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From: "David Roberts" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Letters
Editor, Guardian" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject:
KOSOVO BOMBING NOT A SUCCESS - Response to Eric Lee letter
Date:
Tue, Nov 13, 2001, 3:41 pm
13 November 2001
Dear
Letter Editor
It seems as if only one side of the story of the bombing
of Yugoslavia is ever presented in the British press. I hope that in the
interest of balance and fairness you will print the following letter.
If you would like evidence in support of my claims I will happily
provide it.
KOSOVO BOMBING NOT A SUCCESS
Eric
Lee (Letters, November 13) is yet another person who is crowing about the
"success" of the bombing of Yugoslavia. It’s a popular view but it does not
take account of important facts.
The goal of the bombing of Yugoslavia
was to force Mr Milosevic to sign "a peace agreement" which would allow NATO
troops to occupy the whole of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. Mr Milosevic
was required to cave in to this ultimatum or face the wrath of NATO. (The
contents of the notorious Appendix B of the Rambouillet "Accord" were, of
course, not known to the British public at the start of the war or even to
Members of Parliament.) UNHCR reports show clearly that only after the
start of the bombing did Kosovo Albanians flee from Kosovo. As the exodus
began a new aim of returning refugees to the province was announced. Not
starting the bombing would therefore have answered the "new" aim with
immeasurably less destruction and human misery. Returning the refugees was
never a topic of the talks at Rambouillet.
The departure of the
Serbian Army from Kosovo under pressure from the NATO onslaught was a disaster
for ethnic minorities in Kosovo including the Serbs. The Serb army had every
right to remain to defend minorities in Kosovo, a province which its mediaeval
churches show Serbs had occupied for 600 years.
When the Serb army
departed the KLA completed the ethnic cleansing of Serbs, Jews, Roma, and
Christian Albanians from Kosovo with the murder of 1200 men women and children
and the expulsion of 200,000 people into the only remaining multi-ethnic
region of the former Yugoslavia - Serbia outside Kosovo. Part of the failure
of the NATO war against Serbia was the astonishing shameful refusal of the UN
"peace keepers" to keep the peace and protect ethnic minorities when they took
over from the Serb Army in June 1999.
The Kosovo Liberation Army was
not representative of the Albanian population of Kosovo. The true
representative of Kosovo Albanians was the LDK (the Democratic League of
Kosovo) whose pacifist leader, Ibrahim Rugova, enjoyed overwhelming support.
In fact, the KLA was a terrorist organisation funded by Osama bin Laden, the
Albanian diaspora, and the massive drug and prostitution trades that were, and
still are, channelled through Kosovo.
Other measures of the failure of
the war include the direct and indirect loss of lives, the devastation of
Yugoslav industry and infrastructure, the pollution caused by the bombing of
pharmaceutical and fertiliser factories, an oil refinery and oil storage
facilities, and the use of depleted uranium and cluster bombs, the
terrorisation of an innocent civilian population with 78 days of bombing by
hundreds of bombers operating day and night, and the destruction of only
thirteen Serbian tanks when the war was said to be against "the Serbian
military machine."
The supply of food aid to Afghanistan, one of the
poorest, most war-torn and malnourished in the world would be a way of helping
this country rather than carrying out terrorism through bombing in the style
of the bombing of Yugoslavia.
David Roberts
Chairman, Justice
Yugoslavia
43 Gardner Street
Brighton
BN1 1UN
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
01444 232 356
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