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Press Reports On False Claims
Of Genocide By Serbs In Kosovo
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/Kosovofalsehoods.htm

"A United Nations court has ruled that Serbian troops did not carry out genocide against ethnic Albanians during Slobodan Milosevic's campaign of aggression in Kosovo from 1998 to 1999... The court, which is comprised of two international judges and one Albanian, was ruling on the case of a Serb, Miroslav Vuckovic, convicted of genocide by a district court in Mitrovica".
Kosovo assault 'was not genocide'
BBC Online, 7 September 2001

"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..... 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."
Former NY Times Reporter: '93 Pulitzer Should Be Revoked
CNSNews, 22 March 2006

“Some media reports have quoted a senior Belgrade official as stating that there are 198 mass graves in Kosovo. The Office on Missing Persons and Forensics (OMPF) would like to categorically state that no evidence has been provided to OMPF regarding existence of any mass graves in Kosovo. Such unfounded statements reflect a lack of sensitivity to an issue that is extremely emotive and causes considerable anguish for all affected families.”
UNMIK Disputes Belgrade Report on Mass Graves
United Nations Mission In Kosovo (UNMIK) Press Release, 23 January 2004

No Mass Graves Were Discovered In Kosovo Until 2005
The Graves Discovered Were Of Serbian Dead
Whilst Albanian Bodies Had Been Disposed Of In Serbia

Why Did NATO Take Sides In This European Civil War
When There Were Atrocities On Both Sides And No Evidence Of Genocide?
Oil and US Geopolitical Objectives in the Balkans - Click Here

"...About 3,000 people are still missing from the 1998-99 conflict. Most are ethnic Albanians but some 500 Serbs are also missing, believed to have been killed by the rebels. Two mass graves with the bodies of Serb civilians were unearthed in Kosovo earlier this month."
Serbia to return Kosovo corpses found in mass grave
Reuters, 26 May 2005

"The recent discovery [in 2005] of a second mass grave containing bodies of Serb civilians in Kosovo has stoked tensions in the run-up to expected final status talks this autumn. UNMIK investigators discovered the bodies of 13 Serbs in a mass grave in Malisheva/Malisevo, in central Kosovo in mid-May. Forensic experts said all were dressed in civilian clothes and had their hands tied behind their backs. The year of their execution is believed to have been 1998, during the height of the armed conflict between the Kosovo Liberation Army, KLA, and Serb government forces.  The finding in Malisheva follows the discovery of the first mass grave containing Serb bodies in Kosovo at Volljaka, some 60 kilometres west of Pristina, in April 2005. Nine of the 24 bodies in Volljaka have been identified as missing Serbs, but UNMIK forensic experts said they suspected all were local Serbs who went missing in 1998. The discovery has boosted fears this highly emotional issue may add to the tension between Pristina and Belgrade during the run-up to final status talks. Outside observers point out that the issue of missing persons has been manipulated, or used as a bargaining point, before. At the core of the dispute is the unresolved fate of thousands of Albanians, Serbs and others who disappeared at the height of the Kosovo conflict in the late Nineties. Nothing is known of around 2,900. According to the Red Cross, ICRC, some 2,400 of these are Albanians and 700 non-Albanians, including 500 Serbs... More recently, the Serbian media revealed that large numbers of Albanian bodies were also incinerated at the Mackatica aluminium factory, in southern Serbia. Without faster progress on the return all of these bodies, Albanian missing persons groups say the Kosovo government should slow down the return of Serb bodies.... Kosovo Serb leaders, on the other hand, say the discovery of Serb mass graves in Volljaka and Malisheva alters the whole dynamic of the discussion about atrocities. Serb representative Rada Trajkovic told IWPR the discoveries showed the West had been wrong to intervene in Kosovo in the first place. 'The international community made a mistake with its intervention in Kosovo in 1999, bringing us to where we are now,' she said. 'The KLA killed Serb civilians in the territory it controlled.'"
Kosovo: Tussle Over Mass Graves
Balkans Crisis Report, 2 June 2005

"If Senator Kennedy wants to talk about fraud [in relation to the Bush administration's invasion of Iraq], he ought to talk..... about what he and President Clinton told us in 1999 when they told us to bomb innocent Serbs, we'd find 100 thousand mass graves. Those mass graves were never found. They lied to the America people to justify the aerial bombardment campaign."
Congressman Curt Weldon (R) Pennsylvania on 'Hardball with Chris Matthews'
NBC News, 19 September 2003

"Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic says he will call ex-US leader Bill Clinton and other Western politicians to testify at his trial for war crimes at The Hague.... Mr Milosevic, who is conducting his own defence, said he also wanted to question UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Germany's former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright among others."
Milosevic wants Clinton to testify
BBC Online, 15 February 2003

"The War on Terror suffered a major blow three years before it was ever announced. It happened when the people of this democracy [in America] 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 put the final touch on delivering the Balkans to al Qaeda. Today we are being asked to seal that historical blunder, whose repercussions seven years later are only escalating as those we 'rescued' turn their weapons against UN and NATO forces. While NATO spends most of its time rooting out terror cells in Kosovo and Bosnia—which served as the logistics 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.... [Deputy commander of the Kosovo Liberation Army Niam Behljulji, known as Hulji], according to the December issue of the Defense & Foreign Affairs Strategic Policy journal, is the man who supplied the Semtex-like explosives used in the London and Madrid attacks.  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 and the culmination of our pro-terror policies in 1990s Yugoslavia.... Only Britain's Sky News has caught on, in December airing a segment entitled 'The Hidden Army of Radical Islam,' about Bosnia, where there is 'growing radicalization' and a base for Al Qaeda:  'In the heart of Europe, thousands of Arab fighters. Zenica [Bosnia], 1995. They come to wage holy war in support of the Bosnian Army. [Bosnian President Alija Izetbegovic shown welcoming the mujahadeen.] ...They committed many atrocities; the tapes Sky News has obtained include beheadings and signs of torture. …This isn’t just about history; it's about now. Western intelligence agencies are now pressing the Bosnians to look into exactly where these people are and what they are doing, and asking have any of these men been in contact with the three young Bosnian Muslims arrested last month on terrorism charges. ...In Sarajevo now the influence of Saudi ideas can be found all over the city. ...Radical Islam is attempting to plant deep roots in the community. …The seeds for change were planted back in 1995.'... The narration continues: 'There were some serious players sent to Bosnia, among them the man who planned 9/11, Khalid Sheikh Mohamed...'  A similar picture began to emerge in Kosovo, where the late Wall St. Journal reporter Daniel Pearl was uncovering that 'Ethnic-Albanian militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each other to give genocide rumors credibility.' The anti-Serb propaganda which misled Americans throughout  the 90s and which Daniel Pearl was debunking continues to guide our perceptions and foreign policy in the Balkans today. But despite the media’s blackout on the subject of Balkans terror--including by Pearl's own Wall St. Journal--more and more Americans have been scratching their heads, wondering why we forcibly precluded the Serbs from doing in their own backyard what we’ve gone halfway around the globe to do.... For the past four years, the Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been finding what multiple international forensic 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.' 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.... In early 2001, German TV broadcast a report titled 'It Began with a Lie,' which publicized the findings of the observer force Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)  that no genocide had taken place in Kosovo. The revelations set off a huge public debate in Germany, a member of the NATO coalition, after the public realized their country had been party to a hoax, and they held the responsible politicians’ feet to the fire. It’s long past time that we also set the record straight on what we 'achieved' in the Balkans -- and change course. As the world closes in on the Serbs again this year, we must stop bin Laden from establishing a terror state in Europe. We know from Madrid and London that we’ll pay for it with our own blood. In fact, we already have."
A Balkan Base For Al Qaeda?
FrontPageMagazine, 20 March 2006

