Hey, guys, same tactics the Iraquis used.

Million dollar question: How did the Serbs know where to place the human shields? Is the Yugoslav Army omniscient or was it just a lucky guess that NATO was going to hit Korise thinking it was a military command post?

---

Britain accuses Serbs of using human shields

09:06 a.m. May 17, 1999 Eastern

By Giles Elgood

LONDON, May 17 (Reuters) - Britain said on Monday it had more than 80 reports from Kosovo Albanians that Serb forces had used them as human shields against NATO air attacks.


Foreign Secretary Robin Cook said Serb forces must bear responsibility for the deaths of nearly 100 ethnic Albanians killed in a NATO air attack last week because the victims had been rounded up and forced to stay near a military command post.


NATO has been stung by criticism of the raid on the village of Korisa in southwest Kosovo, the latest in a series of attacks which have accidentally caused civilian casualties.


Cook said Serb forces had rounded up ethnic Albanians hiding in the hills and forced them into two compounds at Korisa, where they died in an attack he described as a human tragedy.


``The responsibility for that tragedy rests with the Serb forces who rounded up those refugees from the hillside, forced them back to Korisa and in particular forced those 100 refugees not to return to their homes but to settle, squeezed together, in those two compounds,'' Cook said.


An eyewitness report on Germany's Deutsche Welle radio on Saturday said the Serbs used Albanians as human shields there.


A survivor said some 600 Kosovo Albanians were forced to gather on a small plot of land near Korisa before the attack.


``We were told something bad would happen to us if we left the place,'' said the eyewitness, adding that Serb police hinted at what was about to happen.


``Now you'll see what a NATO attack looks like,'' the refugee quoted one policeman as saying.


He said he went to sleep under a tractor and was awakened by explosions and cries. Some managed to escape as Serb paramilitaries sprayed fire around them.


NATO confirmed that three of its planes had dropped eight bombs on the spot and said it regretted the casualties, but it stressed the target was a Serb military camp.


Cook said Britain had had repeated reports from Albanians fleeing Kosovo that Korisa was not the only place where they were used as human shields by the Serb forces.


``I can tell you that we have now gathered 80 separate reports from refugees in Macedonia of the use of human shields by the Serb forces within Kosovo,'' Cook told a London news briefing by videolink from NATO headquarters in Brussels.


These reports included one incident at the Kosovo town of Klina, where 500 ethnic Albanian men were used as human shields during fighting with the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA).


One refugee had told how he was forced to lie naked in a field in front of Serb artillery while they shelled KLA positions, Cook said.


At the town of Orahovac 700 men were placed in front of tanks with their hands tied for two days. The refugee who gave that account had escaped only by bribing his captors.


``It is against that background that we should judge the crocodile tears that (Yugoslav) President (Slobodan) Milosevic wept over those that died at Korisa,'' Cook said.

Come on! send these groundtroups, finally!

Zoja

TO JAWS AND THE RIOT CREW..........

**BIG BROTHER*** I miss you!!!!! I hope all is
okay with you........please let somebody know you
are okay if anyway possible. Love you....
and Love to the Riot Crew..(hugs to all of ya)
Love,
Little bratty sister....
MLA

Maja,

Even your own country is against ethnic cleansing......And it's even ON THE SUBJECT!!!


CENTRAL EUROPEAN PRESIDENTS BACK G-8 STANCE ON KOSOVA.
In Lviv on 15 May, the presidents of nine Central
European countries urged the Yugoslav government to
accept the G-8 plan for ending the Kosova crisis. That
plan calls for the deployment of international
peacekeepers, the withdrawal of Serbian forces, and
substantial autonomy for Kosova. The heads of states
also proposed a "high-level conference on southeastern
Europe" to work out a "comprehensive strategy for the
stabilization of the entire region through economic
reconstruction and the promotion of democracy." The
statement--signed by the presidents of Austria,
Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Germany, Hungary, Poland,
Romania, Slovenia, and Ukraine--condemned ethnic
cleansing in Kosova and deplored civilian deaths because
of the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia. Ukrainian President
Kuchma was the only head of state at the Lviv summit to
call on NATO to stop its air strikes.


Stop the fascists!
Zoja

COHEN BLASTS SERBS FOR 'CROCODILE TEARS.'

