TARGET YUGOSLAVIA: NATO's WAR OF AGGRESSION, Wednesday, 14 April 1999 Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit CUBANEWS FROM RADIO HAVANA CUBA E-mail: rhc@radiohc.org http://www.radiohc.org TARGET YUGOSLAVIA: NATO's WAR OF AGGRESSION Wednesday, 14 April 1999 Radio Havana Cuba presents its coverage of the ongoing U.S.- led NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. SMART BOMBS ARE ACTUALLY QUITE STUPID The so-called "intelligent" NATO bombs raining down on Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, have proven to be stupid and do not distinguish among their victims, according to Wednesday's edition of the U.S. daily The Los Angeles Times. The newspaper published photographs of a small apartment destroyed by a "smart bomb" in Pristina, quoting its owner and the mother of three children: "Is this part of the humanitarian struggle to save lives?" According to the news daily, civilian victims of NATO's aggression against Yugoslavia include Serbs, members of the Albanian ethnic group, Turks and gypsies. The Los Angeles Times also reported the destruction of a major bus station in the Kosovian capital, as well as a cemetery. The director of the bus station -- once considered among the most modern in Yugoslavia -- told reporters that a military installation was located 700 meters away. The newspaper also pointed out that the cemetery had already been hit by missiles last week, sparking protests from the local Serb-Orthodox Church. The bodies of the deceased were reportedly scattered among the craters and unrecognizable by their family members. The reports come amid other denunciations today of non- military objectives hit by NATO. The Vatican has protested the bombardment of a monastery in Belgrade that provided shelter for refugees from Bosnia. Serb authorities charged today that NATO bombs hit a column of vehicles transporting Albanian refugees in Kosovo and may have claimed as many as 75 lives, with 25 others wounded. And according to Serb authorities, the death toll following Monday's bombardment of a civilian train in Yugoslavia now stands at ten, with 16 people wounded and another 17 missing. MILITARY ANALYSTS ASK IF IT'S WORTH IT As the U.S.-led NATO bombardment of Yugoslavia approaches its fourth week, diverse analysts continue to question the effectiveness of the attacks. In London, a correspondent for the Reuters News Agency, Paul Taylor, quoted several experts, including William Hopkinson, defense analyst with Britain's Royal Institute of International Affairs. According to Hopkinson, NATO is not winning and the military alliance is not achieving its strategic objectives. In a telephone interview, veteran Israeli analyst Zeev Cliff told Reuters that at this moment, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic still maintains a strategic advantage. Dana Allin, an expert on the Balkans with London's International Institute for Strategic Studies, stated that thus far the war has been "a disaster" -- that while NATO has inflicted real damage, nothing has really changed. On Tuesday, Italian Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini told reporters in Paris, following a NATO gathering, that the alliance had no signs that Milosevic was weakening. His statements contrasted with those of NATO Secretary General Javier Solana, who said that the Yugoslav president is losing "and he knows it." The French Defense Ministry had admitted that Serb forces in Kosovo include 20,000 soldiers and 15,000 paramilitaries supported by between 300 and 400 armored vehicles. ----------------------------------------- RADIO HAVANA CUBA'S VIEWPOINT / 30 March 1999 Reports are now confirmed of massive destruction of villages within Kosovo as Serbian soldiers react to the air attacks against the Yugoslav Federation by the United States and NATO. The expected response to the attacks has not disappointed the spin doctors in Washington as they now prepare news conferences to detail this new example of Serbian barbarity and ethnic cleansing. In comments on the subject by Noam Chomsky, he cites a study recently completed by Sean Murphy who reviews history's so- called humanitarian interventions. He recalls the humanitarian excuses given for Japan's attack on Manchuria - defending the population from Chinese bandits -Mussolini's invasion of Ethiopia - the liberation of slaves - and Hitler's occupation of Czechoslovakia - the ending of ethnic tensions and violence. The United States was adamant in not seeking UN Security Council authorization to go ahead and bomb Belgrade even though it controls the Council via its veto and its enormous political and economic power. The rationale was that this was a NATO, not a UN, operation. The real reason, of course, is that the UN is on a need-to-know basis, as are the World Court and the World Trade Organization and any other international body that seeks to limit