Remarkably, in the same speech that Robin Cook admitted the KLA were the instigators of most of the violence he replayed the theme “We once again face a humanitarian crisis as a result of the Serb repression in Kosovo.”

We have now seen how NATO has set up a military dictatorship in Kosovo with disastrous consequences - a huge crime problem, a thousand murders in the first six months - almost entirely Serb and other minority victims - and the ethnic cleansing of 220,000 Serbs and other minority ethnic groups. There is sham democracy in the form of elections to consultative councils whilst all decision making is done from above by NATO appointees.

We know that NATO troops were ordered not to intervene to prevent the looting of Serbian Orthodox Churches. “The orders are to let them pillage.” Preface to Kosovo, War and Revenge, Tim Judah, Yale, 2000. NATO’s total failure to prevent the Serb exodus would also appear to be deliberate - a continued support for the KLA ethnic cleansers. At best, it represents an appalling failure of their peacekeeping role.

a. Dr Henry Kissinger (former US Secretary of State and a Nobel Peace Prize Winner) said, "The Rambouillet text, which called on Serbia to admit NATO troops throughout Yugoslavia was a provocation, an excuse to start bombing."

b. “The military annexe of the Rambouillet proposals . . . would never have been acceptable to the Yugoslav side, since it was a significant infringement of its sovereignty.” - UK, Cross-party committee of MPs’ report, 24 October 2000, Lessons from Kosovo.

c. “I think certain people in NATO were spoiling for a fight at that time. I think the terms put to Milosevic at Rambouillet were absolutely intolerable: how could he possibly accept them? It was quite deliberate.” - Lord Gilbert, Defence Minister of State, responsible for intelligence, 1999. Reported in The Guardian, 21 July 2000.

d. “If the Serbs would not agree and the Albanians would agree then there was a very clear cause for using force.” - Madeleine Albright in an interview with Alan Little in BBC’s documentary, Moral Combat - NATO at War, March 2000.

Details of the Rambouillet text did not appear in Britain till weeks after the bombing had started.

The first reference to the demand for NATO to occupy the whole of Yugoslavia, Appendix B, appeared in the German newspaper, tageszeitung, on 6 April, 1999.

The text of the Rambouillet Accord was not placed in the House of Commons library until after 1 April 1999, long after the decision to bomb Yugoslavia had been taken.

A similar situation occurred with other NATO governments. Journalist, Stefan Reinecke commented in tageszeitung, 13 April, “This appendix is a scandal. If the Federal Government was not informed about this passage, there is no hope. What is one to think about a government that has not read the failed treaty - and so does not know the details of why it is entering into a war. If the Federal Government in fact was informed about this appendix, and accepted its terms, it was a hair-raising political mistake.” - p 160, Degraded Capability - The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward S Herman, Pluto Press, 2000.

5 Serbs were not intransigent. Serbs agreed basic principles and wished to continue the talks

A letter on or about 22 February 1999, sent by Ratko Markovic, the Serbian negotiator, asked for a date on which to resume talks, and stated that the Yugoslav Government had agreed to discuss "the scope and character" of an "international presence" in Kosovo to "implement the agreement to be accepted in Rambouillet". Another letter of 23 February stated that the Serbian delegation looked forward to "continue the work in line with the positive spirit of this meeting".

Quoted in Kosovo War And Revenge by Tim Judah, Yale, 2000, p 218.

The text signed by some members of Kosmet Albanians is not the Agreement of Rambouillet but the text published before all the meetings.

The delegation of the Republic of Serbia cannot be blamed for failure of the talks. By accepting the ten principles established by the Contact Group, it demonstrated its firm determination to achieve a political agreement. The Federal Government urges that the initiated talks be resumed and that all the participants in these talks apply good will to bring the text of the political agreement, in all its segments, in line with the Contact Group's ten principles. . . A political agreement whereby representatives of the political parties of Kosmet (Kosovo) Albanians will accept autonomy and express respect for the territorial integrity and unity of the Republic of Serbia will be the best proof that they have given up the project of destroying the State whose full-fledged citizens they are.” - Statement from the Federal Government of Serbia's meeting, chaired by Prime Minister, Momir Bulatovic.

