Milosevic: U.S. Was Ally of Al Qaeda in Kosovo Fri Feb 15, 1:08 PM ET
By Andrew Roche
THE HAGUE (Reuters) - Slobodan Milosevic (news - web sites) told his war
crimes trial on Friday "genocidal" U.S. forces had been the unwitting ally
of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites) in Kosovo, and demanded Bill Clinton
and other Western leaders come to testify.
Bin Laden's al Qaeda was "one of the fundamentalist groups which sent a unit
to fight in Kosovo" alongside Muslim Kosovo Albanians aided by the United
States against Serb forces in 1998-9, the fallen Yugoslav leader told The
Hague (news - web sites) tribunal.
"The attacks on New York and Washington show what the terrorism you
sponsored looks like when it turns against you," he said in a speech that
ranged across centuries of history and much of the globe, and exhausted
court interpreters.
Milosevic, 60, was extradited from Belgrade seven months ago to a jail cell
in The Hague. On Tuesday his trial began for crimes against humanity in
Kosovo in 1999 and in Croatia in 1991-2, and for genocide in the 1992-5
Bosnian war.
Prosecutors have this week portrayed him as prime mover in a decade of
massacres, torture, mass rape and expulsions by Serbs.
In a second day of reply to prosecutors' opening addresses, he blamed the
carnage entirely on his Balkan enemies and NATO (news - web sites). Echoing
the language of his indictment, he said the West itself had committed
"genocide and crimes against humanity."
"I'm asking what kind of tribunal this is, if you refuse to try people for
these crimes by the leaders and armies of NATO countries," a coolly
pugnacious Milosevic told judges.
On the fourth day of what is forecast to be a marathon case, he insisted the
hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo in 1999 during the
NATO air war against Yugoslavia had been driven out not by Serbs but by
their fellow Albanians.
The guerrilla Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) "referred to all Albanians who
did not flee Kosovo as traitors," he said, creating an "illusion of exodus."
"There were hundreds of cameras waiting at the borders to show alleged Serb
misdeeds."
The motive was to justify NATO's attack, said Milosevic, showing the court
pictures of carbonized bodies of civilians killed by NATO bombs in Kosovo
and the rest of Serbia in 1999.
CHINESE EMBASSY BOMBING
NATO missiles destroyed the Chinese embassy in Belgrade, in what Washington
insisted was a mistake by Central Intelligence Agency (news - web sites)
target planners using an outdated map.
"It is quite clear that (former U.S. president) Clinton wanted to go down in
history as the first man to bomb Chinese territory by bombing the Chinese
embassy," Milosevic said. "This was no accident."
Milosevic accused Germany of setting out to destroy old communist Yugoslavia
by its support for Slovenian and Croatian independence, and by secret
backing of Albanian "terrorists."
"The German intelligence service rallied up criminals from all over Europe.
They were pushed to Kosovo," he said.
Bin Laden, meanwhile, used anarchic Albania as a launchpad for violence in
the Balkans and elsewhere in Europe, he said.
Some Muslim "terrorists" in Kosovo, had they not been jailed by Serbia,
would now be "going in chains to Guantanamo Bay" from Afghanistan (news -
web sites) instead, the white-haired Milosevic insisted.
"While Americans transport al Qaeda terrorists to Guantanamo...at the same
time they demand all Albanian terrorists be freed from prisons in
Yugoslavia," he added.
The involvement in the Balkans of Mujahideen guerrillas from Arab states and
Afghanistan is well-documented, and U.S. agents followed the trail of bin
Laden and his followers in Albania and Kosovo itself, before the September
11 attacks.
Accusing NATO of the use of especially lethal cluster bombs, he showed the
court a photograph of a Serb woman killed while plowing her field and
corpses of children in pajamas.
"This is an example of bestiality, targeting people in this way," he said,
adding NATO bombed at night to maximize deaths among sleeping civilians. He
showed pictures of shattered hospitals, an old people's home, buses, houses
and workplaces, some strewn with charred and bloodied bodies.
After NATO occupied Kosovo in June 1999, they allowed Serbs to be killed or
forced out by Albanian "terrorists" and "savages." More than 100 Serb
Orthodox churches were razed in a campaign he likened to Taliban destruction
of Buddhist statues.
Kosovo, seen by Serbs as a historic heartland, was now run by an "Albanian
drug mafia" and the sex-slave trade, he said.
CALLS CLINTON, ALBRIGHT, BLAIR, SCHROEDER
"I am going to call witnesses here and I want it to be possible to question
Clinton and Albright and Kinkel and Schroeder and Kohl and Dini... Kofi
Annan (news - web sites)... Blair," he said, listing Western and U.N.
leaders involved in Balkan peace talks.
Milosevic wants them to testify that the West used him as a peacemaker in
the Bosnian war before turning against him.
Under the tribunal's procedures Milosevic is expected to produce a list of
witnesses he wants called. The three judges have the final say on whether
witnesses are subpoenaed.
The reformist Yugoslav government, which handed Milosevic to The Hague, on
Friday called his testimony "disgusting." But the Russian parliament branded
the tribunal a "political" court which had failed to charge NATO states for
atrocities.
