[ALBSA-Info] Article by Takis Michas

[Agron Alibali]

From:  "Institute for War & Peace Reporting" <office at g...> (by way of Greek Helsinki Monitor <office at g...>) 
Date:  Sat Aug 10, 2002  9:39 am
Subject:  Greek Complicity in Serb Wars (Takis Michas)



Balkan Investigative Reports 

http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl?archive/bcr2/bcr2_20020729_2_ir_eng.txt

Greek Complicity in Serb Wars 

There's growing evidence that Greece helped to lubricate Milosevic's war
machine

By Takis Michas in Athens

As Greece prepares to take on the mantle of the European Union presidency
in January 2003, the time has come for Athens to examine the role it played
in aiding the regimes of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and
his Bosnian Serb associates Radovan Karadic and Ratko Mladic.

Besides a general failure to confront the scale of war crimes perpetrated
by Bosnian Serb and Serbian forces during the Nineties, there's mounting
evidence of Greek complicity in Yugoslav sanction-busting during the
conflicts. 

A recent report published by the International Criminal Tribunal for the
Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, covering the period 1994-2000, presents damning
evidence of Greek and Cypriot involvement in the Balkan wars.

According to the report, both provided the pillars on which the Belgrade
regime constructed an international financial structure to sidestep UN
sanctions in operation between 1991 and 2000. The Hague investigation has
revealed that transactions in excess of 1.5 billion German marks passed
through this network. 

Greek banking and government officials frustrated ICTY efforts to
investigate the matter throughout the Nineties. For example, although the
authorities originally agreed to Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte's probe,
they excluded the central bank from follow-up enquiries in autumn 2001. The
report also claimed that its investigators did not receive all the
information they had asked of Athens. 

In a well-publicised incident, a Greek court of appeals prosecutor refused
to cooperate with the ICTY, saying he had "no intention of becoming a
detective for The Hague".

The tribunal investigation concluded that eight Yugoslav "front" companies
had been operating through the Popular Bank of Cyprus, the Hellenic Bank,
the European Popular Bank of Cyprus and a Greek subsidiary of the Popular
Bank. Some money passing through these accounts, it said, was spent on arms
deals with suppliers from the United States, Russia and Israel.

When asked why money had been taken to Cyprus, former Milosevic customs
chief Mikhail Kertes said, "Probably because there was a way out to the
world from there."

The funds passing through the accounts are said to have come from the
Yugoslav Federal Customs Administration, FCAY. They were found to have
transferred large sums to a branch of Beogradska Bank in Cyprus and other
Greek and Cypriot banks. The report revealed that representatives from the
Beogradska Bank managed the accounts of the front companies and arranged
for the transfer of funds to third parties, including arms dealers. In
several cases the persons named as directors of the trading companies are
said to have had no knowledge of these transactions.

"A financial structure was designed, implemented and maintained to provide
funding, equipment and supplies for the army of the former Yugoslavia and
the special forces of the interior ministry," the ICTY report said. 

Evidence of more direct involvement in the Bosnian conflict is also
mounting. Arms shipments to Bosnian Serb forces, the leaking of NATO
military intelligence to General Ratko Mladic's Bosnian Serb forces and the
presence of Greek paramilitaries among the latter during the Srebrenica
campaign are all issues of concern.

The 7,000-page report by the Dutch authorities into the 1995 Srebrenica
massacres - publication of which led to the resignation of the government -
revealed that large shipments of weapons were transferred from Greece to
Mladic's army in 1994 and 1995. Alleged arms consignments in the years
immediately before and after could not be verified. Professor Cees Wiebes
of Amsterdam University compiled the section of the report dealing with the
involvement of foreign secret agencies and governments in the Bosnian
conflict. It took five years to write, during which time the professor
enjoyed unrestricted access to the Dutch intelligence community and various
foreign and UN archives, interviewing more than 90 intelligence officials.

"Lots of weapons were transferred from Greece to the Montenegrin port of
Bar, from where they would find their way to the Bosnian Serb army," Wiebes
said. The weapons consisted mostly of light arms and ammunition. 