July 2004
US And UK Face Embarrassment At The Hague
Why The West Doesn't Want Milosevic
To Speak For Himself
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATMilosevictrial.htm
Western Powers Covertly Used
Islamic Terrorists To Break Up Yugoslavia
Click Here

"It is no exaggeration to say what is happening in Kosovo is racial genocide... Thousands murdered. One hundred thousand men missing... These atrocities cannot be seen, of course, because the Serbs will not allow journalists or TV crews to report what is happening behind Kosovo's closed borders for themselves....".
British Prime Minister Tony Blair
BBC Online, 14 May 1999

"Where are the bodies? Was the other big war of the last decade, Kosovo in 1999, triggered by bogus allegations as well? Another case of mass deception?  In Iraq, it's the missing mass weapons of destruction. In Kosovo, it's the missing mass graves. In alleged ethnic cleansing exercises by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, as many as 100,000 to 200,000 civilians were said to have gone missing or been killed in Kosovo, many of them buried in mass graves. Members of a Canadian forensic team to the Serbian province have come forward to label the numbers nonsense. No mass graves, they say, and, on both the Albanian and Serb sides, only a few thousand dead. A mockery of the numbers used to justify the war..... The Kosovo story has etchings of Iraq all over it. The United States (the Democrats this time) and Britain (Tony Blair again) demonize an enemy with fraudulent accusations. They play the gullible media, Canada's included, like a violin.  The latest person to debunk the genocide numbers is retired Vancouver homicide detective Brian Honeybourn, a member of the forensic team. He told The Ottawa Citizen this week that his nine-member group found mainly single graves, with a couple of exceptions being one of 20 bodies and another 11. He wonders how genocide charges against Mr. Milosevic can stand up. 'It seems as though The Hague is beginning to panic.' But having everybody in the wagon doesn't excuse what happened. If the forensic teams' stories are correct, the missing dead in Kosovo is indeed a scandal comparable to the absence of WMD in Iraq. In a five-year period, political leaders twice duped their populations into going to war."
Another Case of Mass Deception?
Globe and Mail (Canada), 2 September 2004

"While the U.S. fights Muslim terrorists in Afghanistan and Iraq, the U.S. and the United Nations are helping allies of Muslim terrorists come to power in Kosovo, a province of Serbia. This is a foreign policy disaster in the making that you should hope and pray gets some immediate attention from the media. To illustrate the dimensions of the problem, Father Keith Roderick of Christian Solidarity International has testified that Albanian Muslims in Kosovo have been systematically destroying Christian churches and other sites in Kosovo and the Serbian Christian population in the province is being 'squeezed down to oblivion.' The evidence is on display in a new DVD, 'Days Made Of Fear,' directed, produced and distributed by Ninoslav Randjelovic. At the same time, Father Roderick also says that hundreds of new Mosques have been built in Kosovo over the last several years, financed mostly by Gulf Arab money. The excellent DVD consists of 8 different films, but the most explosive is 'Notes About the Rock,' on the destroyed and vandalized churches and monasteries in Kosovo. Many of the scenes captured on film are considered the only video documentation on this subject available. There is no question about the reason for the destruction. The churches were targeted by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), also known by the acronym UCK. These initials are visible on the ruins, like a calling card. They openly advertise their anti-Christian Jihad, but our media pay no attention. Writing for the Byzantine Cultural Project and reviewing the DVD, Theodoros Georgiou Karakostas comments, 'The footage of ravaged and destroyed Serbian Churches and Monasteries is appalling. The DVD is a shocking affirmation that the American television Networks such as CNN, FOX, ABC, CBS, NBC, and the others are all lined up with the foreign policy establishment and are active practitioners of official censorship. I cannot recall seeing any of the horrifying footage on this DVD on American television.' He adds, 'The same U.S. media which continues to attack the Bush administration for lying about the Iraq war, continues to give Bill Clinton, Madeleine Albright, Richard Holbrooke, Wesley Clark, and Samuel Berger a pass for their destructive war on Yugoslavia. We should remember also that at the last Democratic National Convention in Boston two years ago, one of the top KLA men was an honored guest of John Kerry. 'The same U.S. media which was appalled by the Taliban's destruction of the 2,000-year-old Buddhist statues has nothing to say about the remarkable Serbian Orthodox churches and monasteries which have stood since the period preceding the Ottoman conquests, and which are being systematically destroyed.' Why are the media ignoring what is happening in Kosovo? One reason, as explained in the book, Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting, is that the media reported the war wrong and now refuse to report who has really been victimized by it. Another factor is that the much-vilified neoconservatives got Kosovo wrong, too. As I noted in a Media Monitor, 'In 1999 the neocons supported the NATO war on Yugoslavia launched by President Clinton. That benefited a Muslim terrorist group, the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), with links to Osama bin Laden.' The neocons thought they were supporting a tougher and a new NATO. To compound this tragedy, the Bush Administration has continued the misguided Clinton policy on Kosovo. Let's remember that Clinton ordered U.S. military intervention in the Balkans against the Christian Serbs on the grounds that 'ethnic cleansing' and even 'genocide' were being waged against Serbia's neighbors. Most of that was hokum. Serbia, a U.S. ally in World War II, was being ruled by the communist Slobodan Milosevic, who was desperate to hold on to power in the former Yugoslavia, which included Serbia. While Milosevic was a problem, the Clinton 'solution' made the problem worse. Clinton gave the green light to military aggression against the Serbs and even ordered the CIA to provide support to the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was allied with Osama bin Laden and radical Islamists. The U.S. bombed Serbia and forced Milosevic, who was later turned over to a U.N. court, to capitulate. Milosevic recently died in a U.N. prison."
Christians Under Siege in Kosovo
Media Monitor, 1 June 2006

