[ALBSA-Info] ANALYSIS-Scant mention of NATO, KLA in Milosevic indictment

[Gazhebo at aol.com]

ANALYSIS-Scant mention of NATO, KLA in Milosevic indictment

By Douglas Hamilton

  
THE HAGUE, July 2 (Reuters) - The fact that NATO was bombing Yugoslavia while 
Slobodan Milosevic was allegedly orchestrating the mass killing and 
deportation of Kosovo Albanians is not mentioned until the last-but-one page 
of his 32-page indictment. 

It comes at the end of a section called "Additional Facts." 

The existence of a state of conflict at the time is first mentioned on page 
22 and the Kosovo Liberation Army, which was fighting the Yugoslav Army and 
police all the while, is first referred to on page 28, also as an "additional 
fact." 

Milosevic's prosecutors aim to prove he had a master plan to drive Albanians 
from Kosovo, and ruthlessly executed it. His defence may argue that NATO 
bombing triggered the mayhem. 

"There's nothing to be read into this," said Graham Blewitt, the deputy 
prosecutor at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia 
at The Hague. 

"The way these things are drafted often is just a questioon of the individual 
style of the people doing it," he told Reuters when asked about the lack of 
these elements of context in 12 pages of otherwise detailed charges in the 
indictment. 

But a Rip Van Winkle reader unaware of the two-year guerrilla war between 
Kosovo Albanian separatists and Yugoslav forces, that climaxed in the Western 
alliance's first armed "humanitarian intervention," would get an odd 
impression of events and the circumstances in which killings were committed. 

Attached to the indictment which Milosevic is due to answer on Tuesday is a 
22-page appendix with the names of some 600 murdered Kosovo Albanians, aged 
from 10 months to 90 years. 

With the sole exception of 46 victims at Racak on January 15, 1999, all were 
killed during the March 24 to June 10 period of NATO bombing. Most listed 
lost their lives in late March or early April, within days of the first 
allied air raids. 

Until the bombing started, KLA guerrillas claimed to control up to 40 percent 
of Kosovo. 

LINKING ORDERS TO TRIGGERS 

Milosevic, and four others accused, allegedly "planned, instigated, ordered, 
committed or otherwise aided and abetted in a campaign of terror and 
violence" against Kosovo Albanians. 

"By using the word 'committed' in this indictment, the Prosecutor does not 
intend to suggest that any of the accused physically perpetrated any of the 
crimes charged, personally," the tribunal's indictment states. 

The indictment, reissued after Serbia handed Milosevic over to the tribunal 
last week, asserts at several points that the killings, woundings and forced 
deportations were "systematic." 

In the section titled "General Allegations," it asserts that in addition to 
his de jure powers as president of Yugoslavia and supreme commander of the 
army, Milosevic "exercised extensive de facto control over numerous 
institutions essential to, or involved in, the conduct of the offences 
alleged." 

But in the probable absence of any convincing paper trail, the prosecution 
will be required to produce convincing witnesses to prove Milosevic ordered 
crimes against humanity in Kosovo and urged his security forces to disregard 
the rules of war. 

Milosevic says the tribunal is a tool of NATO and the West to justify the 
bombing of Yugoslavia -- a viewpoint for which Russia has also expressed some 
sympathy. 

Supporters say that whether he gets a technically fair trial at The Hague is 
not the issue; the politics of "victor's justice" lies in who indicts whom in 
the first place. 

"He said he wanted his defence to be political as he considers all the 
accusations against him to be political," one legal source privy to 
discussions told Reuters in Belgrade. 

"He said the real war criminals were the leaders of NATO and that they should 
be tried and not him," the source said. As the indictment notes, Milosevic 
was the "primary interlocutor" of the international community on the crisis 
provoked by the breakup of Yugoslavia. It even lists the big conferences. 

Chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte ruled months ago, after reviewing the facts, 
that NATO has no case to answer. But Milosevic's defence team can be expected 
to challenge that. 

"SECRET PLAN" 

"I think we cannot underestimate the case," Nancy Paterson, an American 
lawyer who has just left the tribunal's prosecutor's office, told the New 
York Times on Monday. 

"There is no classic paper trail that ideally you would like to have," said 
Paterson, who helped draw up the indictment in 1999 that made Milosevic the 
first head of state ever to be charged with war crimes while in office. 

"There are pieces missing...You need to establish what the real chain of 
command was." 

Whatever it was, the results are not in any doubt. 

Thousands of Kosovo Albanians were killed by Serbian troops, police and 
paramilitary gangs, then burned or buried in mass graves or, as recently 
disclosed, trucked north to faraway sites for concealment. 

Three quarters of a million were driven out of Yugoslavia and hundreds of 
villages and farms put to the torch. 

As the indictment states, those who were spared death had their identity 
documents systematically removed as they were pushed out, so they could never 
reclaim their homeland. 

Was this the orchestrated execution of a long-standing, drastic plan to 
"save" Kosovo for Serbia by reversing the 9-to-1 ethnic population balance? 
Or was it a storm of revenge by Serb forces against Albanians who knowingly 
brought NATO bombs down on Yugoslavia? 

Proof that it was the former may exist in a secret Serbian plan, called 
"Operation Horseshoe," said to have been uncovered by German military 
intelligence. Its three-pronged intent was to rid Kosovo of Albanians, leave 
the KLA no place to hide, and cause a refugee crisis in the Balkans. 

But details of the alleged plot appeared at a convenient time for NATO -- in 
early April as it became apparent that more than a few days of bombing was 
going to be needed to make Milosevic give in -- and its existence is 
questioned by some. It is not mentioned in the Tribunal's indictment. 

Two international studies, by the UN refugee agency and the OSCE 
(Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe), concluded that the air 
strikes did trigger greater violence on a grander scale, as Kosovo Albanians 
will readily testify. It was open season. 

Whether the crimes alleged in the Milosevic indictment were planned before or 
after the start of NATO military action may have no bearing on his ultimate 
guilt, or innocence, for them. 

But a finding that the start of war with NATO triggered the pogrom could 
stoke debate over the timing and wisdom of Western "humanitarian 
intervention," and its cost in lives.