Reprinted from the June 8, 2000 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- PRETEXT FOR WAR IN KOSOVO WAS A HOAX: REPORT FINDS NO EVIDENCE OF "RACAK MASSACRE" By John Catalinotto A team of Finnish pathologists sent to Kosovo in January 1999 to investigate the so-called Racak massacre has at last publicized its findings. The result is further proof that the U.S. government manipulated both events in Kosovo and media coverage of them as part of its effort to justify U.S./NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. The NATO powers prevented the truth from being publicized before or during the war. The reason is obvious. U.S. manipulation of the Racak incident was an essential step in initiating the war. On Jan. 15, 1999, Serbian police--accompanied by observers from the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission and an Associated Press video team who were French citizens--had entered the village of Racak, a stronghold of the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army. A firefight ensued, in which the Serb police bested their attackers. The next day, KLA members led William Walker, the head of the OSCE mission, and journalists of the international media to a gully at the edge of the village. Walker was also serving as U.S. ambassador to Yugoslavia at the time, and had a record of not exposing but covering up heinous crimes earlier when he was U.S. ambassador to El Salvador and Nicaragua. The KLA took them to the bodies of some 20 people lying there, and another 20 throughout the village. Before the international media, Walker immediately accused Serbian security forces of having committed a massacre of ethnic Albanian "unarmed civilians." He declared, "I don't hesitate to accuse the Yugoslav security forces of this crime." The story was spread worldwide. U.S. President Bill Clinton condemned the "massacre" in the most absolute terms. He spoke of "a deliberate and arbitrary act of murder." The German foreign ministry proclaimed, "Those responsible have to know that the international community is not prepared to accept the brutal persecution and murder of civilians in Kosovo." The Yugoslav government categorically denied the allegations and called the incident a manipulation. It accused the KLA of gathering the corpses of its fighters, killed in the preceding day's battle, and arranging them so as to resemble a mass execution of civilians. The "Racak massacre" was without doubt the trigger event that made NATO's war against Yugoslavia a certainty. The Washington Post of April 18, 1999, described Racak as having "transformed the West's Balkan policy as singular events seldom do." NATO immediately convoked an emergency meeting. On Jan. 19, U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright called for bombing Yugoslavia as "punishment." The punishment was delayed, however, as Washington went through the charade of talks in Rambouillet, France--at which it imposed demands that it knew the Yugoslav government could not accept. In the meantime, teams of forensic experts arrived in Racak from Belarus, from Yugoslavia and-sent by the United Nations-from Finland. In February 1999, the Belarus and Yugoslav experts both said there had been no massacre. But the Finnish spokesperson gave a vague report that allowed Walker's unsupported charges to stand. Now, after the most brutal war in Europe since World War II, the same team of Finnish pathologists isn't sure there was a massacre after all. CBC Radio News learned and reported on May 22 that the Finnish pathologists' autopsy report reveals no evidence that the 40 bodies were intentionally mutilated. Only one of them showed any sign of being killed at close range. The doctor in charge of the autopsies is expected to release a full report within a few weeks. But the most reasonable conclusion is that there was a firefight, that KLA fighters were killed, and that the United States and NATO kept the report suppressed to help confuse public opinion. There was no massacre--other than NATO's massacre of the Yugoslav people. __________________________________ Faked photos. Remember the satellite photo that Madeleine Albright kept waving over her head as proof of a mass grave in Srebrenica in 1995? Twenty-four journalists, including Mike Wallace, went to investigate the site and returned empty handed, but did he bother to tell the American people? It is this kind of yellow journalism, such as the fake Kosovo mass graves, that have convinced the American people that "we have to do something," not knowing that such atrocity stories are intended to justify the murder of innocent Serbian men, women and children by NATO airstrikes. NATO photos of of Kosovo mass graves are fake: report THE HAGUE, April 24 (AFP) - Several photos distributed by NATO and said to show possible mass graves in Kosovo could be fake, the Dutch daily Algemen Dagblad said Saturday. The paper based its claims on analyses carried out by a map expert specialising in the study of satellite photos, who examined four pictures taken over the Kosovo villages of Pusto Selo and Izbica. NATO showed two photos of each village. In each case, one of the photos shows the area before the alleged graves were dug and the second, taken several days later, appears to show a number of freshly dug graves. According to the expert, identified only as E. Burie, the most recent photos displayed worrying inconsistencies. He said that in the second picture of the Pusto Selo village, there is a house which does not feature in the image taken a few days before. He said: "Either the Kosovars had time between the massacres to build a house in a few nights, or the photo has been manipulated." He said the photo of Izbica showing rows of graves had "touch-up work which could only be the result of two different pictures being superimposed." Burie, who runs a studio in the central Dutch town of Almere specialising in work for the country's top publishers and for military maps, could not be reached for comment. Italian General Giuseppe Marani, a NATO spokesman, said on April 18 that the alliance had photos of 43 sites in Kosovo which featured "very clear rows of individual tombs facing southeast, that is, towards Mecca." _________________________________________________ KOMINFORM P.O. 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