During his afternoon speech, Milosevic compared Clinton's strategy in
fighting the Kosovo war to that of Adolf Hitler's: to establish a strategic
base from which to attack Russia. He described the policy the
Austro-Hungarian empire had adopted toward the territories of the crumbling
Ottoman empire in the 19th and 20th centuries, that of keeping Serbia weak
and the Balkans divided, he said. Presiding Judge Richard May urged
Milosevic to slow down so interpreters could keep up.
Dressed in a navy suit and a tie in the red, blue and white Serbian colors,
Milosevic sits flanked by seated guards in a courtroom sealed off from the
public gallery by a bullet-proof glass wall and equipped with computer
screens and cameras.
Milosevic is conducting his own defense, after refusing to appoint counsel
or enter a formal plea on the grounds the court has no right to judge him,
but is advised by Belgrade lawyers.
Judges have entered not guilty pleas on his behalf and appointed three
lawyers as "friends of the court" to ensure he gets a fair trial. The
"friends" on Friday appealed for judges to give him leeway in the length of
his address, and he was allowed to continue on Monday until 1 p.m.
Milosevic could face life in prison if convicted at the end of an epic trial
some expect to last at least two years.
*****
Milosevic Charges West With An 'Ocean Of Lies' 12-15-02
(AFP) - Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic told his war crimes
trial that NATO and the West had fabricated an "ocean of lies" to back the
1999 war on Yugoslavia.
"This is just an atom of truth in the ocean of lies and the product of
propaganda and the use of global media as a means of war against my
country," Milosevic said Thursday after presenting a nearly hour- long video
on the Kosovo war.
The video cast doubt on the January 1999 massacre of ethnic Albanian
civilians in Racak and charged that the West fabricated allegations of a
Serbian plan to ethnically cleanse the province of its Albanian population.
"This terrible fabrication," Milosevic argued, was used to whip up public
opinion in favor of a war against Yugoslavia.
Hundreds of thousands of ethnic Albanians fled Kosovo to avoid NATO air
bombs in 1999, Milosevic contended.
"Now they wish to negate that fact by saying that they in fact fled from
Serb forces," he said.
Milosevic opened his defense by showing the UN war crimes court a video
discussing the 1999 massacre of ethnic Albanians in Racak, which triggered
the NATO air war that effectively drove federal Yugoslav troops from Kosovo.
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*****
Milosevic Accuses NATO Of Kosovo Horrors 2-16-1
(AFP) - Slobodan Milosevic bombarded the international tribunal with
photographs of burnt corpses, slain children and razed homes that he said
were targeted by NATO air strikes in 1999.
On the second day of his defense against war crimes charges, the former
Yugoslav president accused NATO of targeting civilians who stayed in the
province, arguing that the West wanted to force an exodus in order to pin it
on Serbian forces.
"The movement of Albanians from Kosovo was strategically important for the
Clinton administration," Milosevic said Friday, adding that their flight
provided "confirmation and justification for what they were doing."
Dozens of horrific photographs were presented to the court, one showing a
baby lying in a field and another of a young boy with part of his abdomen
blown open, along with many smashed buildings.
A column of ethnic Albanian refugees was hit by NATO bombs in April 1999
because they sought to return to their village, Milosevic said, disrupting
NATO plans to show that Serb forces were driving out civilians.
"A more horrific message could not have been sent to Albanians that were
returning to their village," he said.
Milosevic is on trial before a UN tribunal in The Hague for war crimes and
genocide for three Balkan wars in the 1990s that left hundreds of thousands
dead and millions homeless.
For Kosovo, he is accused of being behind the deportation of 800,000 ethnic
Albanians, the murder of at least 900 civilians and other atrocities in
1999, with the aim of "ethnically cleansing" the Serbian province and
stamping out a separatist rebellion.
Speaking in a soft, somber tone, Milosevic described the destruction in
villages, named the victims shown lying in pools of blood, and carefully
outlined their ages and the circumstances of their deaths.
During the first day of his defense on Thursday, the former Yugoslav
president accused the West of spreading an "ocean of lies" and showed a
first set of grisly photographs to support his claim that the West had blood
on its hands.
On Friday Milosevic reiterated his view that NATO's air campaign between
March and June 1999 was a violation of international law because it was not
endorsed by the United Nations.
"All the laws of international law and the statutes of NATO were infringed
upon," he told the court.
NATO has acknowledged that civilians died during the air war and expressed
regret for what it terms "collateral damage," but Milosevic said targeting
civilians was central to their military strategy.
Milosevic is to wrap up his defense on Friday before the prosecution begins
calling witnesses to testify next week in the most important war crimes
trial in Europe since Nazi officials filed into the dock at Nuremberg after
World War II.
He is charged with 66 counts of murder, deportation, persecution and other
atrocities committed during the wars in Bosnia (1992-1995), Croatia
(1991-1995) and Kosovo (1998-1999).
On Bosnia, the Serb nationalist is also charged with genocide, the gravest
of war crimes and also the most difficult to prove.
If convicted, Milosevic faces a maximum sentence of life in prison.
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