“NATO action would be in the form of air strikes. It would therefore target the military capability of the Serb dictatorship.” - Tony Blair, statement to Parliament, 23 March 1999.

This was a very influential and, indeed, a key statement. If he had said, “We will target the bridges, factories, oil refineries, power stations, water supplies, TV and radio stations - the whole civilian infrastructure - churches, hospitals, schools homes and market places may be hit . . . even targets over 150 miles from Kosovo,” he would have had little support. Bombing any of these targets cannot realistically be described as “targeting the military capability” of Yugoslavia.

To stop supplies getting into Kosovo NATO had to blow up only six main roads and six minor roads. These were the only access routes from Serbia into Kosovo. Apart from the communications control centres and airfields in Serbia the rest of the bombing of Serbia was superfluous to achieving the stated aim of targeting the military.

It is most doubtful that targeting the military alone had ever been the real intention of NATO. James Rubin had declared their targets for bombing had already been picked by August 1998. The difficulty of finding mobile military forces on the ground would have been recognised. (17)

When General Mike Short, the commander of NATO airforces during the bombing of Yugoslavia accompanied Richard Holbrooke to Belgrade in October 1998 he met Mr Milosevic to explain the nature of the bombing threat. In a BBC interview he recorded what he said to Mr Milosevic, “If you cause me to start a bombing campaign, your country will never be the way you see it today again. In fact, we ought to stop the negotiations now, and you ought to go out and ride around Belgrade, because the way it is today it will never be that way again.”

The American military have developed a number of war fighting theories. One theory is that to win a war one should, if possible, avoid engagement with the enemy’s army, and instead strike at the civilian infrastructure with the purpose of making the leadership of the country feel unable to sustain the conflict. This was the strategy employed against Yugoslavia.

“If Kosovo was left to the mercy of Serbian repression, there is not merely a risk, but the probability of re-igniting unrest in Albania, of a destabilised Macedonia, of almost certain knock-on effects in Bosnia, and of further tension between Greece and Turkey.” Tony Blair, statement to Parliament, 23 March 1999.

The real destabilisation was coming from the British, American and German support for the terrorist Albanian KLA which was threatening the large Serb community in Kosovo and Kosovo’s legitimate Yugoslav Government. Supporting the KLA was supporting the KLA aim of a Greater Albania. It was supporting destabilisation. In the future the KLA, given encouragement by NATO, might be expected take their attacks to Macedonia and Montenegro.

“Let me give the house an indication of the scale of what is happening. A quarter of a million Kosovars - more than ten per cent of the population - are now homeless as a result of repression by Serb forces; 65,000 people have been forced from their homes in the past month, and no fewer than 25,000 in four days since the peace talks broke down; and only yesterday 5,000 people in the Srbica area were forcibly evicted from their villages.” - Tony Blair’s statement to Parliament.

There had been only sporadic skirmishes in Kosovo in 1999 up to 20 March. The Yugoslav offensive was under preparation, but not happening on 17 March according to Pentagon information and information from the Kosovo Verification Mission (OSCE). The last two figures mentioned by Tony Blair tie in well with the reports in the Guardian 20 March and the Sunday Times on 21 March when they both reported UNHCR figures of 20,000 displaced persons.

However, there is a very serious error in Mr Blair’s figure for the total number of people displaced within Kosovo on 23 March. The true figure would appear to be only about one fifth of the figure he quoted.

His statement that a quarter of a million were homeless in Kosovo, seems to be an unfortunate misunderstanding of UN statistics - the right figures, but the wrong year. The UNHCR reported that the total number of displaced people from both sides within Kosovo in the civil war which took place in the previous year,1998, was 260,000. (29) All but a handful of these people had returned home by the winter of 1998. (30) Mr Blair’s figures do not match the other UNHCR statistics of the slow initial build up of refugees quoted elsewhere in this report.

“Last October Milosevic gave an undertaking to the US envoy, Mr Holbrooke, that he would withdraw Serb forces so that their numbers returned to the level before February 1998. Milosevic never fulfilled that commitment.”

This statement by Mr Blair conflicts with other reports. Klaus Nauman, Chairman of the North Atlantic Council said, “He really did what we had asked him to do. Within 48 hours some 6,000 police officers and the military went back into barracks. This was also confirmed by the OSCE Verification Mission.”

Of course, it was true that some troops had returned later in response to repeated attacks on Serbs, but it would be dishonest to mention the return these troops without mentioning the provocation that prompted their return, or the restraint commented on by the OSCE mission, mentioned earlier.

“We believe that there are now some 16,000 internal security and 20,000 Yugoslav Army troops in Kosovo, with a further 8,000 army reinforcements poised just over the border.”

No such buildup was evident on 1 January 1999 because there was no perceived need for these troops at that time. As we have indicated above, the explanation for the buildup of troops was that it was in response to NATO preparations to bombYugoslavia in support of the KLA in their attacks on Serbs. To present a fair picture of the situation Mr Blair should have described how NATO, too, was building up its forces - to attack Serbs. What would really have been shocking would have been the complete absence of preparations by Mr Milosevic for the promised NATO attacks.

Tony Blair continued, “In January, NATO warned Milosevic that it would respond if he failed to come into compliance with the agreements he had entered into in October, if the repression continued, and if he frustrated the peace process. Milosevic has failed to meet any of those requirements.” We have just mentioned the compliance with the October demand. The repression presumably relates to responses to violent provocation. And Mr Milosevic’s “frustration of the peace process,” was his failure to sign up to the trick Rambouillet agreement discussed earlier in this pamphlet.

“The Serbs have reneged on the commitments they made on the political texts of the talks at Rambouillet and they refused to allow a peace keeping force in Kosovo under NATO command to underpin the implementation of the agreement.” There is no agreement until an agreement is signed, so it is unfair to speak of reneging on an agreement. It is true that when the Serbs met the negotiators in Paris they wanted to make changes to a substantial part of the text discussed at Rambouillet. They did not seek to make fundamental changes to the political agreement for autonomy for Kosovo. Why was bombing Yugoslavia more urgent than discussing the concerns that theYugoslavs had raised? As we know, the demand was actually for NATO troops to occupy the whole of Yugoslavia not just Kosovo, but in any case, why should NATO assume a right to occupy the province of another country? If Kosovo, why not Northern Ireland? As it turned out the so-called peace keeping force disastrously failed to keep the peace. Mr Blair should have made it clear that the demand was for a NATO army of occupation throughout Yugoslavia. Every MP would have understood why the talks had “failed” and would have sympathised with the response of the Serbs.

Tony Blair again, “It takes two sides to make peace. So far, only one side has shown itself willing to make that commitment. It was Milosevic who stripped Kosovo of its autonomy in 1989.” An interesting comparison as far as autonomy is concerned is again the case of Northern Ireland.

Was the KLA action ever a commitment to peace? When the Yugoslav troops returned to barracks in October 1998 did the KLA say, “Good, now we can live in peace”?

Not at all. What their military commander, Agim Ceku actually said was, “The ceasefire was very useful for us. It enabled us to consolidate, to grow. We aimed to spread our units over as much territory as possible.” (31) According to Tim Judah, the KLA told anyone who cared to listen that the Serb withdrawal gave them time to prepare for their spring offensive. (32) Arms flowed over the Albanian border to the KLA and the KLA moved forwards and carried on killing.

Parliament placed its confidence in Tony Blair to tell the straight truth about events which he was claiming justified a momentous response. Tony Blair betrayed that trust by seriously misrepresenting the facts and with a few close colleagues committed British forces to an unjustifiable war of aggression. If he had told the truth there would have been uproar in parliament. The bombing would not have happened.