He praises the Austrian
government and Austrian banks "for helping us do the deal".
After selling off banks, cell phone and cigarette companies, Serbia
will privatize energy assets by autumn, including the national oil
company, Dinkic said.
In 2007, Dinkic says, the government will unload an insurance company.
But not every state industry will bring in cash. Some factories, like
the Zastra car complex, are inefficient and won't find buyers, Dinkic
said. "No company will take that for free."
The economy's biggest problem is inflation. Prices rose 13.7% in 2004
and 17.7% in 2005. Even though Dinkic forecasts inflation at under 10%
in 2006, he acknowledges that "Serbia is in transition so prices of
services are going up" from the deflated levels of the past.
Part of the problem is that there isn't enough competition in retail
trade, he said.
Still the current inflation is a far cry from the early 1990s, when
the government had to print bank notes worth 500 billion dinars. To
keep prices under control and back the currency, the government will
continue a strategy of aggressive spending cuts, Dinkic said.
Serbia ran a 1% surplus in 2005, down from a 4% deficit in 2004,
thanks mostly to a new 18% value added tax, which now accounts for
half of its revenue, or EUR2.5 billion. The debt has been cut to 44%
from 170% five years ago.
As the government cuts costs and privatizes industries, Dinkic expects
19% unemployment to remain a problem. He argues the problem is normal
for a country in transition.
"Flexibility of labor is very low," he explains. "People want one job
for life." He defends closing down factories. "You can't force people
to buy something they don't want."
-Contact: 201-938-5400
Serbian News Network - SNN
news@antic.org
http://www.antic.org/
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Friday, March 10, 2006
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State Department: There are problems with minority rights inKosovo (Beta)
State Department: There are problems with minority rights in Kosovo (Beta)
Minorities in Kosovo, above all Serbs and Roma, are discriminated, although the situation has improved over the past year, reads the US State Department report on human rights in the SCG for 2005. The houses of Serbs are set on fire and in some cases, the Albanian majority is trying to expel Serbs by force, it is stressed in the document. Speaking of education and healthcare, it has been assessed that Serbs are discriminated in that field as well, and that there is no progress regarding the cases of ethnic violence against Serbs. It is also stressed that few of the IDPs that fled to central SCG after the conflicts in 1999 have returned to Kosovo. The reason for that is the uncertain final status of Kosovo, fear for safety and property issues, the State Department believes. An especially serious problem in Kosovo is sexual abuse of children, minors and women and there is proof that international and local officials are also involved in human trafficking, the statement reads
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Friday, March 10, 2006
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March 06, 2006
There is great danger in Kosovo
The Sofia Echo
FROM THE EDITOR: Kosovo
09:00 Mon 06 Mar 2006
There is great danger in Kosovo.
The danger is not just a physical one, however fundamental that danger is. Because there has been no major eruption of violence for about two years, many who do not keep a close eye on the situation in the troubled territory may believe that the status quo is an enabling environment for peace. This view is mistaken. None of the profound issues within Kosovo have been solved. The lid is being held on the situation by the international community. While a form of peace is being maintained by foreign military and police forces, a range of issues are quietly festering. An obvious issue is that of the future status of Kosovo. Another is the question of the rights of ethnic minorities within the territory. Further, the situations with regard to under-development and poverty, and human rights, may have worsened rather than improved, notwithstanding the holding action and the monitoring by the international community.
There can be no question that there is a certain urgency to resolving the question of the future status of Kosovo. Yet, as the opening episodes of the current process of consultations and negotiations have shown, there can be no prospect of the situation ever becoming less complex. Nor is the situation assisted by the fact that the two principal parties - those connected to the Serbian community, and the Albanian ethnic majority in Kosovo - have mutually exclusive positions. Serbia has vowed never to sign off on independence for Kosovo; the Albanian Kosovars will accept nothing less.
These are what may be termed the internal dangers for Kosovo; that a continuation of the status quo, or failure of the negotiations process, will unleash a new round of violence from which no victors may emerge.