British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook and U.S. Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright wrote in the "Washington Post" of 17
May that "there have been perhaps hundreds of innocent
casualties as a result of NATO action" against Yugoslav
military targets. Cook and Albright stressed that they
"deeply regret that.... But in a conflict as intense as
this, it is impossible to eliminate such casualties."
U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen said in
Washington the previous day that "for the Serbs to
lament publicly about the deaths of these refugees is
almost tantamount to [Nazi war criminal] Adolf Eichmann
complaining about Allied forces bombing the
crematoriums. These are crocodile tears coming out of
mass killers."

Move, you fascists!
Zoja

More SHIELDS.....


U.S.: KORISA VICTIMS MOST LIKELY 'HUMAN SHIELDS.' Cohen
also said in Washington on 16 May that the 87 displaced
Kosovars killed in a NATO air strike on Serbian military
targets in Korisa two days previously may have been
deliberately brought to that village by Serbian forces
as human shields. "I think there's no level to which
[Yugoslav President Slobodan] Milosevic and his troops
won't sink in terms of using refugees as human shields,"
Cohen argued. Elsewhere, U.S. Undersecretary of State
Thomas Pickering said that he also had heard reports
from refugees that civilians were being used as human
shields, although there is no independent verification
of those claims, AP reported. "It is another tragic
example of absolutely outrageous behavior on the part of
Milosevic, trying to use innocent [ethnic] Albanians to
protect his military forces," Pickering concluded.

Come on, you ground troops. Beat the fascist leaders of Serbia.

Zoja

You see, the fascist Serbian leaders are soooo brave that they can't even fight for themselves. They have to use innocent Albanian people to use as shields, because they piss in their pants to be hit themselves.
No wonder the UCK is fighting so hard.


U.K.: SURVIVORS SAY SERBS USED THEM AS HUMAN SHIELDS. In
London, British Defense Minister John Spellar said on 16
May that Serbian forces were using Korisa at the time of
the air strike "as a military camp and command post with
military vehicles and artillery present. We do not yet
know the reason why civilians were at this location at
the time of the attack. But it increasingly appears
likely, however, that the civilians were used as human
shields. We're aware of continued reports that according
to survivors, the civilians were ordered by Serb police
to return to the village from the hills where they'd
been hiding for several weeks. On their return they were
not permitted to live in their homes, instead they were
herded into concentrated areas within the village and
held there until the NATO attack took place," AP quoted
him as saying.

Zoja

The best news I came across.....

JOINT CHIEFS: GROUND TROOPS NEEDED. The members of the
U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff have written to U.S.
Secretary of Defense Cohen that ground troops must be
committed in the conflict in Kosova to "guarantee
fulfillment of the administration's political
objectives," "Newsweek" reported on 17 May. The military
leaders added that "a ground war would have to commence
by the beginning of August, and the forces required must
start assembling by the beginning of June" if the
hundreds of thousands of refugees and displaced persons
are to be back in their homes before winter.

As soon as the first ground troops set foot on Serbia, they don't need tanks and guns, but shovels to move the sheit off the streets..... Maybe disinfectant will be a good one, too.


Draza, go join the Serbian army, feel what it's like to really crap in your pants ....
Zoja

FIGHTING ALONG NORTHERN ALBANIAN BORDER. Serbian forces
and Kosova Liberation Army fighters exchanged fire
inside Albania for about five hours in the village of
Zogaj, near Tropoja, on 16 May, an RFE/RL correspondent
reported from Tirana. Government officials in Tirana
said that Serbian forces shelled the village of Dobruna
in the Has Mountains and that women and children left
the village, while the men there have taken up fighting
positions. Nearby, Albanian border guards and Serbian
forces exchanged fire in the village of Letaj. The
previous day, NATO jets pounded targets in the village
of Zhur, on the Kosovar side of the Kukes region.

....in your pants, Milo Magarac! Here come the soldiers.....

Zoja

Slob Molosevic, nase junak, can in this stage of the war, only resort to cowardice actions. PRAVI COVIJEK!

YUGOSLAV MILITARY ABDUCTS ALBANIANS IN MONTENEGRO.
Refugees arriving in Albania on 16 May said that
Yugoslav army forces ordered about 150 ethnic Albanian
males of military age to get off busses en route to the
Albanian border crossing of Hani i Hotit, an RFE/RL
correspondent reported from Tirana. Refugees said that
the males were taken away in the direction of Ulcinj. It
is unclear what happened to them. The refugees were part
of a group of some 400 people from the areas of Klina
and Peja.

Really, what heroes, these fascists!

