[PEN-L:7128] (Fwd) Canadian MP's travels through Kosovo

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Date sent:              Fri, 21 May 1999 11:46:54 -0700
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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.