"Something strange is going on in this Kosovo Albanian village in what was once a hard-line guerrilla stronghold, where NATO accuses Serbs of committing genocide. An estimated 15,000 displaced ethnic Albanians live in and around Svetlje, in northern Kosovo, and hundreds of young men are everywhere, strolling along the dirt roads or lying on the grass on a spring day. So many fighting-age men in a region where the Kosovo Liberation Army fought some of its fiercest battles against Serbian forces are a challenge to the black-and-white versions of what is happening here. By their own accounts, the men are not living in a concentration camp, nor being forced to labor for the police or army, nor serving as human shields for Serbs. Instead, they are waiting with their families for permission to follow thousands who have risked going back home to nearby villages because they do not want to give up and leave Kosovo, a province of Serbia, the main Yugoslav republic.... A foreign journalist spent two hours in Svetlje over the weekend, his second visit in less than a week, without a police or military escort or a Serbian official to monitor what was seen or said. The closest Serbian security forces were two policemen sitting at a checkpoint half a mile up the dirt road, who weren't pleased to see so many refugees moving back into the Podujevo area. Just as NATO accuses Yugoslav forces of using ethnic Albanian refugees as 'human shields,' the Serbs say KLA fighters hide among ethnic Albanian civilians to carry out 'terrorist attacks.' But Velia and other ethnic Albanians interviewed in Svetlje said they haven't had any problems with Serbian police since the police allowed them to come back. 'For the month that we've been here, the police have come only to sell cigarettes, but there hasn't been any harassment,' Velia said.  That isn't what North Atlantic Treaty Organization Secretary-General Javier Solana believes is happening in Kosovo. Solana told BBC television Sunday that he expected much more evidence of 'ethnic cleansing' in the province to emerge once the war is over. 'You don't see males in their 30s to 60s,' he said. And on CBS-TV's 'Face the Nation' on Sunday, Defense Secretary William S. Cohen said that as many as 100,000 ethnic Albanian men of fighting age have vanished in Kosovo and may have been killed by Serbian forces.....The Kosovo Democratic Initiative, an ethnic Albanian political party opposed to the KLA's fight for independence, is distributing relief aid, offering membership cards and gathering the names of Serbs accused of committing atrocities. ' As an Albanian, I am convinced that the Serbian government and security forces are not committing any kind of genocide,' Fatmir Seholi, the party's spokesman, said in an interview Sunday. 'But in a war, even innocent people die,' Seholi said. 'In every war, there are those who want to profit. Here there is a minority of people who wanted to steal, but that's not genocide. These are only crimes.' As an Albanian, Seholi also knows the risks of questioning claims that Yugoslavia's leaders, police and military are committing crimes against humanity in Kosovo. His father, Malic Seholi, was killed Jan. 9, 1997, apparently for being too cooperative with Serbian authorities. The KLA later claimed responsibility for the slaying in a statement published in Bujku, a local Albanian-language newspaper, his son said."
In One Village, Albanian Men Are Everywhere
Los Angeles Times, 17 May 1999

"The Kosovo Liberation Army killed two Serb hostages yesterday morning after an American initiative to forge a cease-fire around the guerrillas' former headquarters of Malisevo had been blown apart in a KLA rocket and grenade assault on the town's police station. The hostages, both police reservists, were apparently forced to kneel at the side of the road 200 yards from their besieged colleagues in the station, before being raked with at least 24 bullets fired from a machine pistol. Their bodies showed signs of torture as well as gunshot wounds. Yesterday Serbian police said that they would step up patrols in the restive province within 48 hours unless international observers guaranteed safety on its roads. The hostages's deaths represented a crushing reversal for the American's go-it-alone policy in Kosovo; only last Friday, Christopher Hill, Washington's negotiator in the peace process, had visited villages around Malisevo and pleaded with guerrillas to stop their often unprovoked attacks on Serb security units. The hostages, who were attempting to deliver food to the police station, were captured hours after he left, and the KLA has subsequently shown its determination to push the Serbs out of Malisevo.... The incident provided the Serbs with a graphic opportunity to reveal KLA brutality, and the media centre in Pristina took a convoy of journalists to Malisevo to survey the scene..... A bizarre sideshow then developed in which a Day-Glo orange American Humvee pulled up from the opposite direction, only for its driver, a Contact Group observer, to be harangued by police officials who accused him of removing a key witness from the scene. 'He won't come back now, whatever I tell him to do,' protested the American. 'We were doing all we could.' Realising he was within earshot of journalists, he changed tack and insisted he was in Malisevo because of engine problems with his vehicle, and then beat a hasty retreat.... Another American vehicle, a Chevrolet Suburban in a similar shade of orange and containing David Scheffer, the State Department war crimes envoy, then passed on the other side of the crossroads without stopping....."
Kosovo rebels deal blow to peace hopes
London Times, 10 November 1998