Zoja

Look here, you good for nothing fanatical fascists, here's a little lesson in cooperation for you. Working together is better than ethninic cleansing.

BOSNIAN MUSLIMS, CROATS AGREE ON ECONOMIC PROGRAM.
Bosnian federal Prime Minister Edhem Bicakcic, who is a
Muslim, and Deputy Prime Minister Dragan Covic, who is
an ethnic Croat, agreed on 14 May in Sarajevo on a
package of concrete measures aimed at reviving the
economy. The measures deal with accelerating
privatization, strengthening the currency, reforming
several socialist-era economic institutions, and
establishing an integrated railway system. Western
observers have frequently criticized what they regard as
pervasive corruption and bureaucracy in Bosnia. The
observers note that reform must take place quickly
because Bosnia will need to attract more foreign
investors in the coming months once many postwar aid
programs come to an end.

Zoja

Slob Milosevic slaga i slaga i slaga...... (he lies, and he lies, and he lies.....)

Human Rights Developments, by the Human Rights Watch, 1999

The government of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro), led by President Slobodan Milosevic, continued its blatant disregard for human rights in 1998. Police and army actions in Kosovo involved grave breaches of international humanitarian and human rights law. Milosevic also took steps against the independent Serbian-language media and the autonomy of Serbia’s universities, and failed to cooperate with the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY).

By far the most serious violations occurred in the southwestern province of Kosovo, inhabited predominantly by ethnic Albanians who seek independence. After years of peaceful resistance to Yugoslav government repression, some ethnic Albanians formed an armed resistance against the state, known as the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), or Ushtria Clirimtare e Kosoves (UCK) in Albanian. By early 1998, the KLA had taken credit for a series of attacks on policemen and ethnic Albanians it considered collaborators with the government.

The first government atrocities took place in late February and early March when special police forces attacked three villages in the Drenica region, known for its KLA presence, with artillery, helicopters, and armored vehicles. At least eighty-eight peoplewere killed, twenty-four of them women and children. Although it is unclear to what extent the KLA was offering resistance, the evidence strongly suggests that at least seventeen people were executed after they had been detained or surrendered.

The police attack in Drenica was a watershed in the Kosovo conflict; thousands of outraged Albanians who had been committed to the nonviolent politics of their political leader Ibrahim Rugova decided to join the KLA. In the ensuing months, the KLA took control of an estimated 40 percent of Kosovo’s territory.

The government began a large-scale offensive against the KLA in mid-May, a few days after Milosevic agreed to U.S. demands that he meet with Rugova. The special police together with the Yugoslav Army attacked a string of towns and villages along the border with Albania in the west, with the specific intent of depopulating the region. Until then, the KLA had been receiving arms and fresh recruits from across the border.

Many villages from Pec in the north to Dakovica in the south were shelled while civilians were still present. Noncombatants who fled the attacks were sometimes fired on by snipers, and a still undetermined number of people were taken into detention. In three cases, helicopters marked with the Red Cross emblem reportedly fired on civilians. Landmines were placed in strategic points along the border, as well as along the southern border with Macedonia. Most villages in the region were systematically destroyed, and farmers’ livestock was shot, to ensure that no one could return in the short-run. Fifteen thousand people fled to Albania, and an estimated 30,000 went north to Montenegro.

The KLA’s first major offensive began on July 19 when it attempted to capture the town of Orahovac. The offensive failed and the police recaptured the town two days later. In the fighting at least forty-two people were killed. Witnesses reported summary executions and the use of human shields by the police. Foreign journalists received reports of mass graves, although these reports were not confirmed.

The government forces intensified their offensive throughout July and August, despite promises from Milosevic that it had stopped. By mid-August, the government had retaken much of the territory that had been held by the KLA, including their stronghold of Malisevo. Unable to protect the civilian population, the KLA retreated into Drenica and some pockets in the West.

Some of the worst atrocitiesto date occurred in late September, as the government’s offensive was coming to an end. On September 26, eighteen members of an extended family, mostly women, children, and elderly, were killed near the village of Donje Obrinje by men believed to be with the Serbian special police. Many of the victims had been shot in the head and showed signs of bodily mutilation. On the same day, thirteen ethnic Albanian men were executed in the nearby village of Golubovac by government forces. One man survived and was subsequently taken out of the country by the international agencies in Kosovo.

