The United
States secretly supported the ethnic Albanian
extremists now behind insurgencies in Macedonia and
southern
Serbia.
The CIA
encouraged former Kosovo Liberation Army
fighters
to launch a rebellion in southern Serbia in an
effort to
undermine the then Yugoslav President
Slobodan
Milosevic, according to senior European
officers
who served with the international peace-keeping
force in
Kosovo (K-For), as well as leading Macedonian
and US
sources.
They
accuse American forces with K-For of deliberately
ignoring
the massive smuggling of men and arms across
Kosovo's
borders.
The
accusations were made in a series of interviews by
The
Observer . They emerge as America has been forced
into a
rapid U-turn over its support for Albanian
extremists in Kosovo seeking a 'Greater Kosovo' that
would
include Albanian communities in Serbia and
Macedonia.
In the
past week ethnic Albanian guerrillas have
intensified their campaign of attacks in the two areas,
threatening a new war in the region which last week put
US troops
in the firing line in the Balkans for the first
time.
The
accusations have led to tension in K-For between the
European
and US military missions. European officers
are
furious that the Ameri cans have allowed guerrilla
armies in
its sector to train, smuggle arms and launch
attacks
across two international borders.
One
European K-For battalion commander told The
Observer
yesterday: 'The CIA has been allowed to run
riot in
Kosovo with a private army designed to overthrow
Slobodan
Milosevic. Now he's gone the US State
Department seems incapable of reining in its bastard
army.'
He added:
'Most of last year, there was a growing
frustration with US support for the radical Albanians. US
policy
was and still is out of step with the other Nato
allies.'
The claim
was backed by senior Macedonian officials in
the
capital, Skopje. 'What has been happening with the
National
Liberation Army [which has been responsible
for a
series of attacks on Macedonia's borders in recent
weeks]
and the UCPMB [its sister organisation in
southern
Serbia] is very similar to what happened when
the KLA
was launched in 1995-96,' said one.
'I will
say only this: the US intelligence agencies have not
been
honest here.'
The
claims were given extra credence from an
unexpected source - Arben Xhafari, leader of
Macedonia's main Albanian party who tried to prevent
the
crisis on the border igniting an ethnic civil war inside
Macedonia
itself.
A US
State Department official blamed the last
administration. There had now been 'a shift of
emphasis'