On 23 March 1999 the Serbian National Assembly passed a resolution rejecting the NATO demand for military occupation and calling on the OSCE and United Nations to facilitate a peaceful diplomatic settlement. The National Assembly resolution called for negotiations leading to "the reaching of a political agreement on wide ranging autonomy for Kosovo, with the securing of a full equality of all citizens and ethnic communities and with respect for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of the republic of Serbia and the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. . . . The Serbian Parliament does not accept the presence of foreign military troops in Kosovo. The Serbian Parliament is ready to review the size and character of the international presence in Kosmet [Kosovo] for carrying out the reached accord, immediately upon signing the political accord on the self-rule agreed and accepted by the representatives of all national communities living in Kosovo." Quoted by Noam Chomsky in The New Military Humanism - Lessons from Kosovo, p 109, published by Pluto Press, 1999.

William Walker had been US ambassador to El Salvador when the US was helping to suppress leftwing rebels whilst supporting the contra guerillas against the Sandanista government in Nicaragua. Many people believe he is a member of the CIA.

The OSCE (Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) is a multinational, unarmed, peace-keeping and observation organisation. Its courageous members did much to keep the warring sides apart in the winter of 98/99and to act as intermediaries negotiating the return of kidnap victims.

The team known as KVM - the Kosovo Verification Mission - had some 800 members. Part of their duties was to monitor the Yugoslav compliance with the force reduction agreement negotiated in October 1998. This gave them effectively the role of spying on all military activity and reporting in detail military hardware and activity throughout the province.

The Sunday Times of 12 March 2000 reported that the mission which was supposed to be neutral had been infiltrated by officers of the CIA who were there to give support to the KLA. The role of the OSCE was therefore compromised and suspect. Since a dramatic media event was required to justify NATO intervention it is possible that the CIA had a hand in arranging the presentation of bodies at Racak as a massacre.

Quoted by Richard Tyler, World Socialist Web Site, 12 February, 2001. www.wsws.org

Edward S Herman and David Peterson, p118, in Degraded Capability - The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward S Herman, Pluto Press, 2000.

Tim Judah, Kosovo, War and Revenge, Yale, 2000, p 151

Tim Judah, Kosovo, War and Revenge, Yale, 2000, p155.

“Nearly 40 per cent. of the KLA's troops now come from outside Kosovo.” Mike Hancock MP (Portsmouth, South) in Parliament, 16 February 1999.

a. "Kosovan Albanian extremists . . . were trained, equipped, and armed by Washington in order to counter the viciousness of Milosevic’s men." John Simpson, Sunday Telegraph, 18 February 2001.

b. The Sunday Times on 12 March 2000 told how the CIA trained members of the KLA, and infiltrated the Kosovo Verification Mission. When the mission left Kosovo on 19 March 1999 they handed over to the KLA satellite telephones and global positioning systems enabling KLA commanders to stay in touch with General Wesley Clark, the NATO commander.

c. There are numerous other similar claims. The British SAS, according to the Daily Telegraph, 22 February 2001, and 28 March 2001, also trained the KLA. The Sunday Times, 18 March 2001, reported how KLA men were “taught by British soldiers in the secretive training camps that operated above Bajram Curri in northern Albania during 1998 and 1999.”

d. The German support for the KLA is mentioned in the film, Yugoslavia, the Avoidable War. It was also mentioned in Germany in Monitor programmes by ARD in autumn 1998.

e. The KLA possesses high tech weapons which could only be put into operation with the help of training by the supplying country or manufacturer. These include ground to air missiles and anti-tank weapons like the German Amburst and the Zola. The KLA also had “ Rocket-propelled grenades, and an American weapon which fires highly explosive nitroglycerine." - The Guardian, 30 June 1999.

