Clinton Wouldn’t Have Signed the Rambouillet Either
Clinton: I Wouldn’t Have Signed That Either!
Defense witness at another Hague mock-trial to Serbian diplomat Nikola Sainovic, Obrad Kesic, told the Kangaroo Court that in April 1999, during the US-led NATO aggression on FR Yugoslavia, American President Bill Clinton said he would not have accepted the Rambouillet Accord either, just like the former Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic.
The Rambouillet setup (February 6 — March 19, 1999), headed by then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and the former American ambassador in the UN Richard Holbrook, where Serbian delegation and Albanian separatists were held in separate rooms until Albanians—advised by the shadow dictator and political gangster, ICG’s Morton Abramowitz—signed, was used as a pretext for brutal three-month aggression on Serbia and Montenegro (Federal Republic of Yugoslavia at the time).
Among other things, the Rambouillet ultimatum requested that Yugoslavia allows Albanian minority in Serbian Kosovo-Metohija to hold a referendum for secession of the Serbian province in three years and to submit to military occupation of Yugoslavia’s entire territory: Serbia (with Kosovo province) and Montenegro — or be bombed back into the stone age.
Dan Goure, deputy director of political and military studies at the conservative Center for Strategic and International Studies said in an IPA release: “The [Clinton] administration went to Rambouillet basically to arrange a trap for Milosevic. It was a no-win situation for him and frankly, Albright was basically trying to find a pretext for bombing. They told the Kosovo Albanians that if they signed and Milosevic didn’t, they’d bomb Serbia. Rambouillet was not a negotiation, it was a setup, a lynch party.”
American analyst and businessman Kesic testified that he led a delegation of American Serbs which was received by Bill Clinton in the White House on April 14, 1999, during NATO aggression. According to his testimony, Clinton told the delegation he often tries to put himself in the shoes of others, so he could better understand them.
“He said that, putting himself in Milosevic’s position, he realized that the referendum [for Kosovo province secession] clause in Rambouillet Agreement went too far. He told us that he would not have signed such a document either, if he was in Milosevic’s place,” said Kesic.
It Doesn’t Matter Why We’re Bombing You, It’s About Me Now
Former President Clinton told the representatives of American Serbs that bombardment of FR Yugoslavia begun out of “humanitarian concerns,” but that the reasons that have led to the aggression became irrelevant as soon as it started, since what’s “at stake now is the NATO, U.S. and his personal credibility” and that is why the bombardment could last for the unlimited time.
Kesic stressed that, at the delegates’ request to stop the carnage, even if just temporarily, during the Orthodox Easter celebrations, Clinton responded that was not possible, because it would be difficult to ensure a consensus among NATO-member states to continue with the aggression afterwards.
According to Kesic, who followed American civil rights activist and Baptist minister Jesse Jackson during his mission in Belgrade and afterwards at the Clinton reception, American president gave the same response when Mr Jackson requested the cessation of bombardment after FRY President Slobodan Milosevic handed over three American soldiers captured in Serbian Kosovo province.
Comments
S., did ya get a chance to look at this story?
NY Times, 1987
The New York Times
November 1, 1987, Sunday, Late City Final Edition
SECTION: Section 1; Part 1, Page 14, Column 1; Foreign Desk
27. In Yugoslavia, Rising Ethnic Strife Brings Fears of Worse Civil Conflict
BYLINE: By DAVID BINDER, Special to the New York Times
DATELINE: BELGRADE, Yugoslavia
Portions of southern Yugoslavia have reached such a state of ethnic friction that Yugoslavs have begun to talk of the horrifying possibility of ''civil war'' in a land that lost one-tenth of its population, or 1.7 million people, in World War II.
The current hostilities pit separatist-minded ethnic Albanians against the various Slavic populations of Yugoslavia and occur at all levels of society, from the highest officials to the humblest peasants.
A young Army conscript of ethnic Albanian origin shot up his barracks, killing four sleeping Slavic bunkmates and wounding six others.
The army says it has uncovered hundreds of subversive ethnic Albanian cells in its ranks. Some arsenals have been raided.
Vicious Insults
Ethnic Albanians in the Government have manipulated public funds and regulations to take over land belonging to Serbs. And politicians have exchanged vicious insults.
Slavic Orthodox churches have been attacked, and flags have been torn down. Wells have been poisoned and crops burned. Slavic boys have been knifed, and some young ethnic Albanians have been told by their elders to rape Serbian girls.
Ethnic Albanians comprise the fastest growing nationality in Yugoslavia and are expected soon to become its third largest, after the Serbs and Croats.
Radicals' Goals
. The goal of the radical nationalists among them, one said in an interview, is an ''ethnic Albania that includes western Macedonia, southern Montenegro, part of southern Serbia, Kosovo and Albania itself.'' That includes large chunks of the republics that make up the southern half of Yugoslavia.
Other ethnic Albanian separatists admit to a vision of a greater Albania governed from Pristina in southern Yugoslavia rather than Tirana, the capital of neighboring Albania.
There is no evidence that the hard-line Communist Government in Tirana is giving them material assistance.