Yet, there is a broader issue, and a broader danger. The future of Europe is linked to the future of Kosovo, and similarly troubled territories. Within the current process of political and diplomatic engagements, it may reasonably be expected that the European Union should play a leading role. This is a major challenge to the EU, and raises, in a way different to the debate about EU expansion, the deeper question about “what kind of Europe?” The parameters that have applied to the process of EU expansion thus far, including the EU’s engagements with Bulgaria and Romania, cannot be applied in the same way. The most constructive level of engagement possible on the part of the EU will be required to ensure a European future for Kosovo. If it is accepted that the EU accepts as members those states that are functioning according to the criteria for accession, a special effort will be required to ensure a European future for the people of Kosovo, who are and always will be Europeans in the geographical sense, whatever the outcome of the status talks.
What role can there, and should there, be for Bulgaria? This country thus far has been careful to emphasise that it cannot and will not play the role of mediator, and nor will it put forward a solution that is separate to that emerging from the process in which the United Nations and the European Union, among others, are engaged. However, if it is true that Bulgaria is viewed as a good neighbour both by those in Belgrade and in Pristina, while being viewed as a partner of European leaders in Brussels, Bulgaria can do much to keep alive the rounds of negotiations. As much diplomatic energy as is available should be dedicated to this. To help keep the process on track, including by fully supporting efforts by the UN, EU and the US to keep the parties at the negotiating table and steering them towards genuine progress, would be fully justified, for the sake of all the people of Kosovo, for the Balkans and the South East European region, and for Europe as a whole.
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 06, 2006
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Carlita's Way
["We want to bring justice and reconciliation to the former Yugoslavia," ]
A nation on trial for its past
Serbia and Montenegro may become the first country to be found guilty of genocide.
By Peter Ford and Beth Kampschror
PARIS AND SKOPJE, MACEDONIA - Serbia and Montenegro, already struggling to find its place in Europe, risks becoming the first state ever to be formally branded genocidal, as judges at the World Bank last week began hearing arguments in a Bosnian lawsuit over crimes committed during the war in the early 1990s.
The case could make Serbia, as the successor state to Yugoslavia, liable for tens of billions of dollars in reparations. But Bosnian Muslims say the suit's importance lies elsewhere, in creating an accurate and unchallengeable account of the conflict, which continues to poison regional politics.
"For our future, to have clean relations with our neighbors, we need to have a clear vision of our past and our future," says Sakib Softic, the lead Bosnian lawyer at the World Court in The Hague. "The international court has the authority, with its judgment, to finish up these questions from our past and move on toward the future."
While another international court in The Hague is trying individuals - including former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic - for war crimes, the International Court of Justice (ICJ), as the World Court is officially known, hears cases between states.
Bosnia must prove to the court not only that genocide occurred, through the policy of "ethnic cleansing," but that the Bosnian Serb militias committing it did so on the orders of Yugoslav government officials, and with their support.
The Bosnian side "seeks to establish responsibility of a state which, through its leadership and through its organs, committed the most brutal violations of ... the most sacred instruments of international law," Mr. Softic told the 16-judge panel in his opening statement last week.
When they present their oral arguments this week, Serbia's lawyers are expected to argue that the court has no jurisdiction over the case because when it was brought in 1993, the former Republic of Yugoslavia was not clearly recognized as a member of the United Nations, and thus not of the ICJ either.
It was on those grounds that in 2004 the court dismissed a suit filed by Serbia and Montenegro against the US-led bombing of Serbia during the 1999 Kosovo war.
Serbia's lawyers are also expected to argue that however horrific the crimes committed in Bosnia by Bosnian Serb forces, such as the massacre of more than 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men and boys near Srebrenica, the authorities in Belgrade were not responsible for them.
The case will challenge the ICJ, which is more accustomed to dealing with reconciling territorial claims in boundary disputes between nations. "This is a very, very political affair, and the decision will be a grave one," says Emmanuel Decaux, an international law professor at the University of Paris II.
In the field of international humanitarian law, the ICJ has been overshadowed by ad hoc war-crimes tribunals like those set up in The Hague to try cases arising from the Balkan wars, and in Arusha, Tanzania, to deal with those responsible for the Rwandan genocide, and by the recently created International Criminal Court, which has yet to hear a case.
"We are in the process of creating the architecture of international accountability for human rights violations," says Nicholas Howen, head of the Geneva-based International Commission of Jurists. "You need to hold individuals responsible, but there is a big gap if you can't say the machinery of a state is responsible, too."
