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Back to index to Milosevic statement
FOREIGN INVOLVEMENT IN THE CREATION OF THE KLA The influence of foreign factors who supported and aided the break-up of Yugoslavia was quite considerable. Precisely, these factors of influence came out with quite a malicious claim, and that is that the crisis in Kosovo and Metohija actually occurred in 1989 with the adoption of the amendments to the constitution of Serbia, stating that they abolished the autonomy in Kosovo and limited the human rights of Albanians. This is quite without foundations. The Serbian constitutional amendments in 1989 established a constitutional or unity of the Republic of Serbia which up until then was under the tutelage of its two provinces because Kosovo and Vojvodina, up until the adoption of those amendments, participated in the rule of that republic but the republic did not have any influence over what was going on in the provinces. So the republic, in parts of its own territory, could not implement its constitutional authority, primarily -- one primarily being to care for the benefits of its own people. By the amendments in the Republic of Serbia in 1990, the anomalies were corrected in the position of the Republic of Serbia in relation to its autonomous provinces, and these amendments of 1989 and the constitution of 1990 did in no way infringe on or abolish the human rights of Albanians. They still continued to enjoy free education, press, publishing in their own language. And in everything else, proceedings before judicial organs, they could do that in their own language. And they were more protected than any national minority in any other country. With the secession of Slovenia and Croatia, the Kosovo crisis entered into a new phase. From the forming of the terrorist KLA, the Albanian secessionists began with overt terrorist attacks. That organisation, and this will be shown by documents that will be presented here, armed and trained its members with the assistance of some foreign countries, first of all Germany, the United States, Switzerland, and some other -- some Islamic countries. At the time, lists of names of banks and the numbers of bank accounts where contributions were sent for the KLA were published in Germany and Switzerland. I'm not going to go into this because I don't have enough time. According to reports in the European and the Concrete magazine [sic- PB] from March 1999, the latest weapons were delivered to Kosovo via Albania worth several million German marks. According to OSCE members from a checkpoint which was on the border of Albania and Yugoslavia, observers noted there with surprise that members of the KLA actually were wearing German uniforms. In any case, the German intelligence service admitted that it had organised the training of Albanian terrorists in Berlin and other places as well as the transport of Albanian terrorists. There was also help and assistance from Turkey and also from the Albanian drug Mafia. This is something that is known, and we have quite reliable sources about these issues. The main tasks with the arming of these forces were given to the US intelligence service in assistance with the British service, and The Scotsman says that the US intelligence service got in contact with MI5 in order to train the KLA, and then MI5 or MI6 actually passed these tasks on to certain British security companies which then in turn implemented these tasks. Then they also published the lists of weapons and so on, and I have no time to speak about that today. The most frequent targets of the KLA were police stations and military institutions as well as the civilian population initially. Their victims were very often members of their own people just because they were loyal citizens of Serbia. The terrorist activity was increasing from year to year. A vast number of attacks occurred. I will mention only some. In the report for 1998 from January 1st until December 31st, there were 1.129 terrorist acts in which 115 members of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were killed, out of which -- well, I don't want to go into division. No, actually 215 were -- 216 were killed, 115 were wounded, and 187 were likely wounded, while a number of them were also hijacked. There were also 755 terrorist attacks and provocations directed at citizens. The figures before referred to police officers. 173 citizens were killed out of whom 46 Serbs and Montenegrins, 77 Albanians, three Gypsies, two Muslims, and 42 unidentified persons. As you can see, in 1998, the KLA killed more Albanians than Serbs. In that year the terrorists abducted 292 citizens, out of which 173 Serbs and Montenegrins, 100 Albanians, 14 Roma, one Bulgarian, one Greek, and one Macedonian. They killed 31, 142 are missing, and nine escaped. Then further explanations are given in terms of everything that was used: Mortars, hand-held rocket launchers, explosive devices, anti-tank mines, and so on and so forth. All of this happened at the time when Ibrahim Rugova claimed that the KLA is just a figment of the imagination of the Serb propaganda, that it doesn't really exist. This information is sufficiently clear, and I wonder if any government in the world would remain passive vis-a-vis such terrorist activity. It is only understandable that the police not only had to react to terrorist attacks but it was indispensable for it to take action in order to neutralise and combat terrorist groups in order to re-establish control. Attacks against the army is something that you know of very well, and the entire public does.