The government offensive was an apparent attempt to crush civilian support for the rebels. Government forces attacked civilians, systematically destroyed towns, and forced thousands of people to flee their homes. One attack in August near Senik killed seventeen civilians who were hiding in the woods. The police were seen looting homes, destroying already abandoned villages, burning crops, and killing farm animals.

The majority of those killed and injured were civilians. At least 300,000 people were displaced, many of them women and children now living without shelter in the mountains and woods. In October, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) identified an estimated 35,000 of the displaced as particularly at risk of exposure to the elements. Most were too afraid to return to their homes due to the continued police presence.

At least one hundred ethnic Albanians “disappeared” in Kosovo between February and September 1998, about half of whom were last seen in the custody of the police. The precise number was impossible to determine since the Yugoslav authorities did not make public the number of people they had in detention. Some of the “disappeared” may have been in prison, others were possibly dead. Others unaccounted for in the conflict may have gone into hiding, fled Kosovo, or joined the KLA.

As of October 4, 1,242 ethnic Albanians had been charged with “terrorist acts,” according to the government, although only 684 of these people were in custody. Detained individuals included human rights activists, humanitarian aid workers, political party members, doctors, and lawyers, many of whom were physically abused. The use of torture against detainees was widespread, and five people were known to have died from abuse in prison during the year.

The government restricted the ability of humanitarian aid agencies to treat the internally displaced. On various occasions, the police blocked access to needy populations, confiscated supplies, and harassed and even attacked humanitarian aid workers. Three humanitarian aid workers were killed by mortar fire while trying to deliver food near Kijevo on August 24. The government justified the restricted access by claiming that some humanitarian organizations had distributed supplies, including arms, to the KLA.

The KLA also committed serious violations of international humanitarian law, including the taking of hostages and extrajudicialexecutions. At least one hundred ethnic Serbs, and a number of ethnic Albanians and Roma, were missing in circumstances in which KLA involvement was suspected: at least thirty-nine of them were last seen in KLA custody. In some villages the KLA tried to drive ethnic Serbs from their homes. In some cases, elderly Serbs stayed behind, either too old to flee or unwilling to abandon their homes. Some of these people were missing and feared dead. Four Serbian journalists were known to have been detained by the KLA.

On September 9, the police reported the discovery of bodies they claimed had been killed by the KLA in Lake Radonjic near Glodjane. By September 16, they had gathered thirty-four bodies, eleven of whom were identified, including some ethnic Albanians. At the end of August, the police claimed to have discovered the human remains of twenty-two people and a kiln used by the KLA to cremate the bodies in the village of Klecka. The manner in which the allegations were made, however, raised serious questions and underlined the importance of an investigation by an impartial forensics team to investigate Klecka, as well as the other areas where summary executions were reported.

On September 11, the Montenegrin government decided to close the internal boundary between Montenegro and Kosovo to all persons seeking refuge from the armed conflict. Two days later, a group of 3,200 ethnic Albanians from Kosovo, the majority of them women, children, and the elderly, were expelled to Albania by Montenegrin authorities.

The Yugoslav government restricted the work of domestic and foreign journalists who sought to report the atrocities in Kosovo. Some ethnic Albanian journalists were threatened, detained, or beaten by the police. Independent radio and television stations in the Albanian language continued to be denied licenses and, in one case, a station was closed down. The international media covering Kosovo also faced a number of restrictions, starting with the denial of visas to critical journalists whom the state considered “anti-Serb.” One journalist was declared persona non grata. A number of foreign journalists were beaten or fired upon by the police. Other minority groups in FRY also complained of discrimination, especially the Muslims in Sandzak and Hungarians in Vojvodina. Members of the country’s large Roma population, the poorest ethnic group in FRY, were occasionally subjected to violence by individuals, usually “skinheads,” as well as by the police. Roma in Kosovo were harassed and occasionally attacked by both ethnic Albanians and the police.

The country’s ethnic minorities were hardly the only victims of human rights abuses in 1998. Throughout the year, the Yugoslav government continued to take repressive measures against all citizens who challenged or criticized its authority, regardless of ethnicity. Police abuse against common criminals, as well as those publicly demonstrating against the government, remained a common occurrence. The court system was closely controlled by the state, providing little opportunity for a fair hearing or a remedy for abuses committed by the state.