f. PBS Newshour reported that U.S. Vietnam War veterans were training KLA mercenaries in Albania. - July 15, 1998.

g. "MPRI sub-contracted some of the training programme to two British private security companies, ensuring that between 1998 and June 1999 the KLA was being armed, trained and assisted in Italy, Turkey, Kosovo and Germany by the Americans, the German external intelligence service and former and serving members of Britain's 22 SAS Regiment. " - Workers World Newspaper, 29 April 1999.

h. “The April 18 London Sunday Telegraph reported that an SAS British special forces unit, is running two KLA training camps near Tirana, the Albanian capital.” - Workers World Newspaper, 29 April 1999.

1991 census (the latest available)

Alan Little, in an interview in BBC’s Moral Combat - NATO at War, asked Madeleine Albright what the punishment of the KLA would be if they failed to behave in a reasonable way. Her reply, "The punishment would be that they would lose completely the backing of the United States and the contact group."

“Both U.S. Secretary of Defense William Cohen and the top U.S. general, Henry Shelton, have said in the last week that the goal of the U.S. military operation against Yugoslavia is a victory for the KLA.” - Workers World Newspaper, 29 April 1999.

“NATO recalls that those responsible for the massacre of Racak must be brought to justice. . . NATO is ready to take whatever measures are necessary. . . to avert a humanitarian catastrophe, by compelling. . . the achievement of a political settlement. The council has therefore agreed today that the NATO Secretary General may authorise air strikes against targets on FRY [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia] territory.” - Statement by the North Atlantic Council [NATO] on Kosovo, Press Release, 30 January 1999.

a. “All of the officials who have worked on this have made very clear that in order to move towards military action, it has to be clear that the Serbs were responsible.” - James Rubin, US State Department spokesman, press briefing at Rambouillet 21 February 1999, quoted in Weller, The Crisis, page 469.

b. “I just didn’t have the nerve to tell even a few sophisticated journalists that the only failure at Rambouillet would be a rejection by the Albanians. . . We had to gather European support for a credible threat of airstrikes. For that, we needed an Albanian yes.” - James Rubin, article in the Financial Times, 7 October 2000.

a. “NATO Defence Ministers therefore decided in June 1998 to task NATO military planners to produce a range of options, both ground and air . . . and by early August the results had been reviewed by the North Atlantic Council.” “During the summer, NATO forces conducted a series of air and ground exercises to demonstrate the Alliance’s ability to project power rapidly into the region.” - Kosovo, Lessons From The Crisis P7, UK Ministry of Defence, 2000.

b. In August 1998 James Rubin, US Assistant Secretary of State, explained that a number of contingency plans were ready to be put into action in Kosovo so a political decision to intervene could be made quickly. Troop numbers needed and bombing targets throughout Serbia had already been selected. In June 1998, NATO had staged mock air strikes in neighbouring Albania and Macedonia. From August 17-22, air and ground exercises were planned to take place in Albania and during September in Macedonia. - State Department Daily Press Briefing, 3 August 1998.

The Americans planned to make the Rambouillet document unsignable by the Yugoslavs. This has been explicitly explained by James Rubin, Madeleine Albright’s right hand man and the US State Department spokesman who took part in the talks at Rambouillet. In a Financial Times article published on 7 October 2000 he said, "Albright had given the Serbs a take it or leave it proposal they could never accept." The proposal was the non-negotiable demand that NATO forces be allowed to occupy the whole of Yugoslavia without restriction or time limit. It was introduced into the document a matter of hours before the scheduled end for the talks at Rambouillet in February.

“Following the talks in Rambouillet, France (6-23 February 1999), there was a significant build up of VJ [Serb army] forces throughout Kosovo, leading to the arming of civilians and the training of reservists, the arrival of anti-aircraft weapons, the digging of tank pits and the preparation of demolition explosives along key routes in from the south and an increase in military air activity.”