KLA AS A TERRORIST ORGANISATION In a broad spectrum of views of different international political structures, particularly in part of the international public opinion, especially since 1998 there was this misconception that was launched on purpose of the KLA as some kind of liberation movement, which is quite unfounded. So for example, the FAS [Federation of American Scientists - PB], which is considered to be a think-tank, published a report in which it says that the terrorist KLA was included among the best-known terrorist countries -- terrorist organisations in the world. In addition to the FAS, the State Department is the only institution in the US that deals with the question of terrorist organisations seriously. John Pike, security head of the FAS, stated that his organisation carried out a detailed analysis studying the entire structure of the KLA, as opposed to the State Department which bases its opinions on opinions only rather than such careful analysis. The tactics of the KLA consist of ambushes, then KLA members are organised in members of three to five -- cells of three to five members, which is characteristic of terrorist organisations. The members of the group are visibly obsessed with their idea of secession from Yugoslavia and annexation to Albania, and they carry out orders without any protest. There are a thousand mercenaries in the KLA from Saudi Arabia, Albania, Bosnia and Croatia, and some Western countries that I cannot go into now, and they work there as experts. Also, the camps are listed, the camps on the territory of Albania. The FAS report also states that the open, long-term objective of the KLA is to unite the Albanian populations of Kosovo, Albania, and Macedonia into a Greater Albania. The KLA represented a typical terrorist organisation, with all the accompanying characteristics, and that was the position of all the police forces of the Western countries because they were aware of the links of this organisation to drug dealers and white slave traders. Gelbard, in 1998, on the 23rd of February, stated at a press conference in Belgrade, and I quote: "We are deeply disturbed and we condemn the impermissible activity of terrorist groups in Kosovo especially the KLA. There is no doubt that this is a terrorist group. I do not accept any kind of justification. Having worked on the subject of terrorist activity for years, I know very well how to define a terrorist group, and I base this on facts, not any kind of -- any kind of rhetoric. Their activities speak for themselves." He called upon Albanian leaders to condemn terrorism and to show on which side they were, and nothing came out of this as we all know. Outside the establishment, outside the Clinton administration, the second half of 1998 there was an unequivocal belief that the KLA was a typical terrorist organisation. This is also confirmed by a carefully compiled document prepared by the Senate Committee of the Republican Party in 1999, which says and I quote: "At the time when the NATO bombing started, the partnership between the Clinton administration and the KLA was unequivocal. Such demonstrative acceptance on the part of leading persons from the Clinton administration of an organisation which was branded a terrorist organisation by one of its officials only a year beforehand is shocking, to put it mildly. It is even more important that the new partnership between Clinton and the KLA can conceal the worrisome characteristics of the KLA that Clinton did not take into account." This is an official document of the Senate of the United States of America. The nature and role of the KLA as a terrorist organisation is the subject of documents. And in the transcript of the US Congress from the year 2000 Frank Ciluffo from the programme called Globalised Organised Crime Programme, when testifying before Congress with the representative juridical committee, stated: "What was concealed from the eyes of the public was the fact that the KLA got part of its funds from the sale of narcotics. Albania and Kosovo are in the middle of the Balkan route which links up the crescent of Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Western Europe. The value is about 400 million US dollars per year and about 80 per cent of the heroin intended for Europe goes along that route." All of this was said in a hearing in the US Congress. [passages redacted apparently to protect the identity of a witness - PB] Resolutions of the Security Council about Kosovo and Metohija adopted before the NATO aggression against Kosovo show that the Security Council believed that in Kosovo and Metohija there were terrorist attacks that had taken place, and the KLA in these resolutions was clearly defined as a terrorist organisation. Resolution 1160: "Condemnation of all acts of terrorism by the KLA or any other group or individual or any kind of external support to the terrorist activity in Kosovo, including the financing, arming and training thereof..." And we can see who was involved in this training, et cetera. In paragraph 2, the leadership of the Kosovo Albanians is called upon to "condemn all terrorist actions," and it underlines that all elements of the Albanian community in Kosovo should achieve their means and objectives -- their objectives only by peaceful means. In paragraph 8 reference is made to similar matters. This remained a mere promise never fulfilled. Terrorist activities were reinforced, more and more weapons brought in, and the terrorists acted even more intensively with the engagement of the West. Resolution 1199, I quote: "Condemns terrorism as a means of obtaining political objectives of any group or individual and condemns any kind of external support to such activity in Kosovo, including the provision of weapons for terrorist activities in Kosovo." What the Clinton administration did and which led to what happened on the 11th of September is a major thing and nobody can deny that. You can see how many of the suspects who were arrested took part in activities conducted by the KLA in Kosovo. There is ample proof of that in Kosovo and Bosnia-Herzegovina, practically as members of al Qaeda. The Security Council expresses its concern over reports of constant violations of the bans of providing weapons to terrorists, as stated in Resolution 1160, and again in paragraph 6 it insists on the condemnation of all terrorist activities and that all members of the Albanian community should achieve their goals through peaceful means only. In paragraph 11, it is stated that financial resources should not be gathered in the territory of any country. In Resolution 1203, there is a condemnation of terrorism of any group or individual in order to achieve political objectives, including the provision of weapons in Kosovo and the carrying out of terrorist activities in Kosovo and also concern is expressed over continued violations of previous resolutions passed by the Security Council. In paragraph 10, I quote -- all of this has been a quotation: "The Security Council insists that the leadership of the Kosovo Albanians should condemn terrorist activities. However, they had never done so." Terrorist activities of the KLA, that is. So in contrast to these evident facts which pointed to the terrorist character of the KLA and according to Security Council Resolutions, every country had the duty to do their best to suppress such activities.