the powers of what has become, as Chomsky says, a rogue superpower. Every bomb that falls on Serbia, comments the Financial Times of England, and every ethnic killing in Kosovo suggests that it will scarcely be possible for Serbs and Albanians to live together in peace again. As Chomsky says, if you cannot think of any way to adhere to the simple principal of do no harm then do nothing. The argument of "we had to stop the atrocities" makes no sense when you are furthering them by your actions. There is always room for more negotiation, more diplomacy. Escalating a war is perverse. The arguments for such incursions are also perverse as they lead to so much more war and suffering. In its mission to subject the planet to its economic and political will, the United States has become the very demon it seeks to convince us it is fighting. It has become the worst menace to true world order and consequently one of the planet's worst violators of human rights. ----------------------------------------- KOSOVO HISTORY / 9 April 1999 A number of our listeners have requested more information on Kosovo's history to enable them to more easily analyze the situation against the barrage of misinformation - deliberate or otherwise - of the western mass media. Some of the following details were taken from an article on the subject in the current issue of the Economist magazine, which has as its front cover a picture of a displaced Kosovar Albanian under the title: Victim of Serbia - or NATO? Although 10 percent of the population of Kosovo is Serb, the province has especial importance to the Serbian people as it was the cradle of their civilization. During the Middle Ages the region's population was primarily Serb and enjoyed relative prosperity until 1389 when the Ottoman Empire conquered the territory and placed it under Turkish rule for 500 years. Kosovo still has many thousands of Serbian churches and monasteries that dot its landscape that originated prior to the arrival of the Ottoman hordes. With the new Muslim rulers came new Muslim immigrants and the first wave of Albanian immigrants began to arrive. Slowly the Serb population dwindled and the Albanian population expanded forcing the original Serbs into a minority status. The Serbs took back Kosovo from the Turks in 1912 and in 1918 it became part of the new Slav state, Yugoslavia. Many of the Albanian population felt that the Serbian reconquering of Kosovo cheated them out of joining the emerging Albanian state and there were frequent uprisings in the years leading up to the Second World War which the Serbs put down by force. During the years of the Second World War, in which the Serbs became well-known fighters against the Nazis, Kosovo became part of an Italian controlled Greater Albania but reverted back to Yugoslavia in 1944 with the creation of the Socialist Republic of Yugoslavia. In the 1974, recognizing that the majority of the population was not Slav but Albanian, Marshal Tito granted Kosovo autonomy. However, upon his death in 1980 the Albanian population began to agitate for complete independence from Yugoslavia and many Serbs began to flee the province afraid of the growing hatred toward them. In the late 1980s, with the help in large part of the Kosovo Serbian population, Slobodan Milosovic came to power and was elected president of Yugoslavia. He dealt with the continuing unrest in Kosovo by fully reintegrating the province into Yugoslavia thereby eradicating the autonomy it had previously retained. With the subsequent break up of the Slav republic in 1991 the de facto leader of the Kosovo Albanians, Ibrahim Rugova, declared an independent Kosovo state and created a parallel economy to the Serbian one. Two years later in 1993 the Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA was formed. The Dayton Peace Conference in 1995 unfortunately did not properly address the Kosovo issue and the European Union subsequently recognized the province as part of Serbia in the new Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. The KLA regularly attacked and killed Serbian police in small skirmishes that exploded into a major conflict in early 1998 when the Serbs sent in the army which has led to the current crisis with NATO and the US demanding that Milosovic withdraw his forces or face its missiles. Whatever one may think of the Serbian leader and his tactics, the fact remains that Kosovo is an integral part of the Yugoslav Republic twice recognized by the very countries that are now doing the bombing. The sovereignty of Yugoslavia is at stake and the hasty and brutal actions of NATO and Washington in their interference in the internal affairs of the Federation have already been the cause of a population exodus and promise ethnic tensions for many decades to come. Although most nations do not seem to learn from previous mistakes, their history's are, nevertheless, important