The court's judgment, not expected until late this year, is eagerly awaited in Bosnia-Herzegovina. "I expect the court ... to give a good decision and say that Serbia is guilty," says Refik Begic, the Muslim mayor of Bratunac, a majority Serb town in eastern Bosnia. "If we are to trust each other and establish a good relationship, we need to know what happened here."
Serbian leaders, however, say that raking over the coals of the past will be bad for the future. The lawsuit could have "dramatically negative effects on future relations in the Balkans," Serbia's deputy prime minister, Miroljub Labus, told Nezavisne Novine, a newspaper published in Bosnia-Herzegovina's Serb-dominated Republika Srpska.
But in a region divided as much as anything by opposing memories and interpretations of what happened during the war "this [case] is about establishing the nature of the war, whether it was aggression or whether it was civil war," says Nerma Jelacic, a human rights investigator in Sarajevo.
The International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY), where Mr. Milosevic is on trial, has already ruled that genocide did occur in Bosnia. Although the ICJ is not bound by that precedent, "it would be very troubling, and troublesome for the coherence of international justice" if the ICJ judges find otherwise, says Professor Decaux.
It will not be easy, however, for the Bosnian side to establish the Yugoslav government's responsibility for the war crimes its proxy forces committed. Prosecutors at the ICTY have sometimes had trouble proving all the links in alleged chains of command between the battlefields and Belgrade, and Bosnian lawyers at the World Court will not be able to use all the evidence presented at the ICTY, some of which Belgrade provided only on the condition it not be released to third parties.
The hearings will continue until May 9, when the judges will retire to consider what they have heard, along with thousands of pages of legal arguments. That is expected to take several months. The case was first brought in 1993, and has been prolonged by repeated procedural incidents and political upheavals in Belgrade.
But rather than blunting the impact of the judgment, the long delay might actually give it greater force, suggests Mr. Howen. "It shows the timeless nature of the crimes, the timeless need for accountability, and the timeless nature of the law," he says.
**********
http://www.usip.org/peacewatch/pdf/pw0106.pdf
US Institute of Peace (USIP)
Peace Watch-January/February 2006
Building for Peace
Carla Del Ponte's Quest for Justice
Chief prosecutor says the job is not yet done
With the tenth anniversary of the Srebenica
massacre approaching in July and two of the most
wanted individuals, Ratko Mladic and Radovan
Karadzic, still at large, the Balkans Working Group, headed
by Daniel Serwer, hosted a meeting in mid-June featuring
Carla Del Ponte, the chief prosecutor of the International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Del
Ponte arrived shortly after the widespread distribution in
Serbia of a shocking video of a mass execution of Bosnian
Muslim men by Serbian paramilitary forces in 1995. "There
can no longer be any doubt that a genocide occurred in Srebenica,"
said the prosecutor. "The tide has now turned, but
the job is not yet done."
Del Ponte noted that cooperation between the ICTY and the
authorities in the Balkans had increased dramatically in the previous
six months. A score of indictees were transferred to The
Hague, including the former prime minister of Kosovo. International
pressure from Europe and the United States played a major
role in this transformation, said Del Ponte-as did the Serb and
Croat desire to begin discussions about acceding to the European
Union.
But some significant obstacles remain. The fact that the two
most wanted men are still at-large ten years after Srebenica is "an
insult to the victims and a shame to the international community"
said Del Ponte. Serbia and Republika Srpska must act in concert
with the international community to locate and arrest these two
men, who have been indicted by the ICTY on charges of genocide
and other crimes against humanity. (The ICTY itself has no
powers of arrest.)
The tribunal is accelerating its work in order to finish all the
trials by 2008 and all appeals by 2010. It is also slowly countering
government propaganda, especially in Serbia, that it is engaged in
selective and biased prosecutions. The ICTY now has 162 individuals
under indictment for war crimes, crimes against humanity,
and genocide. "We want to bring justice and reconciliation to the
former Yugoslavia," said Del Ponte. "If the need for justice is not
satisfied, then the next generation may want to render justice with
blood, tears, and weapons."
