TARGET YUGOSLAVIA: NATO's WAR OF AGGRESSION / Tuesday, 11 May 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 Tuesday, 11 May 1999 Radio Havana Cuba presents its coverage of the ongoing U.S.- led NATO aggression against Yugoslavia. -------------------------------------------------- MONEY IS RUNNING OUT FOR KOSOVO REFUGEES The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has warned that this agency is running out of money and that the Balkans are facing a European tragedy. High Commissioner Sadaco Ogata blasted the lack of financing for his agency in its effort to provide assistance to 750,000 refugees from Kosovo in Albania, Macedonia, Montenegro and Bosnia-Herzegovina. The humanitarian agency had requested 143 million dollars to finance its aid program until the Summer, but has only received 77 million. Of that amount, 23 million were donated by Japan, 8.5 million by the United States and only 800,000 each from France and Great Britain. Several other members of the European Union have together donated nearly 8 million dollars. One UN official said it's been necessary to deploy more aid in a shorter period of time than during the conflicts in Bosnia or the Great Lakes region of Africa. --------------------------------------------------------- RADIO HAVANA CUBA'S KOSOVO UPDATE / Tuesday, 11 May 1999 Radio Havana Cuba thought it might be useful to revisit some of the reasons given by NATO and the US for the attack on the Yugoslav Federation, with the aim of maintaining a perspective on just what is happening and how public opinion is continually manipulated. First, let's explore the issue of Serbian ethnic cleansing against the separatist Kosovars and US and European concerns about the so-called "genocide," which was being likened to the Nazi Holocaust by mainstream media. The Yugoslav Federation is made up of Albanians, Hungarians, Montenegrins, Serbs, Romanis and other ethnic groups that make up the largest multi-ethnic state in the Balkans. The Serb offensive against Kosovo, while perhaps extreme, was not the genocide reported by Western governments and their media. Giving ludicrous figures like half a million Kosovar men unaccounted for and using a satellite photo to prove that such genocide is taking place, NATO and US veracity is questioned by people such as political science professor Barry Posen of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who is quoted by The Boston Globe as pointing out that the photo in question shows long, neat rows of 150 individual graves pointing toward Mecca. As the professor says: "These are not mass graves. It's weird to think they would have mass murder, recruit grave diggers and properly orient the graves toward Mecca so as to give them some semblance of a proper Muslim burial." If such mass executions are taking place as NATO would have us believe, the technology is there for very detailed photos of actual events as was the case in Bosnia where detailed pictures of massacres taking place were released. It appears, therefore, that the US and NATO are holding back on photos they surely possess because these do not show anything close to genocide on the scale they would have the world believe. Better to just call in the obedient press which, with remarkably little scrutiny, reports that genocide is taking place. Everyone believes it and the bombing can go on with little resistance from the public. A letter to the German Green Party, signed by a number of prominent US Jewish leaders, calls for a rejection of the analogy of Hitler and the Holocaust that is being drawn by Washington. The German Green Party -- perhaps the most progressive political party in Europe -- has, to its eternal shame, supported the bombing campaign, allowing itself to also be duped by US and NATO propaganda. And, for the record, the biggest single act of ethnic cleansing was the driving out of Croatia of 600,000 Serbs in 1995. Some 50,000 resettled in Kosovo and are now made refugees again by the bombing. According to Michael Chossudovsky from the Department of Economics at the University of Ottawa, the Yugoslav Federation has to date taken in 223,000 refugees from Bosnia, 300,000 from Croatia and 86,000 from Kosovo. Interestingly enough, there are 100,000 ethnic Albanians living quite peacefully in Belgrade and many of their relatives in Kosovo chose to travel to the capital to join them rather than cross the border into Albania and Macedonia. US money and arms have supported regimes responsible for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, East Timorese and Guatemalan indigenous people, not to mention the current crimes against the Kurds in Turkey. NATO and the US told the world that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosovic refused to negotiate on Kosovo during the Rambouillet peace talks in France. In fact, US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented an ultimatum to the Yugoslav government that demanded Kosovo autonomy, the stationing of NATO forces in Kosovo and a referendum on ultimate independence. There were no peace talks. Although he accepted Kosovo autonomy which he had previously taken away from the Kosovars when the separatist movement began to cause trouble for his government, the US and NATO knew that Milosovic would never accept the other demands which violated the sovereignty of the Federation. Thus, they set Milosovic up for a conflict they sought and for which they began to demonize him as a second Saddam Hussein and Hitler. Saddam Hussein and Hitler attacked other countries. The conflict in Kosovo is an internal one. Yet Yugoslavia is being attacked by 19 countries with the most advanced weapons technology on the planet. The US goal is clearly the continued break-up of the Balkans in a strategically-vital area of Europe, where control of smaller nations such as Croatia and Bosnia-Herzogovina has already been accomplished. The greatest crime of Milosovic in Washington's eyes has nothing to do with their favorite catch-phrase of ethnic cleansing, and everything to do with his intransigence in the face of US bullying. Not to mention the little side-advantage of war being good business for the enormous US military-industrial complex. We should all remember that the majority of the information that reaches the media comes from military sources. We should also remember that there is always propaganda on both sides in time of war and that the experts frequently quoted should be frequently questioned. -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. For the complete RADIO HAVANA CUBA NEWSCAST and other features, please write for our daily broadcast schedule. We welcome your comments and suggestions. For further information, contact us at: Postal Address: Radio Havana Cuba P.O.Box 6240 Havana, Cuba Telephone: (53) (7) 791053 Fax: (53) (7) 795007 E-mail: rhc@radiohc.org WWW: http://www.radiohc.org rhc-eng-24 1999-May-11 20:16:09