if one is to understand the sometimes overwhelmingly emotional feelings and commitments of their diverse ethnic populations. RHC put the preceding history of the province of Kosovo together in the interests of clarity and balance. ----------------------------------------- YUGOSLAVIA UPDATE / 13 April 1999 With the continued bombing of the Yugoslav Federation come continued photographs and film footage of the exodus of the Albanian population of Kosovo shown by Western mass media to prove to the world what beasts these Serbs are and how they deserve the terrible treatment they are receiving. So lets balance things out with some sobering facts and highlight some inaccuracies: The lessons learned from the similar bombing of Iraq are horrendous. From a relatively affluent country before the Gulf War to its massive poverty today. The United Nations reports that Iraq has one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world. Over 6,000 people die every month as a direct result of the continuing blockade against the country. Only 41% of the population has access to clean water. Hospitals, factories, schools, clinics, water treatment plants and communications centers were destroyed in the 1991 war, and the infrastructure of the country is still in ruins. Former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter says that the US manipulated UNSCOM to further its strategy against Iraq and provoked the Middle Eastern nation into actions that would seemingly justify its bombing attacks that continue through to the present. Item. The cost of a US Stealth bomber is over $2 billion - which represents the entire gross domestic product of Albania. With the 21 bombers in its possession, Washington could provide for two years the basic health and nutritional requirements of those that are starving across the globe, saving the lives of 30,000 children under 5 who die every day from treatable diseases resulting from malnutrition. Item. Every cruise missile cost $1 million. NATO dropped 120 missiles on Yugoslavia in the first week of the conflict, with each missile representing enough money to buy tools and seed for 50,000 Third World farmers to grow enough food to feed them for a year. Item. The English daily The Guardian reported Tuesday that low-grade uranium used to make anti-tank projectiles that are being used by NATO in its offensive against Yugoslavia, could have serious and dangerous effects on public health. Radio active material remains in the atmosphere for some months after the shells explode and this has been blamed for the Gulf War Syndrome that harmed the health of so many veterans of the Gulf War against Iraq. The supposedly enormous amounts of aid being promised by the US and NATO countries for refugee relief is minuscule compared to the amounts they are spending on arms that are dropped on Yugoslavia leading to the very refugee situation they are financing with such great humanitarian fanfare. The US then turns around and says they'll airlift some 20,000 refugees out to their base on the island of Cuba which Washington regularly accuses of human rights violations. The situation is positively kafkaesque. The so-called Kosovo Liberation Army or KLA is reported by Italian media and Kosovar refugees to be threatening young men with death if they don't immediately join their ranks. It has also put out a shoot-on-sight order against Kosovo Albanian leader Ibrahim Rugova for opposing the bombing of his own country. And all those men between 16 and 60 that NATO spokespeople were saying were missing in the border crossings of refugees clearly showed up doing just that on our own screens here at RHC courtesy of the international war network, CNN. The KLA should be asked about why they are in fact streaming across the border in the first place and questioned about any that are missing before one points the finger at Serbian troops. Rugova, by the way, was reported killed by NBC after the television network was told this by US authorities. Yet he appeared on Yugoslav television meeting with Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosovic. Other Kosovo Albanian leaders that were also reported assassinated turned up in Europe alive - among them, Fehmi Ahani, Rugova's advisor. No retractions were made by NBC or other mainstream bellicose press. And finally, how many of you have heard a report in the mainstream press about Slobodan Molosovic's request that Nelson Mandela be given the role of mediator in negotiations to end the war? A request Washington has chosen to ignore. -30-  [c] 1999, Radio Habana Cuba All rights reserved Articles cannot be reproduced, reprinted or published in any system without the consent of RHC. This prohibition includes the distribution of this material via Usenet News, "bulletin board" services, e-mail lists, print media, radio and television. 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