“By March 1999, the Yugoslav military/security forces were coping with two tasks: defeating the UCK [KLA] and preparing for an attack by NATO. The effect was to require the border areas to be secured, as seen with the VJ building up positions south of Gnjilane/Gjilan and entering villages in what otherwise had been described as a "quiet district". However, more resources and attention went to the west of Kosovo and the border with Albania. Here existed not only a possible route for NATO to enter, but an area where the UCK was particularly active, with "safe havens" and supplies in Albania.” - OSCE Report, KOSOVO / KOSOVA As Seen, As Told.

Javier Solana noted in his letter to Kofi Annan, 23 March 1999, “On 18 March, KVM observers sight an air defence radar at Prizren airfield normally associated with surface to air missiles. This represents a violation of the air verification agreement.” How wrong of the Serbs. What could the motive possibly have been? Under the UN Charter air defence radar qualified as legitimate self-defence. NATO’s threatened bombing was illegal under the UN Charter.

The Serbs were often accused of using excessive force. The following may be a fairly typical example of an attempt to arrest KLA fighters. The OSCE report to the United Nations for the period mid January to mid February 1999 described an incident which was observed by the KVM monitors. “The police surrounded two houses and called for the occupants to surrender. The residents replied with small arms fire. Further negotiations brokered by the KVM failed when the occupants of the house opened fire with an anti-tank rocket launcher. The police responded with anti-aircraft artillery fire. The bodies of two armed KLA members were found. It was estimated that 10 other occupants had escaped.” Out of context the mention of the use of anti-aircraft artillery fire to effect an arrest sounds appalling, but what is the correct level of force the use against an anti-tank rocket launcher?

The Times, 20 February 1999.

The Guardian, 18 March 1999

“We got out in record time. Milosevic and his troops were anxious for us to leave so that they could start. The campaign kicked off immediately.” William Walker, interview with Alan Little, BBC film, Moral Combat, NATO at War, March 2000.

Reported by Veton Surroi, Kosovo Albanian negotiator. Alan Little interview, BBC film, Moral Combat, NATO at War, March 2000

Statistics for numbers of displaced persons within Kosovo were often only guesses made by the KLA who had a vested interest in exaggeration. Their figures were passed to refugee agencies who had almost no means of checking the estimates and who also had a vested interest in exaggeration. These estimates were then passed on to the media and politicians as facts. The Guardian, 20 March, “According to Ferdinando Del Mundo, the head of the United Nations refugee agency (UNHCR) in Kosovo, at least 20,000 ethnic Albanians have abandoned their villages in the last four days as Serbian army and police units roll back Albanian fighters.”

The Sunday Times of 21 March reported, “The worst violence was northwest of Pristina, the provincial capital. As Serbian forces advanced against a stronghold of the Kosovo Liberation Army in the Drenica region, columns of refugees stretched for miles. . . The United Nations refugee agency estimates that 20,000 people have been displaced in the past seven days.”

Quoted by Philip Hammond p126 in Degraded Capability - The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward S Herman, Pluto Press, 2000.

Jonathan Steele reported in The Guardian, 30 June 1999, how a KLA fighter had told him that the KLA had instructed many people to leave their homes.

“Many left because they were driven out, but an equal number left to escape the NATO bombardment and some left because of the fighting between the KLA and the Yugoslav Army.” - Paul Watson of the Los Angeles Times, quoted by Eve-Anne Prentice in One Woman’s War published by Duckworth, 2000. Paul Watson was in Kosovo throughout the NATO bombing.

“The KLA . . . wanted every Albanian to join the exodus which was mesmerising the world.” - Eve-Anne Prentice in One Woman’s War. Eve-Anne Prentice was in Kosovo during the bombing and carried out many interviews there.