On May 26, the Serbian parliament passed a new law, the University Act, which gave government authorities exclusive power to appoint rectors, faculty deans, and governing boards at all public universities. The new law also required that all faculty members sign new employment contracts, regardless of the terms and conditions of their existing contracts. After the adoption of the new law, rectors, deans, and members of governing boards at universities across Serbia were replaced with government appointees, many of them prominent members of the ruling political parties in Serbia. Protests against the new law were violently dispersed; and professors involved with opposition political parties or publicly opposed to the policies of President Milosevic were verbally attacked by the government.

Government attacks on the Serbian-language press picked up throughout 1998, especially towards the end of the year. The government maintained direct control of the state radio and television, which provided news for the majority of the population. State programs continued to glorify the government’s accomplishments, conceal its failures and, most importantly, manipulate the fears of the population. As was the case during the wars in Bosnia and Croatia, the state-run radio and television purposefully spread disinformation about Kosovo and promoted images of “the enemy” intended to inflame the conflict.

Independent media faced serious restrictions, including the confiscation of radio equipment and arbitrary bans. On October 8, in response to the threat of NATO intervention, the Serbian government passed a Decree on Special Measures that allowed for the direct censorship of local and foreign media. The decree banned the broadcast of foreign news programs like the BBC, RFE, and VOA, and ordered local media not to disseminate material that was “against the territorial integrity, sovereignty and independence of the country.” On the basis of the decree, the police closed down two newspapers, Danas and Dnevni Telegraf, and confiscated their computers on October 13. The next day, the independent daily Naša Borba was also closed. Two radio stations, Radio Index and Radio Senta, were also shut down.

On October 20, the Serbian parliament adopted a new Law on Public Information that incorporated many of the restrictions from the special decree, notably a ban on foreign radio and television broadcasts that were “of a political-propaganda nature.” The law imposed exorbitantly high fines on those who breach the law. On October 23, the owner of Dnevni Telegraf and Evropljanin magazine, Slavko Curuvija, was charged with publicizing information “jeopardizing the territorial integrity and independence of the Republic of Serbia and Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” because of an open letter to Milosevic published by his magazine that strongly criticized the government. He and the magazines’s editor and publisher were found guilty and fined $230,000.

The least obvious but highly effective restriction on the media was the deliberate lack of a coherent legal framework for the establishment of private radio and television stations, which the government used to justify the denial of broadcast licenses. Without a license, stations could be summarily closed down, as happened to at least four stations in 1998.

Throughout 1998, the federal and Serbian authorities failed to cooperate fully with the ICTY. A number of prominent indictees remained on FRY territory during the year, and the government refused visas to some ICTY investigators who wished to conduct investigations in Kosovo, as well as U.S. Ambassador at Large for War Crimes Issues David Scheffer.

Zoja

To DAVID

Serious question: what do you think of this?

WASHINGTON, May 16 (UPI) -- Colin Powell, who as chairman of the Joint
>Chiefs of Staff directed U.S. forces in Operation Desert Storm, advised
>NATO to ``accept casualties'' and to ``go all out'' to complete its
>mission in Kosovo.
> Appearing today on NBC's ``Meet the Press,'' Powell said a key factor
>that separates the Kosovo conflict from Desert Storm is that while in
>Iraq the allies could decide when the war was over, in Kosovo the
>current political objective leaves the final decision as to when the
>military action ends to Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic.
> Against Iraq in Desert Storm, the alliance employed the so-called
>``Powell Doctrine,'' which is described as the use of an overwhelming
>military force to support ``clear political objectives.''
> Powell said, ``The difficulty we're having right now (in Kosovo) is
>the political rhetoric is not matched by the political objective, and
>the political objective is not matched by the means that are being
>applied to that objective.''
> He added in that the single form of military presence -- the air
>campaign -- ``may work...but the danger with this particular strategy is
>that it is up to Mr. Milosevic to decide when he is going to blink.''
> The retired general said: ``Go all out....War involves casualties. We
>invaded Panama and lost two dozen wonderful young American soldiers. We
>lost another 500 in Desert Storm. You have to accept casualties as a way
>of conducting war and achieving your objectives, and the Powell Doctrine
>says do it quickly to get it over with.''
> There have been reports that the conservative nature of the current
>campaign against Milosevic is driven by the need to hold together the
>multi-nation NATO alliance, some members of which do not want the
>conflict to escalate to the point where ground troops would be sent in
>to battle Serb forces.
> Powell said: ``I also understand the difficulty the (Clinton)
>administration has with 19 other nations, and they have made a political
>calculation that ground troops can not be a part -- not even threaten the
>use of ground troops. But let's not be confused about this, in due
>course, ground troops are going in.''