"What, however, was the situation within Kosovo before March 20, and are we now being misled with biased media information? Is this aggressive war really justified to counter alleged humanitarian violations, or are there problematical premises being applied to justify the hostilities?... As an OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) monitor during February and March of this year, I was assigned as the Director of the Kosovo Polje Field Office, just west of the provincial capital of Pristina.... By the time I arrived, vehicles and other resources along with the majority of international monitors were arriving, but the cease-fire situation was deteriorating with an increasing incidence of Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) provocative attacks on the Yugoslavian security forces. In response the security forces of the Ministry of Internal Security police supported by the army were establishing random roadblocks that resulted in some harassment of movement of the majority Albanian Kosovars. The general situation was, though, that the bulk of the population had settled down after the previous year's hostilities, but the KLA was building its strength and was attempting to reorganize in preparation for a military solution, hopeful of NATO or western military support.....Consequently the October Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement restraining the Internal Security police and army was not strictly adhered to, as unauthorized forces were deployed to maintain security within the major communities and internal lines of communication. In my estimation, however, the KLA was left in control of much of the hinterland unchallenged, comprising at least some fifty per cent of the province. In addition the parallel Albanian government of the Kosovo Democratic League (KDL) continued to provide some leadership to the majority of the Albanian Kosovars.   This low intensity war since the end of 1998 had resulted in a series of incidents against the security forces, which in turn led to some heavy-handed security operations, one being the alleged 'massacre' at Racak of some 45 Albanian Kosovars in mid-January...Upon my arrival the war increasingly evolved into a mid intensity conflict as ambushes, the encroachment of critical lines of communication and the kidnapping of security forces resulted in a significant increase in government casualties which in turn led to major Yugoslavian reprisal security operations that included armour, mechanized forces and artillery to secure there same lines of communication. By the beginning of March these terror and counter-terror operations led to the inhabitants of numerous villages fleeing, or being dispersed to either other villages, cities or the hills to seek refuge.... The situation was clearly that KLA provocations, as personally witnessed in ambushes of security patrols which inflicted fatal and other casualties, were clear violations of the previous October's agreement. The security forces responded and the consequent security harassment and counter-operations led to an intensified insurrectionary war, but as I have stated elsewhere, I did not witness, nor did I have knowledge of any incidents of so-called 'ethnic cleansing' and there certainly were no occurrences of 'genocidal policies' while I was with the KVM in Kosovo. What has transpired since the OSCE monitors were evacuated on March 20, in order to deliver the penultimate warning to force Yugoslavian compliance with the Rambouillet and subsequent Paris documents and the commencement of the NATO air bombardment of March 24, obviously has resulted in human rights abuses and a very significant humanitarian disaster as some 600,000 Albanian Kosovars have fled or been expelled from the province. This did not occur, though, before March 20, so I would attribute the humanitarian disaster directly or indirectly to the NATO air bombardment and resulting anti-terrorist campaign. "
Returning OSCE human rights monitor offers a view from the ground in Kosovo
The Democrat, May 1999

"Nato strikes on Serbia caused, rather than prevented, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, says Nato's former Secretary-General and former UK Foreign Secretary, Lord Carrington.... in the Saga interview, published on Friday, Lord Carrington openly accuses Nato governments of creating the mass exodus of Kosovo Albanians.... Lord Carrington also criticised Britain for being 'a little bit selective' about its condemnation of ethnic cleansing ... "
Ex-Nato chief criticises Kosovo Campaign
BBC Online, 26 August 1999

"....it was impossible for Milosevic to accept the Rambouillet agreement because what it asked him to do was allow Nato to use Serbia as a part of the Nato organisation. Sovereignty would have been lost over it. He couldn’t accept that.  I think what Nato did by bombing Serbia actually precipitated the exodus of the Kosovo Albanians into Macedonia and Montenegro. I think the bombing did cause the ethnic cleansing.  I’m not sticking up for the Serbs because I think they behaved badly and extremely stupidly by removing the autonomy of Kosovo, given them by Tito, in the first place. But I think what we did made things very much worse and what we are now faced with is a sort of ethnic cleansing in reverse. The Serbs are now being cleared out. I think it’s a great mistake to intervene in a civil war. I don’t think [Milosevic] is any more a war criminal than President Tudjman of Croatia who ethnically cleansed 200,000 Serbs out of Kyrenia [Krajina]. Nobody kicked up a fuss about that. I think we are a little bit selective about our condemnation of ethnic cleansing, in Africa as well as in Europe"
Interview with Lord Carrington, Former British Foreign Secretary
Saga Magazine, September 1999

"...the estimate of a Spanish forensic surgeon, Emilio Perez Pujol, who has just returned home, disillusioned after investigating war crimes in Kosovo, is that as few as 2,500 civilians were killed. In an outspoken interview, Pujol complained he had been sent to head a large investigation team attached to the ICTY, consisting of pathologists and police specialists, to work in the north of the country.  But he found that what was publicised as a search for mass graves was 'a semantic pirouette by the war propaganda machines, because we did not find one -- not one -- mass grave'.... The gap between the hyperbole of the western propaganda machine and the realities of Kosovo were wide throughout the air campaign and led to the publication of wild, misleading and just plain untrue stories. Above all, there was a tendency to claim there was a systematic campaign of genocide in Kosovo... The war in Kosovo was Nato's first intervention in a sovereign country, so building a case to sway public opinion was crucial for it and member governments.... War reporting is now experiencing extraordinary changes. In the case of Kosovo, western military officers, officials and ministers all conspired to push out the party line. There was spin-doctoring on an unprecedented scale, which has damaged Nato's reputation for fairness and truth.... All this has left a dedicated forensic scientist such as Pujol, who had come to Kosovo to help establish the truth, deeply irritated. In an interview with El Pais, he says: 'We had been working with two parallel problems. One was the propaganda war. This allowed them to lie, to fake photographs for the press, to publish pictures of mass graves, or whatever they had to influence world opinion in favour or against Milosevic or in favour of the Nato bombings....There never was a genocide in Kosovo. It was dishonest and wrong for western leaders to adopt the term in the beginning to give moral authority to the operation.'"
Lost in the Kosovo numbers game
Sunday Times, 31 October 1999

"A report purporting to show that Belgrade planned the systematic ethnic cleansing of Kosovo's entire Albanian population was faked, a German general has claimed. The plan, known as Operation Horseshoe, was revealed by Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister, on April 6 last year, almost two weeks after Nato started bombing Serbia. German public opinion about the Luftwaffe's participation in the airstrikes was divided at the time. Horseshoe - or 'Potkova', as the Germans said it was known in Belgrade - became a staple of Nato briefings. It was presented as proof that President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia had long planned the expulsion of Albanians. James Rubin, the American state department spokesman, cited it only last week to justify Nato's bombardment. Heinz Loquai, a retired brigadier general, has claimed in a new book on the war that the plan was fabricated from run-of-the-mill Bulgarian intelligence reports. Loquai, who now works for the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), has accused Rudolf Scharping, the German defence minister, of obscuring the origins of Operation Horseshoe.... Loquai has claimed that the German defence ministry turned a vague report from Sofia into a 'plan', and even coined the name Horseshoe. Die Woche has reported that maps broadcast around the world as proof of Nato's information were drawn up at the German defence headquarters in Hardthöhe.... The Bulgarian report concluded that the goal of the Serbian military was to destroy the Kosovo Liberation Army, and not to expel the entire Albanian population, as was later argued by Scharping and the Nato leadership."
Serbian ethnic cleansing scare was a fake
Sunday Times, 2 April 2000

