Primakov: Milosevic for Peace, Not 'Greater Serbia' Tue Nov 30, 2004 07:31 AM ET
By Emma Thomasson THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic was a peacemaker who did not want to fight for a "Greater Serbia," while an anti-Serb West stoked the bloody collapse of Yugoslavia, Russia's Yevgeny Primakov said Tuesday. Primakov, former Russian foreign minister and prime minister, was testifying in defense of the former Yugoslav president, who is charged with genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes in the Balkans in the 1990s. Primakov said the Western media had portrayed Serbs as "aggressors" and after Bill Clinton was elected U.S. president in 1992, Washington became increasingly anti-Serb. "It became ever more apparent that their course was to weaken Serbia, to not allow it to gain strength and possibly even to complete the process of Yugoslavia's complete disintegration," he told the U.N. tribunal in The Hague. Primakov, prime minister in 1998-99, blamed the West, in particular Germany, for fueling violence in Kosovo in the late 1990s by supporting the separatist Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) despite earlier labeling them terrorists. "The initiators and provocateurs of so many events in Kosovo was the so-called Kosovo Liberation Army," he said, adding that a mass exodus of refugees from the region started only after NATO launched airstrikes in March 1999. In an allusion to the U.S.-led war in Iraq, Primakov said Kosovo had set a precedent for military action without a U.N. mandate. "This undermines undoubtedly the international order," he said. NO "GREATER SERBIA" PLAN Primakov said the West was wrong to assume that Milosevic wanted to create a "Greater Serbia" or to unify all Serbs in a state as the multi-ethnic Yugoslav federation crumbled. During his first meeting with the former Serb strongman in 1993, Primakov said he specifically asked Milosevic whether he had plans for a "Greater Serbia." "He said this could only be achieved in theory and at the price of great bloodshed and 'I'm not prepared to do that,"' Primakov said of Milosevic's reply. "He had no plans and conducted no actions to achieve a Greater Serbia." Primakov noted that Milosevic accepted the 1993 Vance-Owen peace plan for Bosnia and imposed an economic blockade after the Bosnian Serb parliament rejected the plan. "You wanted a peaceful solution," he said to Milosevic. The 1992-5 Bosnian war ended after U.S.-sponsored talks in Dayton, Ohio. Primakov said former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright had told him Dayton would not have worked without Milosevic's support. Primakov said Milosevic also tried to stop violence in Kosovo and told the Russian prime minister on a visit to Belgrade on the eve of the NATO bombing he was prepared to pull his forces out of Kosovo if NATO withdrew from the border with Macedonia. "We never had the chance to tell what we had achieved," Primakov said. "Barely had our plane taken off then the bombing of the airport started." The former Yugoslav president won back the right to lead his own defense earlier this month after the court appointed two lawyers in September to defend him to stop his ill health causing more delays to an already marathon trial. Milosevic has accused the tribunal of bias against him and the Serb people, saying it is designed to cover up NATO war crimes in Kosovo. He has refused to enter a plea to the charges and pleas of not guilty were entered on his behalf. Milosevic, a Belgrade law school graduate, wants to call more than 1,000 witnesses in his defense including British Prime Minister Tony Blair, Albright and Clinton. http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=worldNews&storyID=6952759 Serbian News Network - SNN [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.antic.org/