PS from Emina and Zoja. Zoja is putting anti fascist mail on the board to make clear to the people here who are for ethnic cleansing and Milosevic, that his murder machine must be stopped. Either go for all out war, or stop the bombing altogether. We both tried to set up a decent discussion in a differentiated way, but nothing worked. We both got a lot of comments like get raped, and crap about both our personal lives, while these things were only used to illustrate our being on this board.

We both came to the conclusion that the best thing to do here is take a hard line stand. Maybe that will be clear. So, if you see hard line statemens from any of us, please keep in mind, that more acedemic peices were found useless to post here. Pity but true. It's so impossible that even the most patient ones amoung us, gave up and just to be clear, took a hard line stand.

You being a war veteran in the Gulf, we both are very interested in you response to what Powell said.

Emina and Zoja

To David, D-S, DdC, Guido the Great, Rosie, Jack, and every one who is able to discuss decently.
This is what we tried to bring accross all the time. What do you think of this? http://www.hinduonline.com/today/stories/05172524.htm THE HINDU, Monday, May 17, 1999 The lessons of the Kosovo war


By Thomas Abraham


THERE IS an important lesson to be learnt from the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation's fiasco in Yugoslavia. Military power in the modern world is useful only in two circumstances: in self- defence or as a way of conquering another country. It will be useless if the aim is only arm-twisting. NATO has tried to use its immense military power to threaten Yugoslavia and make it bend to its will. Such threats worked in the 19th and early 20th centuries. That was the era of gunboat diplomacy when the colonial Western powers had merely to station a warship or two off the coast of a weaker country and shell it a couple of times, for it to cave in. That was how large parts of Asia and Africa were subjugated.


That era is over. For one thing, military power now is much more evenly divided. More important, we live in a nationalistic age in which people won't give in to threats from outside powers. Wherever they live, people respond with an angry determination not to give in when they are bombed. The West ought to have learnt this lesson from its experiences as far afield as Vietnam and Iraq. In Iraq, Mr. Saddam Hussein has been at the receiving end of Western air attacks for eight years now but he has outlasted all adversaries. Mr. George Bush, U.S. President who led the Gulf War, retired and his successor, Mr. Bill Clinton, who continues the same Iraq policies, is at the fag-end of his Presidency. But the Iraqi strongman is still very much in place. The bombings have only generated long-lasting resentment against the West and helped Mr. Hussein consolidate his hold on power.


Similarly, the popular response in Serbia has not been to force Mr. Slobodan Milosevic to yield to the Western demands or to try and overthrow him. Instead, it has been anger, resentment and a determination not to succumb to the threats. It is not difficult to see why this is so. Though NATO has described the bombing as an action against Mr. Milosevic and his armed forces, ordinary people see it as an attack on themselves. Bombs, even those blessed with the surgical precision that NATO claims for its weapons, are blunt instruments. They hit buildings, bridges, roads and factories and rip the fabric of people's lives. And invariably, they produce overwhelming anger against those carrying out the attacks, rather than a spirit of compromise.


The only way NATO could actually have made its military strength work was to invade Yugoslavia, depose Mr. Milosevic and either install a pro-Western government or run the country itself. But the West does not have the stomach for such a major enterprise in a situation where its vital interests are not threatened. Thus, it opted for the easy way of holding out threats, followed by bombing, in the hope that this would work. The easy way, however, is also a futile way.


The experience of the last three decades, whether in Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq or Yugoslavia, has clearly shown how little military threats can achieve. It has also shown that there are no military solutions to what are essentially political problems. The conflict in Kosovo is a complex, ethno-nationalist issue with a long history. It is not a problem which can be solved by arbitrarily forcing a solution on two unwilling parties. Kosovo's status within Serbia is something that the Serbs and the Kosovars


will have to negotiate and all that the outside world can do is to create conditions for a peaceful dialogue. Imposing a political solution, which is what NATO is trying to do, is the easiest way to ensure that the settlement does not last. One or the other of the parties will be dissatisfied and will try to restart the conflict in the hope of a better outcome.


Political and diplomatic means could have been used to avert the crisis. It could, in fact, have been resolved some years ago. The West had a clear warning of the trouble brewing in Kosovo. In the early 1990s, when Yugoslavia began to break up, Kosovo was seen as the Balkan's most volatile area. Albanian and Serb nationalism had been battling it out in Kosovo throughout the Eighties and once the rest of Yugoslavia began to crumble, there was little doubt that there would be a major battle over the province.