"In Milosevic's trial, German reporter Franz Josef Hutsch testified that ethnic Albanian rebels in Kosovo had been harassing Serb troops to provoke an 'excessive reaction' against Kosovo civilians and hasten international intervention. Milosevic is accused of unleashing Serb troops who committed atrocities while quashing a rebellion in Kosovo, a southern province of Serbia dominated by ethnic Albanians. Eventually NATO launched a 78-day bombing campaign to force the Serbs to end the crackdown. Milosevic has described the Kosovo war as a defensive action against terrorists. Hutsch said he spent months with the Kosovo Liberation Army, the KLA, beginning in September 1998. He described it as a well-organized force, assisted by officers from Algeria, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco who had trained somewhere in Turkey. To finance the purchase of increasingly sophisticated weapons, he said, the KLA ran smuggling operations of drugs and women who were being forced into prostitution in Europe. Hutsch testified that the KLA's tactics during the cease-fire in late 1998 included staging hit-and-run attacks on Serb patrols designed to ''force them into a trap and try to provoke an excessive reaction.' He said they also tried to lure the Serbs into attacking civilians in early 1999 so the images would be shown during peace negotiations taking place in Rambouillet, France."
Milosevic returns to court, again seeking right to represent himself
Associated Press, 12 October 2004

"... indiscriminate mass murder, rape camps, crematoriums, mutilation of the dead -- haven't been borne out in the six months since NATO troops entered Kosovo. Ethnic-Albanian militants, humanitarian organizations, NATO and the news media fed off each other to give genocide rumors credibility. Now, a different picture is emerging.... British and American officials still maintain that 10,000 or more ethnic-Albanian civilians died at Serb hands during the fighting in Kosovo. The U.N.'s International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has accused Serbs of covering up war crimes by moving bodies. It has begun its own military analysis of the Serb offensive. But the number of bodies discovered so far is much lower -- 2,108 as of November, and not all of them necessarily war-crimes victims. While more than 300 reported grave sites remain to be investigated, the tribunal has checked the largest reported sites first, and found most to contain no more than five bodies, suggesting intimate acts of barbarity rather than mass murder. The KLA helped form the West's wartime image of Kosovo.... Even more closely connected to the KLA was Radio Free Kosova, set up in January as outsiders were cut off from Kosovo hot spots. A former correspondent for the radio, Qemail Aliu, says he and five other journalists holed up with the KLA in the central Kosovo mountains, using satellite phones to take reports from KLA regional commanders. The radio broadcasts were just strong enough to reach the provincial capital, Pristina, where a correspondent translated the reports into English for the KLA's Kosova Press Internet site.... Kosovo would be easier to investigate if it had the huge killing fields some investigators were led to expect. Instead, the pattern is of scattered killings."
Daniel Pearl - Despite Tales, the War in Kosovo Was Savage, but Wasn't Genocide
Wall St Journal, 31 December 1999

"When you consider that 1,500 civilians or more were killed during Nato bombing, you have to ask whether the intervention was justified".
Alice Mahon, MP
Cook accused of misleading public on Kosovo massacres
Sunday Times, 31 October 1999

"As the war dragged on... NATO saw a fatigued press corps drifting toward the contrarian story: civilians killed by NATO's bombs. NATO stepped up its claims about Serb 'killing fields.'"
Despite Tales, the War in Kosovo Was Savage, but Wasn't Genocide
Wall St Journal, 31 December 1999

"The head of Belgrade’s Kosovo Coordination Centre, Nebojsa Covic, said today that the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia was prompted by the 'deception' of US diplomat William Walker. The state and its citizens were bombed because of Walker and his trickery,' said Covic, in a reference to the killings in the village of Racak, which Walker described as a massacre by Serb security forces, a description which international investigators have since described as rash.   'If Milosevic must answer for all the things he did, then so should Walker answer for his deception, instead of showing off in Kosovo,' he said."
Kosovo bombing prompted by US diplomat’s 'deception'
B92, (Serbia) 25 January 2004

"Walker, in collaboration with the KLA, may have had a part to play in staging this incident [at Racak]."
James Bisset, former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia
Speech to the Canadian Hellenic Federation of Ontario, May 2000

"Even if they don't remember the village's name, most Canadians will remember the pictures. The images of bodies piled in a ravine in the tiny Kosovo village of Racak in January 1999. That massacre of Albanian civilians by Serbian forces provoked immediate anger and international condemnation against Yugoslav leader Slobodan Milosevic. It became the galvanizing event that led to NATO's armed intervention against Yugoslavia. In the year that has passed since NATO's bombing campaign, there is mounting evidence the Racak massacre was not as gruesomely simple as it first appeared. There are suggestions the massacre was allowed to happen to fuel sympathy for Kosovo's Albanians, while strengthening demands for NATO's bombs. Over the past three months, CBC Radio has sought to unravel the mystery of the Racak massacre: was it a massacre or an act of manipulation by those interested in bringing NATO to war?... If the Serbs had been planning a bloody massacre that day, why had they issued a press release in Pristina that morning, inviting journalists to come to Racak to cover the police operation? They said they would be carrying out an operation aimed at capturing Kosovo Liberation Army soldiers in the area responsible for killing three Serb policemen in ambushes the week before... Had the KLA manipulated the massacre scene to provoke condemnation against the Serbs? Were the dead men in the ditch really innocent civilians, or possibly dead KLA soldiers who'd been taken out of uniform?...The quest to determine what was going on in the days before the massacre has unearthed disturbing new information about the conduct of both the Kosovo Liberation Army and William Walker's observer mission. Much of that new information comes from the people of Racak themselves. People like Sadije Ramadani say the first hints of what was to come appeared on the weekend prior to the Friday massacre. The Yugoslav Army had always maintained a small presence on the large hill overlooking Racak. But suddenly a significant number of reinforcements arrived. They showed up a day after the KLA ambushed and killed three Serb police officers. Canadian General Michel Maisonneuve admits the KLA had to know how the Serbs were likely to react to that ambush... Dugi Gorani, a prominent Kosovar Albanian, suggests the KLA was very aware of the consequences of their actions.'The more civilians were killed,' he said, 'the chances of international intervention became bigger, and the KLA of course realized that.'... Some KLA supporters have conceded that a key unit was based in the hills above and around Racak. But, when the Serbs finally attacked on January 15, eyewitnesses say the KLA fought back from high in the hills and made no real attempt to defend or protect the village. By the next morning, however, KLA soldiers were all over Racak to lead journalists into the ravine where the bodies were piled. Le Figaro's Renaud Girard remembers asking the KLA where they'd been the day before. But the actions of KLA commanders aren't the only actions that are now coming under scrutiny. For every question being asked about their whereabouts on the day of the massacre, an equal number of questions are being aimed at William Walker's observer mission. OSCE monitors knew about the KLA's ambush on police and the arrival of Serb reinforcements near Racak the very next day. Burim Osmani says his father Sadik had always been in frequent touch with the OSCE monitors responsible for Racak. He says that two or three weeks before the massacre, his father pleaded with the monitors to establish a permanent presence in the village. The OSCE refused... The world may no longer care to remember the massacre that sparked NATO's bombing campaign and the subsequent occupation of Kosovo by tens of thousands of NATO soldiers. But the people of Racak have found a way to thank and remember the man they believe made it all possible. They've renamed the Road to Racak, William Walker Road."
The Road to Racak
CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) Radio News, 2000