Rezso Banyasz, former Hungarian Ambassador in London, Chairman of the Foundation for a Neutral Hungary, in After The War In Yugoslavia: New Dangers For Hungary and Europe - The Spokesman, no 67, 2000, published by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

The statistics quoted by Tony Blair were historical figures and did not take into account the numbers of returned people. - See note 30.

a. “When the UN humanitarian organizations and their NGO partners had to suspend operations in Kosovo on 23 March 1999, there were thought to be over 260,000 persons displaced within Kosovo, over 100,000 elsewhere in the region, and over 100,000 others who had sought asylum outside the region since early 1998.” [emphasis added] - . Fourth Special Report by the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to House of Commons’ International Development Committee, Appendix 2, 30 June 1999.

“In last year's fighting between the Serbs and the Kosovo Liberation Army, 250,000 ethnic Albanian refugees fled their homes, and hid in the hillsides. None of the refugees are up there any longer.” - BBC News (http://news.bbc.co.uk). 12 Jan 99.

Alan Little interview with Agim Ceku, BBC film, Moral Combat, NATO at War, March 2000

Quoted by Tim Judah p 189, Kosovo, War and Revenge, Tim Judah, Yale, 2000.

From the pamphlet. A Russian Voice On The War, Roy A Medvedev, published April 1999 by Spokesman, for the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, Nottingham.

Quotations from Degraded Capability - The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward S Herman, Pluto Press, 2000.

Information from William Ratliff, Senior Research Fellow and Curator of the Americas, International, and Peace Collections at the Hoover Institution in Harvard International Review, Vol. 22 Issue 4, 2001.

Quoted in The Spokesman, no 65, 1999, published by the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation.

The Times, 15 August 2000; Ulrich Rippert, 10 July 1999, World Socialist Web Site

Main sources of facts: Tim Judah, Kosovo, War and Revenge, Yale, 2000, Kosovo - How Myths and Truths Started a War, Julie Mertus, University of California Press,1999, Following Washington’s Script: the United States Media and Kosovo, Seth Ackerman and Jim Naureckas in Degraded Capability - The media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward Herman, published by Pluto, 2000; US National Vital Statistics Report. 2000; 48(11))

a “The Indian press disagreed with the Western perspective and performance during the Yugoslav crisis, as did much of the rest of the world that encompassed Russia, China, the Orthodox Christian countries, most of Latin America harbouring long memories of American imperialism and military and intervention over the last century, and Africa with its memories of white colonial oppression. But the American and Western media and their governments continued to languish in the bliss that the United States is the sole superpower with a monopoly on wisdom and morality, that NATO is the protector of the world, and the West is the ‘international community’.” - Raju C Thomas in How India Sees Through Western Reports, in Degraded Capability - The Media and the Kosovo Crisis, edited by Philip Hammond and Edward S Herman, Pluto Press, 2000.

b “Watching the likes of Christiane Amanpour and her BBC counterparts, one is reminded of Stalin’s USSR, when lies were first believed thoroughly and then uttered. To these ‘unbiassed’ commentators, there is no connection between the NATO bombing and the refugee floods. There is no harm in killing Serbian media persons, or in bombing away at a country in a manner reminiscent of Hitler’s war against Republican Spain in the 1930s.” - M D Nalapat, Senior Editor, in Times of India, 4 May 1999

“How have you swallowed the CIA-funded propaganda that demonises the Serbs? Are you not familiar with the duplicity and intimidation of the United States foreign policy? That Ambassador Walker, in charge of monitoring forces in Kosovo was financing the contras? Have you no recall of that ‘Free World’ crap that embraced Batista, Noriega, Syngman Rhee, Bao Dai, Lee Van Thieu and Sukarno?” - The late Alan Clarke, Conservative MP, former Minister of Defence, 27 March 1999, House of Commons.

From The Balkans, Nationalism and Imperialism, edited by Lindsey German. Published by Bookmarks, 1999.

“Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary last night defended his controversial ‘ethical foreign policy’ and pledged that a future Labour Government would be even more committed to humanitarian intervention abroad than it had been during four years in office.” Cook wants to build “a global Britain” over the next four years. Report by Richard Beeston, The Times, 26 April 2001.