At the same time, there are strong indications that Greece was leaking NATO
intelligence to Mladic, especially during the period of alliance air
strikes on Bosnian Serb forces in August-September 1995. "NATO officials
became very reluctant to share intelligence with the Greeks due to fears
over leaks to the Bosnian Serbs, and at some point they simply stopped
doing so," Wiebes wrote. 

In early 1994, Greece incurred the wrath of its European allies by voting
against air strikes on Bosnian Serb positions. The country refused to allow
NATO to use its air bases in Preveza on the Ionian Sea and declined to
provide troops for the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia.

Meanwhile, a contingent of Greek paramilitaries was formed in March 1995 at
Mladic's request. The Greek Volunteer Guard, GVG, as it was known, rapidly
became a regular fighting unit with its own insignia - a white
double-headed eagle on a black background. In September 1995, four of its
members received the White Eagle medal of honour from Bosnian Serb leader
Radovan Karadzic. 

The GVG had around 100 soldiers and was based in Vlasenica near Tuzla.
Guard spokesman George Mouratidis said the unit was fully integrated into
the army of Republika Srpska and was led by Serb officers.

>From talking to veterans of the unit, it appears these soldiers were not
simply mercenaries. Most cited religion as their main reason for enlisting.

"I am Orthodox and must help my Serb brethren against the Muslims," said
Vagelis Koutakos in an interview at the time. His colleague Spiro
Tzanopoulos claimed, "The Vatican, the Zionists, the Germans and the
Americans conspire against the Orthodox nations. Their next target after
Serbia will be Greece." 

The GVG's part in the assault on Srebrenica was reported in the media at
home and abroad, and the Dutch government's report describes how the unit
hoisted the Greek flag in the town after the takeover. It also cited video
footage of the event and excerpts taken from intercepted Bosnian Serb army
telephone conversations provided by Bosnian intelligence services.

"One of the intercepted messages was from General Mladic, who asked for the
Greek flag to be hoisted in the city," said Wiebes. 

The presence of the Greek paramilitaries in Srebrenica appeared to be
welcomed by many back home, where their antics were widely reported. The
public seemed mesmerised by tales of hardship and danger, their young men
fighting the "insidious" Muslims and the bravery of their Serb "brethren".
When the Ethnos newspaper ran a two-page spread in August 1995 on the
"heroic" exploits of the GVG in Srebrenica, the response was overwhelming.
The paper's phone lines were jammed by youths desperate for information on
the force. 

Despite the widespread media reports, the authorities consistently ignored
the open and public recruitment of paramilitaries in Greece and denied that
Greek nationals were fighting in Bosnia.

The efforts to lend economic and military aid stemmed from Athens' official
policy. Identification of Greece with Milosevic's policies in Belgrade and
those of Karadzic in Pale was total and unconditional.

Before, during and after its 1994 presidency of the EU, Greece was the only
country to support claims that Serb forces had entered Bosnian territory in
response to provocation. In December 1994, after talks with Milosevic in
Athens, Papandreou reiterated there was little difference between the
Serbian and Greek positions on the Bosnian situation. Athens' criticism of
the violence unfolding in Bosnia was almost exclusively directed against
NATO air strikes. Even as late as April 1994, when human rights violations
by Bosnian Serb forces had been established beyond any reasonable doubt,
the then Greek premier Andreas Papandreou blamed only NATO.

"Greece showed indifference to Serb crimes and failed to condemn the
merciless bombing of civilian populations [in Vukovar and Sarajevo] or the
practice of ethnic cleansing, simply because those acts happened to be
committed by Bosnian Serbs," said Alexis Heraclides, now a senior lecturer
at Panteion University in Athens, but at the time an official in the Greek
foreign ministry.

That indifference also resonated through the Greek media. The assault on
Srebrenica was reported by some in Greece as an example of the "heroic
advance of Serb forces". The involvement of Bosnian Serb forces in the
massacres that followed the seizure of the town was underplayed. To this
day, not one of Greece's ten or more television stations has broadcast a
documentary on these events.