PRETEXT FOR THE NATO INTERVENTION The Clinton administration, under the influence of a strong Albanian lobby and their drug-related money, from 1999 onwards publicly and directly sided with this terrorist organisation and became its protector. Therefore, it is not surprising that after that period it took measures to prevent the break-up of the KLA and to ensure them the status of a party involved in the entire process, and it is in this capacity that they brought them to Rambouillet even. In this public rehabilitation Holbrooke, together with Gelbard, the other US representative, met with a group of terrorists of the KLA and conducted a dialogue with them before TV cameras. Soon afterwards he admitted that Gelbard had previously established contact with them already. During August and September 1998, the police forces practically broke up and neutralised the terrorists of the KLA and their strongholds. Then again representatives of the Clinton administration came to the -- came onto the scene and then the Verification Mission came. Later on, it was established that their only objective was to revitalise and re-animate and protect the KLA. [.....] The appointment of William Walker as the leader of the Verification Mission was no accident. This was done at the insistence of the CIA whose agent he was. It should be remembered that he was the US Ambassador in Salvador and that he was in charge of special operations in Nicaragua, such as the supplying of arms and the forming of the death squads. The developments of the late 20th century showed that the Clinton administration used the nationalist and separatist movement and similar movements in the world in order to achieve their interests. Therefore, they whole-heartedly supported such movements, usually by way of sponsored terrorism. This was shown on Kosovo and Metohija, and it is also confirmed by the conclusion of the Committee for Foreign Affairs of the US Congress in 1992 which said activate Kosovo and wherever possible get concessions from Belgrade. In an analysis of a commission of the republican Senate, it says that the NATO intervention was planned beforehand by the American administration but it lacked a media event which would, in the eyes of the international community, serve as a political pretext for intervention. There were lies upon lies waiting for a trigger to set events in motion. Official NATO structures were recruited on time and during Clark's mandate they established initial contacts with the KLA. This follows from the background briefing in the American Ministry of Defence on the 15th of July, 1998. These initial contacts were recognised by NATO in mid-1998. They were given covert support from the mid-1990s onward by the CIA and the BND [German intelligence - PB]. These secret operations were supported by NATO and were known to NATO, as can be seen by -- [sic - PB] in the book Kosovo, The Freedom Fighters, under quotation marks. All of this confirms that the KLA, which was initially treated as a terrorist organisation from mid-1998 due to a decision by the Clinton administration entered into close links with NATO. Preparations for the NATO aggression were conducted in this partnership together and in parallel with the farcical negotiations in Rambouillet. The turning point was the above-mentioned media event which was created pursuant to what happened in Racak, according to the tried and tested scenario from Bosnia in the case of the Markale market. There was allegedly a massacre in the village of Racak, and the experienced chief of the OSCE mission, Walker, called it an unprecedented crime by the Serbian security forces. This was the peak of the preparations carried out in order to create a pretext for the NATO aggression according to a plan developed previously by the Clinton administration. There was an attempt to describe this event in these terms here as well, and I showed you a video where you can see the orange uniforms of the Verification Mission on the hill overlooking Racak when Walker's deputy testified where you can see what really happened there, and you could see the testimony of their commander over there. I have no time to go into it now on this occasion, but I wish to quote what the military commentator Milovan Drecun said in the book The Second Kosovo Battle about the Racak case. He said: "The Racak case will enter many textbooks as a brilliantly executed and pure anti-terrorist action carried out by members of the police but also as one of the most monstrous media deceptions ever seen by the world. We are witnesses to the fact that the events in Racak are daily being manipulated, especially in The Hague where persistently serious falsification is being perpetrated." It is well known that the sponsors of these events did not want it to be published that there was no massacre in Racak but attempts were made throughout to blame the Serbian side. There are facts that show that after the agreement on the presence of the Verification Mission in October 1998 on Kosovo until the end of January 1999, over 500 KLA attacks were perpetrated. And in the same period, using the Verification Mission as a screen, 35 villages inhabited by Serbs and Montenegrins were ethnically cleansed. And on -- in November 1999, 80 terrorist attacks were perpetrated by the KLA on the police and on civilians.