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Monday, March 06, 2006
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March 04, 2006
Kosovo Albanian accuses US diplomats of political sacking
United States of Albania
Kosovo Albanian accuses US diplomats of political sacking
Serbians Demand Intervention to Prevent Guerrilla Leader's Election in Kosovo
Strategic Forecasting -Stratfor
Kosovo: The Quiet Support Behind Ceku's Political Rise
March 03, 2006 19 40 GMT
Summary
Kosovar Lt. Gen. Agim Ceku appears poised to become prime minister after President Fatmir Sejdiu asked him to assume the role March 2, one day after Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi resigned. Although Ceku's guerrilla background worries Serbia and some other European countries, Kosovo's political leadership and the United States are ready for Ceku's ascension to power.
Analysis
Kosovo's newly elected President Fatmir Sejdiu asked Lt. Gen. Agim Ceku to become prime minister March 2, one day after Prime Minister Bajram Kosumi resigned during a government shake-up. Ceku, a former Kosovo Liberation Army guerrilla leader and current head of Kosovo's Protection Corps, is a controversial figure. He has been accused of masterminding at least two massacres of Serbs during the Kosovo war. He is also allegedly involved in organized crime.
So why would a former guerrilla with no previous political affiliation suddenly skyrocket to power? Ceku is considered a hero in Kosovo and is known for his effective leadership style. He also has never openly sided with one political party until now. More importantly, Ceku has quiet support from the United States. Ceku cooperated with NATO and Washington in 1999 and 2000 in the last stages of the Kosovo war. As a result, the United States has intervened more than once to prevent Ceku's indictment by the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia at The Hague.
For the United States, which has significant influence in Kosovo, Ceku is a known quantity. Kosumi was not. Kosumi was a student activist and teacher, which meant Washington could do little to pressure him. Kosumi even received criticism from U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan for failing to implement required changes, including filling all government positions. This led Kosumi's Alliance for the Future of Kosovo party to press for his resignation after he failed to comply with international protocol. U.S. military leaders likely know a great deal, both good and bad, about Ceku and can take some comfort in NATO's ability to influence him.
European leaders said March 2 they will withhold judgment on Ceku until after he assumes power. Europe's capitals intend to see how well he abides by human rights agreements, which means Brussels will be watching to see how many Serbs die or are run out of Kosovo after Ceku becomes prime minister.
The ministerial substitution comes during a delicate period between the first and second rounds of U.N.-mediated talks between Kosovar Albanians and Serbians regarding Kosovo's status. The United Nations, which has administered the province since 1999, believes Kosovo will gain independence by the end of 2006. However, Ceku's sudden appearance on the political scene will exasperate Serbia, because Belgrade considers him a war criminal. Ceku's possible appointment seems to be a slap in the face for Serbia, but that will matter little if the U.S. and Kosovar political leadership want Ceku in a position of power.
Related Headlines
Kosovo: The Power Struggle After Rugova's Death
Feb 01, 2006
Kosovo: The President and the Militant
Feb 10, 2006
Geopolitical Diary: Kosovo and the Implications of Independence
Feb 22, 2006
.............................
Gray Falcon
Friday, March 03, 2006
Our Man Agim
Prologue: Tuesday afternoon I received a phone call from a friend in Washington, who told me of information from a trusted source that Bajram Kosumi, "Prime minister" of the provisional Albanian government of occupied Kosovo, will be forced to resign and replaced by than Agim Ceku. "Can they do that?" my friend asked. "Sure they can, " I replied. "They are the Empire, and Kosumi is a satellite; they can do anything
in Kosovo." Well, except protect non-Albanians, their property and culture, anyway - but why belabor the obvious? On Wednesday, Reuters
reported that Kosovo PM Bajram Kosumi resigned from office, "under pressure" from "Western mentor states shepherding the U.N.-run Serbian province through talks that could lead to its independence." UN's viceroy and steadfast partisan of the Albanian cause, Soeren Jessen-Petersen, commented: "...we want to support Kosovo, but at the same time we want the leaders and the people to work very, very hard to earn that which they want to see in Kosovo."
(
Handy translation note: We = Empire; Kosovo = Albanians. Carry on.)
And sure enough, Kosumi's successor is Agim Ceku, the butcher of Krajina and the highest-ranking "military" commander of the terrorist KLA (Hashim "Snake" Thaci was its political leader). He is a natural choice to fill the shoes of Ramush "
Golden Boy" Haradinaj, another KLA veteran who resigned as Prime Minister
last March to face charges before the Hague Inqusition - which promptly released him and sent him back to Kosovo.