A few days after the ICTY announced its indictments against Mladic and
Karadzic, the Greek-Serb Friendship Society claimed to have collected over
two million signatures on a petition calling on the tribunal to drop the
charges.

"We collected signatures everywhere," said society treasurer Lykourgos
Chazakos. "In factories, offices and on the streets, the reaction was
overwhelming. We met representatives from all political parties, who showed
tremendous understanding. The people at the ministry of foreign affairs
were especially encouraging."

The Greek Orthodox Church was one of the staunchest supporters of
Milosevic's policy. It invited Karadzic to a rally in his honour at Piraeus
in 1993, which was attended by leading politicians from all political
parties and prominent trade unions.

In a 1994 comment, Papandreou said the Balkan wars had "brought to the
surface the resonance of Orthodox ties" between Athens, Sofia and Belgrade. 

Renowned literary critic Zoran Mutic, famed for his translatio ns of
Ancient Greek classics into Serbo-Croat, is bewildered by the extent of
support for the Bosnian Serbs.

"When I hear so many journalists, academics, intellectuals and politicians
expressing admiration for Karadzic, what can I say? How can they consider
him a hero when he bombed hospitals and sent snipers to kill children on
the streets?" he asked.

Another effect of this backing for the Bosnian Serb cause was the failure
to acknowledge - let alone lend support to - the hard-pressed Serbian
opposition parties and non-government media.

Sasa Mircovic of B-92 said the Greek government refused to recognise the
role of independent media in Serbia. "They did not know and they did not
want to know what was happening in our country," he told IWPR.

Efforts were even made to undermine the Serbian opposition. In the early
Nineties, a Greek weekly, closely linked to the foreign ministry, published
EC documents listing Serbian opposition organisations in receipt of funds
from Brussels. 

"This act constituted one of the most serious and dangerous attempts at
undermining the efforts of the Serb opposition by presenting its members as
being in the payroll of foreign powers," said Mircovic.

A few years before the death in 1997 of prominent left-wing thinker
Corenliums Castoriadis, he told how Serb war crimes were being "covered up"
in Greece through a campaign of misinformation and lies.

"In my eyes," he said, "Greek politicians, journalists, people who work in
the media and the others responsible for this campaign of disinformation
are moral accomplices in the cover-up of Serb crimes in Croatia and Bosnia."

Greek foreign office officials have repeatedly denounced the ICTY as
partial and anti-Serb. In 1996, then foreign minister Theodor Pangalos
asked the tribunal to "stop demonising the Serbs". Again in 1998, during a
visit by then Bosnian Serb prime minister, Milorad Dodik, to Athens,
Pangalos said the tribunal had "fallen under political influence".

The country's judicial system has been equally unwilling to investigate
allegations of serious breaches of international law by Greek nationals and
government officials. "In any European country with respect for the rule of
law such serious allegations would immediately cause the intervention of
the public prosecutor's office," said former trade and industry minister
Andreas Andrianopoulos.

Greek premier Costas Simitis and his government have so far failed to
condemn the policies of previous administrations. Nor have the authorities
shown the slightest willingness to set up a parliamentary investigation
into the allegations of complicity in war crimes in Bosnia. Instead, they
persist with staunch denials of any wrongdoing.

Last summer, Greek EU commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou told an Athens
conference a bright future awaited Greece in Europe. When asked if this
future would include those politicians and institutions implicated in the
Bosnian, Croatian and Kosovar atrocities, Diamantopoulou said only,
"History has proven that Greek policies were correct". 

Takis Michas writes for the Greek daily Eleftherotypia. His book "Unholy
Alliance: Greece and Milosevic's Serbia" was published in May by Texas A&M
University Press.



---------------------------------
Do You Yahoo!?
HotJobs, a Yahoo! service - Search Thousands of New Jobs
-------------- next part --------------
HTML attachment scrubbed and removed