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE INVASION As a reward for these and all other crimes they perpetrated, primarily against the Serbs but also against other non-Albanians and also against Albanians, and for their collaboration during the NATO aggression, the KLA was renamed the Kosovo Protection Corps, and the UN gave it legitimacy, making it possible for them to access funds in Western countries through bilateral channels, including direct military aid. It was understood, however, that they had to disarm immediately. This is only one of many details in a sea of abuses that occurred. And Agim Ceku, a notorious terrorist, was put at the head of this protection force. There were many crimes against Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija committed under his orders. Serbs and Albanians were killed because of their loyalty to the state they lived in, Serbia. This same person fought against the Serbs as an officer in the Croatian army in Croatia, and he was especially prominent because of the crimes he committed against the Serbs during Operations Flash and Storm and in the Medak pocket where women, after being raped, were doused with gasoline and set on fire. There is certainly data about this. But he is protected. He is an ally in spite of the fact that he is a notorious murderer and terrorist. You're able to see, for example, in 2003 in November in the Belgrade press, photographs. I have no time to use photographs in my opening statement because my time is too short, but you can see KLA members in uniform holding heads of Serbs in both hands and where you can see a bag full of heads of Serbs who had been beheaded. Everybody can see that the person being photographed holding Serbian heads in his hands is Sadik Cuflaj, and they carried out, they perpetrated crimes in Pec and other places, Zvelan [phoen] and Pec. And this is just a part of everything. Names, dates, information was published, but this was all neglected and ignored. And now this same Cuflaj, with thousands of other terrorists of the former KLA is a member of the Kosovo Protection Corps and he holds a rank in it and he's a corporal. And they have been entrusted by the international community to maintain order in Kosovo where the Serbs are in constant fear of extinction. [.....] The Canadian General Lewis MacKenzie, one of the former commanders of UNPROFOR in Bosnia, in his text of the 6th of April, 2004 in the Canadian daily National Post, says: "NATO decided on the action although no member of the NATO alliance was in danger. It was decided to bomb not only Kosovo but also the infrastructure and the people of Serbia, and this without a resolution of the United Nations." I continue to quote: "We mentioned that the West is placing itself on the side of the extremists, of a militant separatist movement of Albanians from Kosovo, but we were pushed aside as unobjective, and it is without doubt that the Kosovo Liberation Army, which is fighting for the secession of Kosovo, was characterised as a terrorist organisation which was receiving assistance from Osama bin Laden," and we will present documents about this. MacKenzie continues, contrary to what this illegal Prosecution insists on in their unfounded indictment, he says: "All the information served to cover or justify the bombing of Serbia turned out to be serious forgeries." General Lewis MacKenzie is no pro-Serb Canadian, he's only a professional soldier speaking about the campaign to expel from Kosovo all those who are not Albanian so that Kosovo would link up with mother Albania and fulfil the objective of a Greater Albania, MacKenzie says: "The campaign began with an attack on Serb security forces in the early 1990s. Milosevic's strong response to these attacks were managed to be used by Albanians to get sympathies from the world for their objectives. Quite contrary to Western claims, the genocide did not happen. Out of an alleged 100.000 buried in mass graves, about 2.000 were found, and these were members of all ethnic groups, including those who were obviously killed in war, while taking part in combat." [.....] MacKenzie goes on: "The Albanians from Kosovo played with us just like a maestro plays with a violin. We helped and indirectly supported their forceful campaign for an ethnically cleansed and independent Kosovo. We never blamed them for the violence from the 1990s. We still present them as victims although facts speak to the contrary. Think what kind of a message of encouragement this would be to other terrorist movements in the world who are seeking independence. If the Albanians achieve the independence of Kosovo with the assistance of our taxpayer dollars as well as those coming from bin Laden's al Qaeda." He does not mention many other dollars received by them but we will have the opportunity to discuss those as well. He goes on: "Following the NATO intervention in 1999, Kosovo became the biggest centre for crime in Europe, a white slave trade and also a smuggling route on its way to Europe and North America. There is proof that the largest quantities are coming from -- through Kosovo from another country liberated by the West, Afghanistan. Members of the KLA are personally implicated in these in this organised crime." Admiral Gregory Johnson, the commander of the NATO forces in Kosovo, or the commander of the NATO