Writes Chris Deliso of Balkanalysis.com:
There's certainly no one as good as Ceku at removing "unnecessary delays," especially if it involves removing unnecessary populations.
So let's review here. First Bush II
adopts a Balkans policy strategy written by the Clintonites, which amounts to secession of Kosovo, secession of Montenegro, a Muslim-dominated centralized Bosnia and preferably the smallest, weakest Serbia imaginable. Then Kai Eide, the Whitewasher of March,
greenlights the final-status talks despite the UN standards (from "standards before status") manifestly nowhere near being met. Then Martti
Ahtisaari, who was instrumental in tricking Belgrade to sign a truce in 1999 that NATO interpreted as unconditional surrender of Kosovo, and who then joined the Serbophobic and pro-Albanian ICG, is chosen to chair the negotiations. Then, following the death and beatification of
Ibrahim Rugova, American and UK diplomats
openly declare that independence of "Kosova" is inevitable, and Belgrade should deal with it. Now the "international community" shows the precise extent to which it controls the Kosovo Albanians, by forcing their top officials (Nexhat Daci, speaker of the Albanian parliament, was also forced to resign) out to make way for their KLA pets.
Despite his involvement in the deliberate slaughter of Serb civilians in present-day Croatia (for which the Inquisition has hounded his immediate superior,
Ante Gotovina), Ceku not only didn't get indicted, he was put
on UN payroll as commander of the "Kosovo Protection Corps," a sinecure for KLA veterans established after the occupation. When Ceku was arrested on a stopover in Slovenia, on a perfectly valid and legal Interpol warrant based on criminal charges in Serbia, he was
bailed out by Viceroy Harri Holkeri who declared that "Serbia-Montenegro no longer had jurisdiction over the citizens [sic] of Kosovo." Holkeri displayed no such decisiveness during the Albanian
Kristallnacht a few months later, hiding instead with the best of the
rabbits.
After all this, can anyone in Belgrade who still has even a single functioning brain cell honestly believe that the "international community" (i.e. Washington, Brussels and satellites) has anything but an Albanian "Kosova" in mind? There is
no doubt about it any more.
The plot to separate Kosovo from Serbia
de jure as well as
de facto should be the primary concern of whoever heads the government in Belgrade. Not chasing Ratko Mladic, or negotiating the possibility of a theoretical consideration of a promise to maybe negotiate the notion of eventualkly entering the EU - the preservation of Serbia's territorial integrity,
here and
now. Acquiescing to the "independence" of "Kosova" is treason. Trouble is, these days treason is trendy in Belgrade. It's progressive, civilized, "democratic" even...
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Saturday, March 04, 2006
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March 02, 2006
UK politician: "Spread of US influence" reason for NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
UK politician: "Spread of US influence" reason for NATO bombing of Yugoslavia
March 01, 2006
YU
Excerpt from report by Serbian independent news agency FoNet
The Hague, 1 March: A defence witness for [former Serbian and Yugoslav President] Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague tribunal, Alice Mann, said today at the trial that there had been no humanitarian disaster in Kosovo, adding that the [former US diplomat] William Walker had stage-managed an incident in Racak village [in March 1999, used as a pretext for bombing].
Mann, who was the chairwoman of the British Parliamentary Committee for Peace in the Balkans and a Labour MP in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, said that "even those who bombed Yugoslavia knew that the Kosovo Liberation Army (OVK) [UCK in Albanian] had been an organized force. My experience taught me that as soon as fighting began civilians started moving out of the scene".
She accused William Walker, former chief of the Kosovo Verification Mission on the eve of the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, saying that he had stage-managed an incident in Racak village in January 1999 when a large number of [ethnic] Albanians had been killed".
According to her, the CIA had infiltrated verifiers into Kosovo, organizing the training of OVK members.
"We should not have destroyed a country based on what Walker said," Mann added.
Asked how she found out whether Kosovo Albanians had started to leave the province, the witness replied: "Shortly before the bombing, the foreign secretary [Robin Cook] and the prime minister [Tony Blair] gave statements, and the facts also spoke for themselves. The mass movement of Albanians from Kosovo began after the bombing, which is understandable, because they were leaving in fear for their lives".
