------- Forwarded Message Follows ------- Date sent: Fri, 21 May 1999 11:46:54 -0700 To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] From: Sid Shniad <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Canadian MP's travels through Kosovo The National Post Friday, May 21, 1999 LONE WALK OUT OF KOSOVO ENDS ROBINSON'S ODYSSEY MP says he was first Western politician inside since air strikes By Patrick Graham Blace, Macedonia - Svend Robinson arrived in Macedonia yesterday having travelled through the Balkans the hard way. After driving for two days through a devastated Kosovo accompanied by Serb government officials, the NDP's foreign affairs critic walked alone across the border. During what he claimed was the first visit to Kosovo by a Western politician, Mr. Robinson toured NATO bombing sites and Albanian villages emptied of their inhabitants. Sporting a tie and rumpled jacket and carrying a flight bag over his shoulder, he said: "I was shocked by what I saw. It was a humbling but overpowering experience.'' Less than an hour after crossing the border, Mr. Robinson was jumping aboard buses full of refugees waiting to be taken from Brazde refugee camp to Canada and welcoming them to the ''cold country with a warm heart.'' It is unusual, to say the least, for a citizen of a NATO country to drive from Belgrade to Pristina, the capital of Kosovo, and virtually unheard for someone to make the final leg through southern Kosovo to Macedonia. Mr. Robinson, a pugnacious parliamentarian at the best of times, clearly has grit. Leaving early on Wednesday morning in a convoy of two cars, Mr. Robinson drove on and off the main southern highway out of Belgrade to avoid bomb damage. He passed a UN convoy on his way to Pristina, where he spent the night. On the road to Macedonia yesterday, Mr. Robinson said he did not see a single person in the burned villages along the road. ''From Pristina to the border was devastating. Towns and villages were completely empty, houses burnt and destroyed,'' he said. Despite warnings from the Canadian government, Mr. Robinson made the journey in order to see for himself what was happening in Kosovo. His arrival surprised even Canadian diplomats who had been skeptical that Mr. Robinson would succeed both in gaining permission and navigating the dangerous routes where Yugoslav forces and NATO warplanes have systematically levelled the province. In his bag, Mr. Robinson carried a fragment of a NATO cluster bomb he found in a Kosovo village and that now serves, he says, as a symbol of the political message he intends to convey back home. Once a proponent of NATO air strikes on humanitarian grounds, Mr. Robinson now believes they are a failed tactic and ''profoundly inhuman,'' he said. ''My view is that the NATO bombing strategy has been a profound disaster, a human disaster, an environmental disaster, and a political disaster,'' said Mr. Robinson. ''It has succeeded in crushing and silencing a very fragile and emerging democratic movement.'' Mr. Robinson indicated a negotiated settlement will be possible without providing Slobodan Milosevic, the president, with immunity from a war crimes trial. Like many of the Western journalists who have been bused into Kosovo from Belgrade, Mr. Robinson was given a grisly tour of sites where NATO bombs killed civilians. This is the view of the war that the Yugoslav government wants to show the world even if it requires taking outspoken human rights activists like Mr. Robinson on a tour of areas clearly scarred by ethnic cleansing. Supervised by foreign ministry officials, Mr. Robinson had little unfettered contact with ethnic Albanians while in Kosovo. When Mr. Robinson stopped in the town of Podujevo, he was told ethnic Albanians had fled from NATO air strikes and the fear of ''terrorist'' attacks by the Kosovo Liberation Army. At a hospital in Pristina, Mr. Robinson angered his escort when he refused to see victims of NATO bombings unless he was also shown patients wounded by Yugoslav police and paramilitaries. A doctor told Mr. Robinson that there were no such victims there. In a chilling encounter at the Grand Hotel in Pristina, Mr. Robinson reported talking to six mercenaries working with the Yugoslav forces. The four Russians, one Israeli, and one Ukrainian were some of the hundreds of soldiers, many of them volunteers, who have arrived in Kosovo since the conflict began. ''One of the Russians said to me 'I'm here to kill Muslims,' '' said Mr. Robinson. ''I asked whether they had killed a lot Muslims and they said 'Yes we have killed a lot Muslims -- but only the men, we don't kill the women and children. All Muslim men are terrorists.' '' After crossing into Macedonia yesterday, Mr. Robinson was driven to Brazde camp by members of the Canadian embassy staff in Macedonia. He was taken on a tour similar to the ones given to over a dozen celebrity visitors in the last month, including Richard Gere. On Monday, more Canadian parliamentarians will arrive for what aid workers and journalists call the packaged misery tour. While five buses full of refugees waited to be transported to the airport for a flight to Canada, Mr. Robinson entered each one carrying a bag of Canadian flag pins and welcomed them: ''My government is doing everything we can so that every refugee who wants to return to Kosovo can with security.'' Mr. Robinson also assured them that those responsible for their plight would be brought to justice. And then he broke their hearts. Dozens of people on the buses broke into tears as Mr. Robinson described his drive through Kosovo. After asking repeatedly whether anybody was from Podujevo, Mr. Robinson graphically described the empty streets and charred remains of the houses. Nazifi Hetem, a 48-year-old father of three who had escaped Podujevo, sobbed quietly as Mr. Robinson, hand on Mr. Hetem's shoulder, told him what had happened to his home town of 13,000 people. However, Mr. Robinson did not mention either his views on the use of ground troops or his views on negotiating an end to the bombing. In the refugee camps of Macedonia, where Tony Blair received a hero's welcome for his aggressive views on the use of ground forces, criticisms of NATO are not well received. Mr. Robinson was content to leave the buses following light applause from future Canadians and, possibly, future constituents.
[PEN-L:7128] (Fwd) Canadian MP's travels through Kosovo
ts99u-1.cc.umanitoba.ca [130.179.154.224] Fri, 21 May 1999 15:35:12 -0500