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UK politician: "Spread of US influence" reason for NATO bombing of
Yugoslavia
March 01, 2006
YU
Excerpt from report by Serbian independent news agency FoNet The Hague, 1 March: A defence witness for [former Serbian and Yugoslav President] Slobodan Milosevic at the Hague tribunal, Alice Mann, said today at the trial that there had been no humanitarian disaster in Kosovo, adding that the [former US diplomat] William Walker had stage-managed an incident in Racak village [in March 1999, used as a pretext for bombing]. Mann, who was the chairwoman of the British Parliamentary Committee for Peace in the Balkans and a Labour MP in the NATO Parliamentary Assembly, said that "even those who bombed Yugoslavia knew that the Kosovo Liberation Army (OVK) [UCK in Albanian] had been an organized force. My experience taught me that as soon as fighting began civilians started moving out of the scene". She accused William Walker, former chief of the Kosovo Verification Mission on the eve of the NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, saying that he had stage-managed an incident in Racak village in January 1999 when a large number of [ethnic] Albanians had been killed". According to her, the CIA had infiltrated verifiers into Kosovo, organizing the training of OVK members. "We should not have destroyed a country based on what Walker said," Mann added. Asked how she found out whether Kosovo Albanians had started to leave the province, the witness replied: "Shortly before the bombing, the foreign secretary [Robin Cook] and the prime minister [Tony Blair] gave statements, and the facts also spoke for themselves. The mass movement of Albanians from Kosovo began after the bombing, which is understandable, because they were leaving in fear for their lives". "Did your prime minister speak the truth or not?" Milosevic asked his 53rd witness, but the presiding judge, Patrick Robinson, did not allow Mann to reply to this question. Robinson assessed as irrelevant Milosevic's question whether the witness had attempted to organize a vote in her country over Great Britain's participation in the bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999. "I thought and I still think that NATO's attack against Yugoslavia were counter-legal," Mann said. "What was the real reason for the bombing?" Milosevic asked. "I think that the reason was purely political, being the spread of US influence in the region. I think that it was also linked to the breaking up of Yugoslavia. The Americans had already intervened in Krajina [region in Croatia contested between the Croatian authorities and Serb minority in Knin until 1995], they had already trained KLA [UCK] guerrillas. It was only a matter of time when the bombing would start. Bill Clinton was in trouble over domestic policy issues, just as the US prepared for war in Iraq. The USA now has a military base in Kosovo and their bases are everywhere in the world wherever interests oppose their own," Mann responded. [Passage omitted] The trial continues. Source: BBC Monitoring / FoNet news agency, Belgrade |