"Did your prime minister speak the truth or not?" Milosevic asked his 53rd witness, but the presiding judge, Patrick Robinson, did not allow Mann to reply to this question.
Robinson assessed as irrelevant Milosevic's question whether the witness had attempted to organize a vote in her country over Great Britain's participation in the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999.
"I thought and I still think that NATO's attack against Yugoslavia were counter-legal," Mann said.
"What was the real reason for the bombing?" Milosevic asked.
"I think that the reason was purely political, being the spread of US influence in the region. I think that it was also linked to the breaking up of Yugoslavia. The Americans had already intervened in Krajina [region in Croatia contested between the Croatian authorities and Serb minority in Knin until 1995], they had already trained KLA [UCK] guerrillas. It was only a matter of time when the bombing would start. Bill Clinton was in trouble over domestic policy issues, just as the US prepared for war in Iraq. The USA now has a military base in Kosovo and their bases are everywhere in the world wherever interests oppose their own," Mann responded. [Passage omitted]
The trial continues.
Source: BBC Monitoring / FoNet news agency, Belgrade
http://www.csees.net
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 02, 2006
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War Criminal, Ally, or Both?
["Well, I have always made it clear ... thatNATO has nodirect contacts with the KLA*," answered Shea. "Who they appoint as their leaders, that is entirely their own affair. ] *video proves the opposite Mr Shea!
· Mother Jones
War Criminal, Ally, or Both?
The KLA's new leader, Agim Ceku, may have helped mastermind the most brutal ethnic-cleansing campaign in post-communist Yugoslavia's history. Now he's on NATO's side in the war over Kosovo.
by Jeffrey Benner
May 21, 1999
The Kosova Liberation Army (KLA)'s new chief of staff, Agim Ceku, has been linked to two of the grisliest episodes of brutality in the ongoing war in the former Yugoslavia, perhaps even worse than the current Serb campaign against ethnic Albanians. Now he's on NATO's side in the war for Kosovo. Who is this man, and why is NATO making excuses on his behalf?
Ceku joined the newly formed Croatian military (HV) in 1991 during that region's effort to secede from Yugoslavia. He quickly rose to the rank of brigadier general, and retired last February. Though it sounds lifted from a résumé, a short description of Ceku in Jane's Defense Weeklycredits him with helping to orchestrate Operation Storm and the Medak offensive, which involved the cleansing of ethnic Serbs from the Krajina region of Croatia, the deliberate shelling of civilians, rape, and systematic arson.
According to Jane's, "in 1993 Ceku masterminded the successful HV offensive at Medak, and in 1995 was one of the key planners of the successful 'Operation Storm,' in which the HV quickly defeated [its] Serb opponents."
Ceku also has some well-placed references to go along with that résumé: An unnamed retired U.S. military official told Jane's, "We were impressed by [Ceku's] overview of the battleground and the ability to always predict his enemy's next move."
In Operation Storm, a four-day offensive in August of 1995, the Croatian army regained control of the Krajina region, which was primarily inhabited by ethnic Serbs. Many analysts say Operation Storm was undertaken with the tacit approval of the West, and perhaps even with the assistance of U.S. military advisers (much the same way it is reportedly advising the KLA in Kosovo).
According to an Amnesty International report, "Croatia: Impunity for killings after 'Storm,'" nearly the entire ethnic Serbian population of the region, estimated to be at least 180,000 people, fled in face of the attack. Hundreds of civilians were murdered, most of the victims being elderly and disabled persons who were unable to flee. The report estimates that 5,000 structures were torched by the advancing Croatian army.
According to The New York Times, the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has determined that war crimes were indeed committed during Operation Storm. In a March 21, 1999 article, the Times revealed an unpublished report produced by the Tribunal. Among the report's assertions: "During the course of the military offensive, the Croatian armed forces and special police committed numerous violations of international humanitarian law."
The Medak offensive in 1993, which Jane's credits Ceku with "masterminding," is also known as the "Medak massacre." While the name may not ring a bell for most readers in the U.S., it is remembered in Canada as that nation's largest military action since the Korean War. According to the book, Tested Mettle, Canadian peacekeepers in the "Medak Pocket" engaged Croatian soldiers in a firefight to stop them from terrorizing Serbian civilians. Four Canadians were wounded in the battle, which left nearly 30 Croatian soldiers dead.