"European diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made airstrikes inevitable. Some have questioned the motives and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of mission. 'The American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the CIA, operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and the OSCE,' said a European envoy... Several Americans who were directly involved in CIA activities or close to them have spoken to the makers of Moral Combat, a documentary to be broadcast on BBC2 tonight, and to The Sunday Times about their clandestine roles. Walker dismissed suggestions that he had wanted war in Kosovo, but admitted the CIA was almost certainly involved in the countdown to airstrikes.... Ten years earlier he [Walker] was the American ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there to suppress leftist rebels while supporting the contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo's capital, concluded from Walker's background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the continued separation of American 'diplomatic observers' from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the agency.... The KLA has admitted its long-standing links with American and European intelligence organisations. Shaban Shala, a KLA commander now involved in attempts to destabilise majority Albanian villages beyond Kosovo's border in Serbia proper, claimed he had met British, American and Swiss agents in northern Albania in 1996.""
CIA aided Kosovo guerrilla army
Sunday Times, 12 March 2000

"Ambassador Walker was not just working for the OSCE. He was part of the American diplomatic policy that was occurring which had vilified Slobodan Milosevic, demonised the Serbian Administration and generally was providing diplomatic support to the UCK or the KLA leadership."
Moral Combat - NATO at War
BBC 2, 12 March 2000

"I didn't consult with anyone before [reporting the fact that I was holding a press conference on the deaths at Racak]. I knew that it takes forever to get permission to do something like that."
William Walker Interview
Public Broadcasting Service, USA, 2000

“Dick, you can kiss your Nobel Peace Prize goodbye.”
William Walker to US special diplomatic envoy to Bosnia and Kosovo, Richard Holbrooke, after Walker's visit to Racak
as reported by Walker's deputy, General Karol Drewienkiewicz
The Milosevic Trial: William Walker’s role as provocateur
World Socialist Web Site report, 20 July 2002

"The final toll of civilians confirmed massacred by Yugoslav forces in Kosovo is likely to be under 3,000, far short of the numbers claimed by Nato governments during last year's controversial air strikes on Yugoslavia. When Yugoslav forces withdrew from Kosovo in June last year, Nato spokesmen estimated that the Serbs had killed at least 10,000 civilians. While the bombing was under way William Cohen, the US defence secretary, announced that 100,000 Kosovo Albanian men of military age were missing after being taken from columns of families being deported to Albania and Macedonia. 'They may have been murdered,' he said....The exhumation of less than 3,000 bodies is sure to add fuel to those who say Nato's intervention against Yugoslavia was not 'humanitarian' and that it had other motives ..."
Serb killings 'exaggerated' by west
Guardian, 18 August 2000

"For amid the present furore over the no-show of Iraqi WMDs, let us remember that in Kosovo our humanitarian Prime Minister dragged this country into an illegal, US-sponsored war on grounds which later proved to be fraudulent. In 2003 Tony's Big Whopper was that Saddam's WMDs 'could be activated within 45 minutes'. In 1999 it was that Slobodan Milosevic's Yugoslavia was 'set on a Hitler-style genocide equivalent to the extermination of the Jews during World War Two'..... In fact, the Yugoslavs had by February 1999 already agreed to most of the autonomy proposals and had assented to a UN (but not Nato) peacekeeping team entering Kosovo..... It was the unwelcome prospect of Milosevic signing up to a peace deal and thereby depriving the US of its casus belli that caused Secretary of State Albright, with the connivance of Cook, to insert new terms into the Rambouillet accord purposely designed to be rejected by Belgrade. Appendix B to chapter seven of the document provided not only for the Nato occupation of Kosovo, but also for 'ounrestricted access' for Nato aircraft, tanks and troops throughout Yugoslavia. The full text of the Rambouillet document was kept secret from the public and came to light only when published in Le Monde Diplomatique on 17 April. By this time, the war was almost a month old...The Kosovan war was, we were repeatedly told, fought 'to stop a humanitarian catastrophe'. 'It is no exaggeration to say that what is happening is racial genocide' - claimed the British Prime Minister - 'something we had hoped we would never again experience in Europe. Thousands have been murdered, 100,000 men are missing and hundreds forced to flee their homes and the country.' The Serbs were, according to the US State Department, 'conducting a campaign of forced population movement not seen in Europe since WW2'....With public support for war faltering, and a Downing Street spokesman talking of a 'public-relations meltdown', it was time for the Lie Machine to go into overdrive.... To date, the total body count of civilians killed in Kosovo in the period 1997-99 is still fewer than 3,000, a figure that includes not only those killed in open fighting and during Nato air strikes, but also an unidentified number of Serbs. Clearly it was an exaggeration - of Munchausenian proportions - for the Prime Minister to describe what happened in Kosovo as 'racial genocide'. In both Kosovo and Iraq, the government's war strategy seems to have been threefold:
1. In order to whip up public support for war, tell lies so outrageous that most people will believe that no one would have dared to make them up.
2. When the conflict is over, dismiss questions about the continued lack of evidence as 'irrelevant' and stress alternative 'benefits' from the military action, e.g., 'liberation' of the people.
3. Much later on, when the truth is finally revealed, rely on the fact that most people have lost interest and are now concentrating on the threat posed by the next new Hitler.
An admission of the government's culpability for the Kosovan war only slipped out in July 2000, when Lord Gilbert, the ex-defence minister, told the House of Commons that the Rambouillet terms offered to the Yugoslav delegation had been 'absolutely intolerable' and expressly designed to provoke war. Gilbert's bombshell warranted scarcely a line in the mainstream British media, which had been so keen to label the Yugoslavs the guilty party a year before."
How the battle lies were drawn
Spectator, 14 June 2003

