By: Mary Mostert, Analyst, Banner of Liberty (www.bannerofliberty.com)
March 19, 2001
The Munich daily Suddeutsche Zeitung observed a couple of weeks ago "NATO has changed side regarding the issue of Kosovo, and is now paving the way for establishing peace together with its new partner Serbia." If that sounds off-the-wall, consider what the Belgrade papers reported over the week-end:
"Belgrade, March 16 (Tanjug) - In the presence of the Yugoslav Foreign Minister Goran Svilanovic, the OSCE Chairman-in-Office Mircea Dan Geoana and the Council of Europe Secretary-General Walter Schwimmer, Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and the Council of Europe opened their Belgrade offices Friday."
Last Thursday, in Strasbourg, the European Parliament adopted a resolution calling on "KFOR to prevent the intrusion of ethnic Albanian extremists into Macedonia, if necessary by military means."
That was only one day after the Yugoslav army, headed by Generals Nebojsa Pavkovic, and Vladimir Lazarevic who were in command of Serb forces in Kosovo when NATO began bombing Yugoslavia in 1999, led their troops into the Ground Safety Zone (GSZ) bordering Macedonia. (http://www.serbia-info.com/news/2001-03/14/22777.html).
On Friday one of the Yugoslav Lt. Generals, Ninoslav Krstic, said in a two sentence report that there are "5-6,000 terrorists in the Ground Safety Zone. We are sweeping that area intensively."
Meanwhile, back in Belgrade, while Europe's leaders were cozying up to their new ally, Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica, he was announcing "Remembrance Day - in memory of all the victims of the 1999 NATO aggression on Yugoslavia" to observe the Serb day of infamy on March 24, 1999 when Bill Clinton, the president of the nation they once most admired, the United States of America, started bombing Belgrade.
The Government statement on the new national holiday said:
"As a country and a people, we are obliged to remember the evil that had been inflicted upon us - as well as the evil that we inflicted upon others. That way we can avoid repetition of that evil.''
Kostunica said in the letter to the government requesting the establishment of a Remembrance Day of the bombing that it was necessary from a "humane and political point of view. Our cooperation with NATO would be based on flimsy foundations if we try to act as if nothing ever happened in the spring of 1999.''
What is happening in Macedonia is exactly what w as happening in Kosovo in 1998. The KLA, which was a U.S. State Department designated terrorist organization until Clinton decided to use the U.S. Air Force to provide them with air support, of course has never really been disarmed. It has driven most of the non-Albanian population out of the province and what is left is a haven for world class criminals.
Even the generally anti-Serb International Herald Tribune reported recently:
"Three years ago, for the action-minded in Washington, backing the Kosovo Liberation Army seemed a good idea. The NATO allies were not so sure. After NATO's occupation of Kosovo, the United States encouraged KLA militants to set up in the so-called buffer zone in southern Serbia, largely Albanian-populated, where Serbian army forces were prohibited. The guerrillas attacked Serbian police and demanded the region's reunification with Kosovo, from which it was separated only in the 1950s. It was easy for them to move clandestinely from there into the adjoining Albanian-populated part of Macedonia, whose territorial integrity the United States has formally guaranteed.No one blocked them. There was a sharp dispute between Washington and London over Britain's call for aggressive NATO patrols inside the buffer zone to check the guerrillas. The Pentagon has formally limited the U.S. Army's role to peacekeeping inside Kosovo. The United States even vetoed NATO protection for 30 European Union monitors, meant to observe a limited Serbian army movement back into the buffer zone. "There is no guarantee the Serbs are going to behave," an American official explained, as if assurance of good behavior were not the point of such an exercise. Washington says it wishes to preserve its "credibility" with the Albanians. In fact it is appeasing Albanian extremists. .
A factor in the situation is that the guerrillas are blackmailing Washington. They, or extremists among them, know that if the United States turns against them, they can provoke a major crisis between Americans and NATO allies, and profit from what follows. .
The scenario would involve killing enough U.S. soldiers to provoke the Bush government and Congress into pulling American troops out of the Balkans. It is a reckless scenario, dangerous for all concerned, and possibly fatal to NATO, but it is plausible."
The London Guardian over the week-end announced: that the US project of the Trans-Balkan pipeline running from the Caspian Sea to the Albanian port of Vlore is the "main cause of the tragic crisis in the former Yugoslavia and the US intervention in Kosovo and Metohija.".
In what appears to be a universal European journalistic effort to evade ANY responsibility for its part in the dismantling and eventual bombing of Yugoslavia, the Guardian wrote:
"In 1998, Bill Richardson, then US energy secretary, said that the pipeline would make all countries from the Caspian to the Balkans politically and economically reliant on the West, which is also a strategic goal."It is obvious, The Guardian writes, that the former Yugoslavia, especially Serbia, was a serious problem for the realization of the plan. The intervention in Kosovo and Metohija was carried out in order to please Albania, whose port of Vlore is the ultimate destination of the pipeline.
"The project of the Trans-Balkan pipeline was made in early 90-s, and it is due for approval next month, the paper writes,"
My analysis of all this is simply: War is about to break out in the Balkans. Only, this time our ally will be Yugoslavia, in the hopes its tough little army will keep us from having American soldiers coming home in body bags. This time it won't just be Serb policemen and Macedonian policemen who are the targets of Albanian terrorists. It will be American peace-keepers.
To comment: mmostert@bannerofliberty.com
To Subscribe to the Reagan Monitor, the newsletter that gives you news FACTS you can USE to make your life, and the world, better go to:
Start Your Subscription
