The URL for this article is http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/szamuely/free.htm www.tenc.net [Emperor's Clothes] FREE MILOSEVIC, JAIL EAGLEBURGER, ZIMMERMANN (ETC.)... by George Szamuely [posted 11 April 2001] Quiz time. Who said the following? "Serbia has never had only Serbs living in it. Today, more than in the past, members of other peoples and nationalities also live in it. This is not a disadvantage for Serbia. I am truly convinced that it is its advantage. National composition of almost all countries in the world today…has also been changing in this direction. Citizens of different nationalities, religions, and races have been living together more and more frequently and more and more successfully." Elie Wiesel? Madeleine Albright? George Soros? Vojislav Kostnica, Zoran Djindjic or one of the other creatures the U.S. installed in power in Belgrade? No, it was Slobodan Milosevic. He spoke these words in Kosovo on June 28, 1989, the very occasion on which he allegedly whipped the Serbs into a bloodthirsty nationalist frenzy. (1) The real Milosevic has never had the remotest connection with the idiotic cartoonish figure depicted by the U.S. government, the "two op-ed-page articles a year" denizens of the defense-industry-funded think tanks and the ignorant reporters passing for "Balkans experts" on NewsHour with Jim Lehrer. Milosevic was neither a "nationalist," nor a "Communist," nor a "dictator" nor a "demagogue." To be sure, he was never one of those East European Communists-turned-Thatcherite-overnight so beloved by U.S. elites. Nor did it help that he won elections handily, or that in the late 1980s he was leading massive demonstrations against the IMF bromides that were destroying Yugoslavia’s industry. The U.S. actually did Yugoslavia a favor by imposing sanctions in 1992. It freed the country–all too briefly, as the Serbs are about to find out–from the dreadful ministrations of the IMF. (2) Milosevic did not instigate the wars in the Balkans. On the contrary, his record throughout the decade was that of a man eager for peace. Who was really responsible for the wars? Those who insisted on secession without waiting to settle outstanding issues like final borders, the status of minorities or the disposal of state property and debt? Or those who, in accordance with international law, insisted that secession could only be "legal" if it was accepted by the seceding state and the seceded-from state? (3) There is no question that the US Government will put enormous pressure on the Belgrade authorities to transfer Milosevic to the Hague, where he would receive a ridiculously unfair trial in a "court" which has already pre-judged him guilty of "war crimes," "genocide" and "crimes against humanity". This is the purpose of the the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia: to absolve the real instigators of the wars in the Balkans of any responsibility for their actions. The Balkans today are littered with tiny, weak NATO protectorates whose domestic and foreign policies are shaped down to the last detail by the U.S. and its junior EU partners. This was an entirely foreseen consequence of U.S. policy in Eastern Europe since the end of the Cold War. There is no truth whatsoever to the legend that the United States wanted to keep Yugoslavia together but was thwarted in this noble endeavor by the machinations of the Germans. In February 1990, nearly two years before the villainous German Chancellor Helmut Kohl supposedly muscled in on the Balkans by recognizing Croatia and Slovenia, Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger was already telling the Slovenians that Washington would accept Slovenia’s secession provided it was done "peacefully and democratically." The Slovenians did not need another signal. Even so, in October 1990–eight months before Slovenia declared independence, one year before war broke out in Croatia–Congress passed an amendment to the Foreign Operations Appropriation law barring any U.S. loans or credits for Yugoslavia unless the assistance was directed to a republic "which has held free and fair elections and which is not engaged in systematic abuse of human rights". This was an extraordinary piece of legislation. According to Washington then, Yugoslavia had ceased to exist. The U.S. government was henceforth to deal with the "republics," entities with no international legal standing whatsoever. In the days leading up to the secession of Croatia and Slovenia, U.S. officials would make pro forma declarations opposing unilateral declarations of independence. Then they would warn the Yugoslav army not to use force to stop the republics breaking away. It was a policy of accepting de facto independence. Moreover, it was revealed in the London Observer last year that, contrary to the publicly proclaimed Western policy of neutrality, the British were in fact secretly selling arms to Slovenia days before its declaration of independence. Since Britain is merely America’s errand boy on such matters, one can be fairly certain that this was a Washington-initiated policy. The carnage that was to come in Bosnia was entirely the consequence of a ruthless and cynical U.S. policy. In March 1992, after seeing the bitter fighting that followed the secession of Croatia, the leaders of Bosnia’s Serbs, Croats and Muslims sat down in Lisbon and hammered out a partition plan of Bosnia. According to a 1993 New York Times story, European Community "mediators who brokered the agreement argued that partition was the only way to contain the ethnic rivalries. But the Bush Administration was pushing the Europeans to recognize Bosnia as an independent country, with a Muslim-led Government in Sarajevo." When the Bosnian Muslim or--more accurately--Islamist leader, Alija Izetbegovic returned to Sarajevo, U.S. Ambassador Warren Zimmermann called on him. "‘He said he didn’t like it,’ Mr. Zimmermann recalled. ‘I told him, if he didn’t like it, why sign it?’ But after talking to the Ambassador, Mr. Izetbegovic publicly renounced the Lisbon agreement." By April the United States had managed to bully the Europeans into recognizing the state of Bosnia, thereby setting in train the carnage to come. The U.S. subsequently sabotaged the Vance-Owen partition plan as well as the Stoltenberg partition plan. The fighting finally came to an end with a U.S.-sponsored partition plan at Dayton. We got what we were after all along. Bosnia was turned into a colony. (4) *** Further Reading: 1) To read 'What Milosevic Really Said at Kosovo Field in 1989' go to http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/jared/milosaid.html 2) The IMF was directly involved in the Yugoslav coup of Oct. 5th. While promising to aid, the IMF in fact presides over the destruction of economies. See 'The International Monetary Fund And The Yugoslav Elections at http://emperors-clothes.com/analysis/1.htm 3) Analyst T.W. Carr has written a most useful account of the Western assault on Yugoslavia. See 'Germany and the US in the Balkans- a Careful Coincidence of National Policies?' at http://www.emperors-clothes.com/articles/carr/carr.html 4) See Prof. Michel Chossudovsky's "Dismantling Yugoslavia, Colonizing Bosnia" at http://emperors-clothes.com/articles/chuss/dismantl.htm Send this article to a friend! {Does not work with all email programs...} *** We may be free but we do need money... Emperor's Clothes does not charge a subscription fee. But of course nothing is free. We rely mainly on volunteer labor. Nevertheless there are plenty of bills. For example, the cost of Lexis, our search engine, has doubled. Lexis is the best method of rapidly locating news stories from several thousand sources over the past twenty years. It is probably the best political research tool ever available. But now it costs twice as much. We rely on our readers for contributions. If you like what we're trying to do, please help. Please mail a check to Emperor's Clothes, P.O. Box 610-321, Newton, MA 02461-0321. (USA) Or if you have access to a computer, please go to our secure server at http://emperors-clothes.com/howyour.html#donate Or you can call us at l 617 916-1705 between 9:30 AM and 5:30 PM, Eastern Time (USA) and Bob will take your credit card information over the phone. Thanks for reading Emperor's Clothes. If you're reading this on a Website other than Emperor's Clothes and would like to check out our home page, please click here www.tenc.net [Emperor's Clothes] _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