The principal battleground is the region called Kosovo, a high plateau ringed by mountains that is somewhat smaller than New Jersey. Ethnic Albanians there make up 85 percent of the population of 1.7 million. The rest are Serbians and Montenegrins.
Worst Strife in Years
As Slavs flee the protracted violence, Kosovo is becoming what ethnic Albanian nationalists have been demanding for years, and especially strongly since the bloody rioting by ethnic Albanians in Pristina in 1981 - an ''ethnically pure'' Albanian region, a ''Republic of Kosovo'' in all but name.
The violence, a journalist in Kosovo said, is escalating to ''the worst in the last seven years.''
Many Yugoslavs blame the troubles on the ethnic Albanians, but the matter is more complex in a country with as many nationalities and religions as Yugoslavia's and involves economic development, law, politics, families and flags. As recently as 20 years ago, the Slavic majority treated ethnic Albanians as inferiors to be employed as hewers of wood and carriers of heating coal. The ethnic Albanians, who now number 2 million, were officially deemed a minority, not a constituent nationality, as they are today.
Were the ethnic tensions restricted to Kosovo, Yugoslavia's problems with its Albanian nationals might be more manageable. But some Yugoslavs and some ethnic Albanians believe the struggle has spread far beyond Kosovo. Macedonia, a republic to the south with a population of 1.8 million, has a restive ethnic Albanian minority of 350,000.
"We've already lost western Macedonia to the Albanians,'' said a member of the Yugoslav party presidium, explaining that the ethnic minority had driven the Slavic Macedonians out of the region.
Attacks on Slavs
Last summer, the authorities in Kosovo said they documented 40 ethnic Albanian attacks on Slavs in two months. In the last two years, 320 ethnic Albanians have been sentenced for political crimes, nearly half of them characterized as severe.
In one incident, Fadil Hoxha, once the leading politician of ethnic Albanian origin in Yugoslavia, joked at an official dinner in Prizren last year that Serbian women should be used to satisfy potential ethnic Albanian rapists. After his quip was reported this October, Serbian women in Kosovo protested, and Mr. Hoxha was dismissed from the Communist Party.
As a precaution, the central authorities dispatched 380 riot police officers to the Kosovo region for the first time in four years.
Officials in Belgrade view the ethnic Albanian challenge as imperiling the foundations of the multinational experiment called federal Yugoslavia, which consists of six republics and two provinces.
'Lebanonizing' of Yugoslavia
High-ranking officials have spoken of the ''Lebanonizing'' of their country and have compared its troubles to the strife in Northern Ireland.
Borislav Jovic, a member of the Serbian party's presidency, spoke in an interview of the prospect of ''two Albanias, one north and one south, like divided Germany or Korea,'' and of ''practically the breakup of Yugoslavia.'' He added: ''Time is working against us.''
The federal Secretary for National Defense, Fleet Adm. Branko Mamula, told the army's party organization in September of efforts by ethnic Albanians to subvert the armed forces. ''Between 1981 and 1987 a total of 216 illegal organizations with 1,435 members of Albanian nationality were discovered in the Yugoslav People's Army,'' he said. Admiral Mamula said ethnic Albanian subversives had been preparing for ''killing officers and soldiers, poisoning food and water, sabotage, breaking into weapons arsenals and stealing arms and ammunition, desertion and causing flagrant nationalist incidents in army units.''
Concerns Over Military
Coming three weeks after the ethnic Albanian draftee, Aziz Kelmendi, had slaughtered his Slavic comrades in the barracks at Paracin, the speech struck fear in thousands of families whose sons were about to start their mandatory year of military service.
Because the Albanians have had a relatively high birth rate, one-quarter of the army's 200,000 conscripts this year are ethnic Albanians. Admiral Mamula suggested that 3,792 were potential human timebombs.
He said the army had ''not been provided with details relevant for assessing their behavior.'' But a number of Belgrade politicians said they doubted the Yugoslav armed forces would be used to intervene in Kosovo as they were to quell violent rioting in 1981 in Pristina. They reason that the army leadership is extremely reluctant to become involved in what is, in the first place, a political issue.
Ethnic Albanians already control almost every phase of life in the autonomous province of Kosovo, including the police, judiciary, civil service, schools and factories. Non-Albanian visitors almost immediately feel the independence - and suspicion - of the ethnic Albanian authorities.
Region's Slavs Lack Strength
While 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins still live in the province, they are scattered and lack cohesion. In the last seven years, 20,000 of them have fled the province, often leaving behind farmsteads and houses, for the safety of the Slavic north.
Until September, the majority of the Serbian Communist Party leadership pursued a policy of seeking compromise with the Kosovo party hierarchy under its ethnic Albanian leader, Azem Vlasi.
(c) 1987, The New York Times
Posted by: Alex | August 27, 2007 09:22 AM
Good one, Alex!
Those are the types of articles that cost David Binder his job at NY Times. People over there don't get paid to report, they get paid to skilfully lie and manipulate the facts.
Posted by: Svetlana | August 27, 2007 03:37 PM
Alex, you are a Godsend! I was looking everywhere for that specific article a few days ago and couldn't find it. I needed it for a piece that I am writing. You are an angel! Mnogo Hvala!
M
Posted by: Melana V Pejakovich | August 28, 2007 05:46 PM