Yet, Kosovo was largely ignored by an international community which was preoccupied with the problem of Bosnia. Even after the Dayton accords on Bosnia-Herzegovina, no real effort was made to bring peace to Kosovo. Last year, when the fighting triggered the flight of refugees, too large to be ignored, the United States and the European Union tried to broker a peace. But the Western effort was onesided: Mr. Milosevic was the bad guy and all the pressure was put on him. The Kosovo Liberation Army, which was engaged in a violent campaign against the Serbian police and civilians, was left unrestrained. Mr. Milosevic, not surprisingly, decided that the only course of action was to unleash a military campaign against the KLA. NATO's bombs then provided the perfect cover for him to push the Kosovo Albanians out of the province. A balanced diplomatic effort some years ago could have averted this crisis.


Catalysing political and economic changes in Yugoslavia could have averted the Kosovo tragedy. The real failure of the West has been in retarding the growth of an open political system in Belgrade through its policy of economic and political sanctions against Yugoslavia. The sanctions were meant to isolate and put pressure on Mr. Milosevic to reform. Instead, they hardened his attitudes, as sanctions tend to do, and left Yugoslavia in a political and economic time warp.


Instead of isolating Yugoslavia, the West should have embraced it and helped it become part of the rest of Europe. Money ought to have been pumped into Serbia and Kosovo to help develop the economy and prepare the country for membership of the European Union. This was a bait that the Yugoslav leadership and, more importantly, the people could not have resisted. The narrow, nationalistic and chauvinistic policies which Mr. Milosevic followed would not have survived in a liberal political and economic regime that the E.U. membership could have ensured. The E.U. aid and investment too would have made a major difference to transforming the political and economic face of Yugoslavia.


It is useful to consider how much the war has cost and how much better use the money could have been put to. One cruise missile costs $1 million and at least 100 have been fired so far. The Stealth fighter that the U.S. lost cost $45 million. Each bomb NATO dropped cost around $10,000. Adding to these figures the cost of flying over 400 aircraft for several hours a day, one estimate from the investment bankers, Lehman Brothers, puts the total at $3 billion for a month-long air war. This does not take into account the cost of feeding and housing 4,00,000 refugees who have fled Kosovo or that of maintaining the NATO ground forces stationed in Macedonia for a possible peacekeeping role in Kosovo. If there is an actual ground war in Kosovo, the cost would shoot up further. If even a proportion of this money had been pumped into Serbia and Kosovo over the last few years, it would have helped transform one of Eastern Europe's poorest regions. It would also have brought about political changes both in Serbia and Kosovo, as the people saw the possibilities that would open up with greater economic and political integration with the rest of Europe.


If there is a lesson from the Kosovo debacle, it is this: the real strength of the West does not lie in its bombs and high tech aircraft. It lies in its political stability and economic prosperity. The West can best achieve its aims by embracing recalcitrant nations and offering them prosperity through economic and political interaction rather than by raining destruction on them.

Emina and Zoja

Mind the words State Run

BELGRADE, May 17 (AFP) - Yugoslav General Vladimir Lazarevic,
>the corps commander in Pristina, on Monday accused NATO of
>"mobilizing terrorist forces" across Europe for use "in its
>agression" against Kosovo.
> Belgrade uses the term terrorist to designate separatists of the
>Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) fighting Serb forces in the southern
>Yugoslav province.
> "After the defeat of (Albanian) forces in Kosovo, NATO mobilised
>terrorist forces throughout Europe and among the Macedonian and
>Albanian population for use in the agression it is waging from
>Albanian territory," Lazarevic said.
> "We are ignoring the fact this ground attack has been going on
>for more than a month and is concentrated between Tropoja (northern
>Albania) and the Junik mountains (in western Kosovo)," he told the
>state-run television RTS.

Zoja

Across Europe it becomes more clear every day that every journalist who tries to be oblective gets shut up and sencored. It is a miracle how journalists are able to send reports as accurately as possible, in spite of censorship. Just yesterday we saw a report from a Dutch journalist, trying a put a good piece together about Novi Sad. His piece was sencored to bits, and people who wanted to say something elese than opinions against NATO were to scared to speak.

Lomg live Serbia, PUKE. Long live a DICTATOR FREE SERBIA!

Zoja