"A Serbian human rights activist on Monday questioned whether USA Today reporter Jack Kelley, who resigned under scrutiny for his reporting of the Kosovo conflict, actually saw a key document he cited as a source. Kelley stepped down earlier this month amid questions over his claims that he was shown an order by the army of former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic for a killing spree in a Kosovo village. Kelley, according to news reports in the United States, claimed he saw a typed order from army headquarters in Belgrade to 'cleanse' the village, printed on official stationery as part of a black-bound notebook belonging to a Yugoslav officer. The order, according to Kelley, was crucial evidence linking Milosevic to Kosovo atrocities. Kelley alleged he saw the document during an interview with Natasa Kandic, of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade, after the fighting ended. The notebook was retrieved by U.N. tribunal investigators in Kosovo. Kandic, however, said the notebook was only seen by herself, U.N. investigators and ethnic Albanian rebels of the Kosovo Liberation Army who fought Milosevic's troops and initially discovered the notebook. It was a handwritten notebook, bound in red, not black, and contained no printed documents, Kandic said."
Serb soldier's notebook on horrific killings at center of controversy surrounding U.S. reporter
Associated Press, 26 January 2004

"Where are the bodies? Was the other big war of the last decade, Kosovo in 1999, triggered by bogus allegations as well? Another case of mass deception? In Iraq, it's the missing mass weapons of destruction. In Kosovo, it's the missing mass graves. In alleged ethnic cleansing exercises by Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic, as many as 100,000 to 200,000 civilians were said to have gone missing or been killed in Kosovo, many of them buried in mass graves. Members of a Canadian forensic team to the Serbian province have come forward to label the numbers nonsense. No mass graves, they say, and, on both the Albanian and Serb sides, only a few thousand dead. A mockery of the numbers used to justify the war.... The Kosovo story has etchings of Iraq all over it. The United States (the Democrats this time) and Britain (Tony Blair again) demonize an enemy with fraudulent accusations. They play the gullible media, Canada's included, like a violin. The latest person to debunk the genocide numbers is retired Vancouver homicide detective Brian Honeybourn, a member of the forensic team. He told The Ottawa Citizen this week that his nine-member group found mainly single graves, with a couple of exceptions being one of 20 bodies and another 11. He wonders how genocide charges against Mr. Milosevic can stand up. 'It seems as though The Hague is beginning to panic.' Garth Pritchard, a Canadian filmmaker, accompanied the forensic team to Kosovo. 'This was a massacre that never happened.' He joined mission leader Brian Strongman in lambasting Canadian Louise Arbour, the special prosecutor for the tribunal that brought the charges against Mr. Milosevic. Ms. Arbour, now the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, was used as a pawn by war-hungry Washington and London, they said. 'I was standing there when the forensic teams were telling Louise Arbour there were no 200,000 bodies and she didn't want to know,' Mr. Pritchard told the Citizen. Ms. Arbour's career path lit up after her war-crimes work. She was appointed to the Supreme Court of Canada, then to her UN post. The findings, or non-findings, of the Canadian forensic team are consistent with those of other teams of experts sent over since the war ended. At the time of the conflict, James Bissett, a former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, and Lewis MacKenzie, a major-general with a wealth of experience in the Balkan theatre, took issue with the tales being spun. But they, as well as some voices in the media, were drowned out by the drumbeat of war. U.S. defence secretary William Cohen was alleging that as many as 100,000 Albanian Kosovars had gone missing. Mr. Blair, in a preview of his comportment on Iraq, was crying horror upon horror. President Bill Clinton wanted to shift the focus off his domestic problems -- Monica Lewinsky etc. -- and was gung-ho for a NATO invasion. Looking back a couple of years after the conflict, defence minister Art Eggleton acknowledged that the propaganda coming out of the Pentagon was extraordinary. But the Chrétien Liberals, on close terms with the Clinton Democrats, weren't about to buck the White House on Kosovo, as they would on Iraq. The allies were all on board for an attack, making it extremely unlikely that Canada would be the odd one out. But having everybody in the wagon doesn't excuse what happened. If the forensic teams' stories are correct, the missing dead in Kosovo is indeed a scandal comparable to the absence of WMD in Iraq. In a five-year period, political leaders twice duped their populations into going to war."
Another Case of Mass Deception?
Globe and Mail, 2 September 2004

"For the past four years, the Hague's International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia has been finding what multiple international forensic 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.' 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.... In early 2001, German TV broadcast a report titled 'It Began with a Lie,' which publicized the findings of the observer force Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE)  that no genocide had taken place in Kosovo. The revelations set off a huge public debate in Germany, a member of the NATO coalition, after the public realized their country had been party to a hoax, and they held the responsible politicians’ feet to the fire. It’s long past time that we also set the record straight on what we 'achieved' in the Balkans -- and change course. As the world closes in on the Serbs again this year, we must stop bin Laden from establishing a terror state in Europe. We know from Madrid and London that we’ll pay for it with our own blood. In fact, we already have."
A Balkan Base For Al Qaeda?
FrontPageMagazine, 20 March 2006

"The chief prosecutor for war crimes in former Yugoslavia yesterday voiced admiration for and fascination with her most formidable opponent, Slobodan Milosevic. Carla Del Ponte, whose mission is to bring the worst criminals from the Yugoslav wars to justice and who spent more than four years trying Milosevic, paid tribute to the late Serbian leader, declaring him superior to the dozens of other suspects who have been in the dock at the tribunal in The Hague. 'The way he questioned certain witnesses was fascinating,' she told Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. 'He really knew how to deal with people. I admired that. He was the only accused who mounted his own defence alone ... Milosevic always spoke out. He had been the president of Yugoslavia. He was head and shoulders above the rest'" Milosevic died in custody in his cell outside The Hague earlier this year, almost five years after being flown there following his overthrow in Belgrade. The death was a major blow to the tribunal, as it deprived the former Yugoslavia of a verdict in the biggest and longest trial before the court. The death spawned multiple conspiracy theories and also triggered strong criticism of the manner in which the tribunal operates."
Del Ponte tells of admiration for Milosevic
Guardian, 29 July 2006