Southern Force, stated on the occasion of the crimes in March 2004 that the conflicts which followed constituted an action organised in advance, an action of ethnic cleansing organised in advance by Albanians. Damjan Krnjevic, he's an editor of the US magazine National Interest and an associate of the Centre for South-Eastern Studies, in an article published in the Wall Street Journal, under the title 'Kristallnacht in Kosovo', underlines that Serbs for years warned about the true nature of the Siptar movement and that the West claimed that they were making this up and exaggerating. Krnjevic characterises this anti-Serb activity and the position of the Serb people in Kosmet in the following way: "Murder followed by murder, kidnapping followed by kidnapping, and arson followed by arson, and finally the pogrom, which confirmed the fears of the Serbs that they had been left to the mercy of barbarians," and this under the auspices of the United Nations. This is something that I added that is not his quotation. His quote ends at "barbarians." In this article 'Kristallnacht in Kosovo', he presents the fact that from June 1999, 3.000 were kidnapped or killed. This is what I already told you, and that "the mission of the United Nations in Kosovo constantly deceived the entire world during the past five years with their alleged successes while they were actually concealing the militarisation taking place there." Just like General MacKenzie, he quotes Derek Chapel, the spokesman of the NATO police, who stated, "Everything is planned in advance." And then he concludes based on that: "The only thing that is lacking or that was lacking was the trigger. Now it is clear that certain Kosovo politicians believe that by expelling Serbs, which they have already achieved from 1999 with two-thirds of the Serbs, they can present the international community with a fait accompli, and they can then take this cleansing to be a sort of foundation for a sort of independence." [.....]
CHEMICAL WARFARE It has already been documented here, already I have shown a large number of photographs about the bombing, but this is also in the voluminous documentation which I will tender as an exhibit along with my opening statement. Apparently it was not enough that so many Serbian facilities were destroyed and so many citizens of Yugoslavia were killed and wounded. That was not enough. So they even fired at the Chinese Embassy and killed some Chinese and destroyed their embassy. Along with using ammunitions with depleted uranium, this has polluted the ground, and this will go on for many thousands of years. It can be said with certainty that the pollution of the environment is not something that occurred not only on the territory of Yugoslavia, but this pollution has occurred on a broader area in Eastern Europe. Depleted uranium ammunition was mostly -- mostly used in Kosovo. That is where there are many sources of rivers which flow throughout Europe, so it was obvious that this was the intent, to poison the rivers which flow into Serbia. Velika Morava, Sava, and the Danube. So this led to an ecological catastrophe by polluting major rivers as well as many spas in an area which is one of the richest of medicinal waters. In the production of food, first of all, which is something that is very expensive in Western Europe and the United States, we're talking about organically grown food, and it's something that Yugoslavia thought it had a future in. So this was jeopardised. There was also a long-term strategic plan for agriculture which was made by Yugoslavia until the year 2020 and where biologically or organically grown food had a specific special place, health food. And with bombing, many impermissible chemicals were introduced, thus jeopardising the long-term production of this health food. According to the findings of experts of the District Court in Belgrade in the indictment against NATO leaders, the cluster bombs which were dropped by NATO dissipated over a large area, and that is why it is not possible to direct their activity only at military targets even though even their use against military targets was a crime but they dispersed to a much greater territory [.....] During the NATO aggression, poisons were not used directly, but consequences similar to those of a chemical war were caused all the same in other ways. For example, by bombing plants and warehouses containing chemicals, oil refineries, chemical factories in Pancevo, Novi Sad, Lucani, Baric. So that a chemical war was also waged against Serbia. The powers that be do not like the sovereignty of Serbia and Kosovo, although it is guaranteed by the conditions of the cease-fire and contained in Resolution 1244, which is not being respected at all. Their interest is to use the territory of Kosovo and Metohija for their geostrategic and political goals; to use the mineral wealth, water resources and other resources of Kosovo. We bear in mind that Kosovo contains the biggest lignite mines in Europe. Close to 14 billion tonnes. And there are also mines at Sink [phoen] and lead mines of enormous value there. On Kosovo and Metohija there are also reserves of cobalt, nickel, which are also very valuable. And the electricity plants in Kosovo are very significant for the energy balance of Serbia. [.....]
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