From: Sandeep Vaidya <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
'CIA's bastard army ran riot in Balkans' backed extremists'
Special report: Kosovo
Peter Beaumont, Ed Vulliamy and Paul Beaver
Sunday March 11, 2001
The Observer
The United States secretly supported the ethnic Albanian extremists now
behind insurgencies in Macedonia and southern
Serbia.
The CIA encouraged former Kosovo Liberation Army fighters to launch a
rebellion in southern Serbia in an effort to undermine
the then Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic, according to senior
European officers who served with the international
peace-keeping force in Kosovo (K-For), as well as leading Macedonian and
US sources.
They accuse American forces with K-For of deliberately ignoring the
massive smuggling of men and arms across Kosovo's
borders.
The accusations were made in a series of interviews by The Observer .
They emerge as America has been forced into a rapid
U-turn over its support for Albanian extremists in Kosovo seeking a
'Greater Kosovo' that would include Albanian
communities in Serbia and Macedonia.
In the past week ethnic Albanian guerrillas have intensified their
campaign of attacks in the two areas, threatening a new war
in the region which last week put US troops in the firing line in the
Balkans for the first time.
The accusations have led to tension in K-For between the European and US
military missions. European officers are furious
that the Ameri cans have allowed guerrilla armies in its sector to
train, smuggle arms and launch attacks across two
international borders.
One European K-For battalion commander told The Observer yesterday: 'The
CIA has been allowed to run riot in Kosovo with
a private army designed to overthrow Slobodan Milosevic. Now he's gone
the US State Department seems incapable of
reining in its bastard army.'
He added: 'Most of last year, there was a growing frustration with US
support for the radical Albanians. US policy was and
still is out of step with the other Nato allies.'
The claim was backed by senior Macedonian officials in the capital,
Skopje. 'What has been happening with the National
Liberation Army [which has been responsible for a series of attacks on
Macedonia's borders in recent weeks] and the
UCPMB [its sister organisation in southern Serbia] is very similar to
what happened when the KLA was launched in 1995-96,'
said one.
'I will say only this: the US intelligence agencies have not been honest
here.'
The claims were given extra credence from an unexpected source - Arben
Xhafari, leader of Macedonia's main Albanian party
who tried to prevent the crisis on the border igniting an ethnic civil
war inside Macedonia itself.
A US State Department official blamed the last administration. There had
now been 'a shift of emphasis'.
Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2001
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