Excerpts of the book's account of the fighting at Medak were published in newspapers across Canada last November. Atrocities witnessed by Canadian soldiers are described in detail. "A drunken Croat soldier emerged from a building and staggered toward [a Canadian soldier]," begins one section. "A girl could be heard screaming inside the house. Draped on the drunken soldier's head was a pair of blood-soaked panties."
While details about his role in such horrors remain unconfirmed, the mere mention of Ceku's possible connection to war crimes is enough to put NATO on the defensive, especially since the U.S. has been linked with him in the past. During the May 14 NATO press briefing, a reporter asked Jamie Shea to comment on reports of Ceku's involvement in ethnic cleansing while he was serving in the Croatian military.
"Well, I have always made it clear ... that NATO has no direct contacts with the KLA," answered Shea. "Who they appoint as their leaders, that is entirely their own affair. I don't have any comment on that whatever."
However, unable to restrain himself, Shea did comment. Using a laughable chain of reasoning, he lay the blame for NATO's association with the KLA at the feet of their mutual arch enemy, Milosevic. "If Milosevic had not started a policy of brutality in Kosovo some years ago, the KLA would never have existed." Shea said. "It is a very recent creation, and it is a creation of Belgrade, first and foremost."
Chillingly, Shea went on to imply that the Krajina atrocities during Operation Storm were a case of the Serbs getting what they deserved. "When you spoke about the Serbs who were driven from the Krajina, this is absolutely true," he admitted. "But as somebody who remembers these events particularly well, do not forget that there were many, many Croats who were persecuted and also driven from their homes in that part of the world, when the Yugoslav national army moved there in 1991."
In fact, this sort of response from a Western official regarding atrocities committed by the Croatian army is hardly new. The West has long seen Croatia as a valuable ally against Milosevic, so misdeeds by the Croatian military have been downplayed by Western European and U.S. officials. According to the Times, American lawyers hired by the Pentagon argued at the International Criminal Tribunal against indicting the Croatian generals who led Operation Storm. The lawyers argued that only legitimate military targets were shelled during the attack.
The following assessment, printed in the August 22, 1995 edition of The Washington Post, still rings true:
"In the battle for international public opinion, Croatia has so far escaped serious criticism for Operation Storm despite increasing evidence of shootings of civilians and officially sanctioned arson of many Serb houses in the Krajina [region]. International attention has focused on rebel Serbs, who are being charged with digging mass graves near Srebrenica -- a U.N. 'safe area' in Bosnia that fell to a combined Yugoslav-Bosnian Serb assault in July."
While the Krajina battle is often cited as the turning point which brought opposing parties to the negotiating table in 1995, for Ceku it served as inspiration to make war. According to a BBC translation of a May 14 Croatian news report, Ceku issued a statement saying: "There is only one way out. And we have advocated it from the very beginning: a final defeat of the Serbian army and its expulsion from Kosovo; a defeat similar to the one they [the Yugoslav army] suffered in Croatia."
More Kosovo Coverage from the MoJo Wire
# posted by ANTIC.org-SNN : Thursday, March 02, 2006
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This was murder
The ICTY killed Milosevic, pure and simple. He suffered from high blood pressure and a heart condition. The ICTY refused to allow him to go to Russia for treatment despite his complaints of diziness and a roaring pressure in his ears recently. The ICTY pushed on at a breakneck pace and adopted tactics that would raise anyone's blood pressure. From the large number of outright liars and NATOcrats testifying for the prosecution to the endless documents given Milosevic at the last moment to the judges cutting off his microphone, placing arbitrary limits on his examinations and cross-examinations, the many outrageous restrictions placed on him and so much more the ICTY's ways would drive anyone crazy. I really believe most people in that position would have given up or gone much sooner. This death conveniently saves the ICTY the trouble of fabricating a guilty verdict which they had NO evidence for. None. Although the trial did see lots of evidence against NATO, the KLA, Croat and Bosniak forces, and even the various "democratic opposition" leaders and their paramilitaries(so beloved by the West and even the Left),
folks like Djindjic and Draskovic.