And Bosnia?
There Was A Genocide In Bosnia
But The Serbian Government Was Not Responsible For It

"The UN's highest court has cleared Serbia of direct responsibility for genocide during the 1990s Bosnian war. But the International Court of Justice did rule that Belgrade had violated international law by failing to prevent the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica..... The case, Bosnia and Herzegovina versus Serbia and Montenegro, began a year ago and a panel of judges has been deliberating since hearings ended in May 2006. Bosnia argued that Belgrade incited ethnic hatred, armed Bosnian Serbs and was an active participant in the killings. Belgrade said the conflict was an internal war between Bosnia's ethnic groups and denied any state role in genocide. In the ruling, the president of the court, Judge Rosalyn Higgins, said: 'The court finds that the acts of genocide at Srebrenica cannot be attributed to the respondent's (Serbia) state organs.'... The war crimes tribunal in The Hague has already found individuals guilty of genocide in Bosnia and established the Srebrenica massacre as genocide."
Court clears Serbia of genocide
BBC Online, 26 February 2007

"Slobodan Milosevic was posthumously exonerated on Monday when the international court of justice ruled that Serbia was not responsible for the 1995 massacre at Srebrenica. The former president of Serbia had always argued that neither Yugoslavia nor Serbia had command of the Bosnian Serb army, and this has now been upheld by the world court in The Hague. By implication, Serbia cannot be held responsible for any other war crimes attributed to the Bosnian Serbs.The allegations against Milosevic over Bosnia and Croatia were cooked up in 2001, two years after an earlier indictment had been issued against him by the separate international criminal tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) at the height of Nato's attack on Yugoslavia in 1999. Notwithstanding the atrocities on all sides in Kosovo, Nato claims that Serbia was pursuing genocide turned out to be war propaganda, so the ICTY prosecutor decided to bolster a weak case by trying to 'get' Milosevic for Bosnia as well. It took two years and 300 witnesses, but the prosecution never managed to produce conclusive evidence against its star defendant.....The international court of justice (ICJ) did condemn Serbia on Monday for failing to act to prevent Srebrenica, on the basis that Belgrade failed to use its influence over the Bosnian Serb army. But this is small beer compared to the original allegations.... Yugoslavia had no troops in Bosnia and greater guilt over the killings surely lies with those countries that did, notably the Dutch battalion in Srebrenica itself.....However, Monday's ruling is about far more than Milosevic. Ever since the end of the cold war, the US and its allies have acted like vigilantes, claiming the right to bomb other countries in the name of humanity. The Kosovo war was the most important action taken on this basis and, as such, the curtain-raiser for Iraq. Fought, like the Iraq war, without UN approval, it was waged partly because the international community felt it should have intervened more robustly against Yugoslavia over Bosnia. It now turns out that Serbia was not in control in Bosnia after all. The ruling therefore punctures a decade-and-a-half of lies in support of the doctrine of military and judicial interventionism."
Lies of the vigilantes
Guardian, 28 February 2007

July 2004
US And UK Face Embarrassment At The Hague
Why The West Doesn't Want Milosevic
To Speak For Himself
www.btinternet.com/~nlpwessex/Documents/WATMilosevictrial.htm
Western Powers Covertly Used
Islamic Terrorists To Break Up Yugoslavia
Click Here

"Peter Brock's devastating portrayal of the role played by western journalists in distorting the truth about what was really happening during the break up of Yugoslavia is a major accomplishment. The book underlines the terrible power of the media in influencing governments to make unwise policy decisions affecting the very course of history. It also exposes the close affinity that exists between media and government. Both are capable of telling lies and both are unwilling to admit mistakes. This is a 'must read' book. It is a sad and shameful story but one that should be mandatory reading by every politician and by every practicing and aspiring journalist."
James Bissett, former Canadian Ambassador to Yugoslavia (1990-1992)
On Peter Brock's Book 'Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting - Journalism and Tragedy In Yugoslavia'

"Peter Brock has done a masterful job - through patient and unbiased documentation and cool, logical reporting - of highlighting the great failure of the media in fairly and accurately covering the break-up of the former Yugoslavia and the subsequent wars in its constituent parts. As someone intimately involved in covering the wars of the 1990s in the Balkans, I can attest that Brock's writing is restrained and, if anything, understated, and the indictment of the media for its bias and the resultant contribution to the start and ongoing conduct of the war is valid. That there were genuine initial misunderstandings on the part of the world's media with regard to the Balkan situation is clear. But the fact that the media - on whose judgments governments made policies - allowed itself to be duped by propagandists, and that editors then refused to recant when their errors became obvious: there lies the essence of Brock's indictment. The free press of the world fought to be recognized as the guardian of truth and as a pillar of good governance. It cannot now deny culpability and reject criticism, or avoid the growing sentiment that it - as with all aspects of public life - requires constant review, and reform. It is evident from Brock's vital and eminently readable book that for freedom to perish, all it takes is for the media to exempt itself from its ethical responsibility toward impartiality. If Watergate was the modern starting point for agenda-based reporting, then the Balkan wars showed that, unchecked, the media could, without accountability, bring about the downfall of nations. The resultant emergence of terrorist coordinating centers in the Balkans, intimately involved in the 9/11, Madrid, and London attacks, can be laid directly at the door of the editors who allowed bias to rule their coverage of the Balkan wars. We have yet to see the full consequences of the media's shameful unprofessionalism in the Balkan wars of the 1990s. But to start to remedy the problem it is essential that Brock's Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting be widely read, and its message taken to heart. Peter Brock's book should be the basis for both Congressional and independent media enquiries."
Gregory R. Copley, President of the International Strategic Studies Association, and Editor of Defense & Foreign Affairs publications
On Peter Brock's Book 'Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting - Journalism and Tragedy In Yugoslavia'

Audio Interview with Peter Brock author of 'Media Cleansing: Dirty Reporting - Journalism and Tragedy in Yugoslavia'

Not for the people in the Middle East, the Caucasus or the Balkans
Not for freedom and democracy
 
Why They Are Really Doing It
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NATURAL LAW PARTY WESSEX
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