US and NATO Needed to Ensure Permanent Military Presence in Europe After the Fall of Berlin Wall

Part 5 of late President Slobodan Milosevic's opening statement at the Hague, August 31, 2004 (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)

As far as the United States are concerned, they have, first and foremost, their own interests in South-Eastern Europe, including former Yugoslavia. The mutual antagonisms and conflicts, impoverishment and the total inability to function independently on political, economic and every other level of the statelets or quasi-statelets created on the territory of former Yugoslavia represents the perfect ground for enabling the American political, economic and especially military presence in Europe.

This last bit, the military presence, is important to United States because after the fall of the Warsaw Pact, the US military presence in the Western [European] states has lost the whole purpose and justification. So, it is no wonder that the United States has been active in producing this miserable state of affairs most Balkan statelets find themselves in.

After the break-up of the Eastern Bloc, some form of the Cold War has continued in this context of using all the means to prevent the survival of a society which could serve as an example of the successful alternative to the current crude pasting of the capitalist model, even though it too has its own problems.

In that sense, Yugoslavia could not have been allowed to survive the Warsaw Pact, because it would represent an inconvenient example to the other East European countries, an example of independent development and the alternative to the unquestioning acceptance of the Western values. This would have made it an obstacle to the new world order, as well as to the world shaped by the United States, as the sole remaining superpower in the world. In other words, this would have made it an obstacle to the transformation of the world into the corporate society, under the leadership of New York banks, where the plunder is the main motive.

In March 1990, the US Congress adopted the "Foreign Operation Appropriation Law", which ended every form of financial assistance to Yugoslavia, except for democratic parties, and in a way that the Nazis and Islamic fundamentalists were also regarded as the democratic parties which needed to be supported. Later on the Albanian terrorists too, while the Albanian separatists were there all along.

It is also known what was the role of a privatized segment of the American army called MPRI [Military Professional Resources Incorporated], which trained the Croat and Muslim army and played the key role in the offensive against Krajina [Serbian-populated region in present-day Croatia]. This too confirms that the American behavior regarding the Yugoslav crisis actually had the purpose of ensuring the American military presence in Europe, which has been accomplished in Bosnia and Herzegovina, in Kosovo and Metohija, and in Macedonia, as well as the dominant influence of USA and NATO throughout Europe.

I believe that I don't even need to mention here the economic interest, as an interest that stands above all the others. Such aspirations for dominating this part of the world are the only explanation for some, at the first glance irrational actions by the US, like influencing Alija Izetbegovic to withdraw his signature on the Cutileiro Plan, or a bit less known to the public at large American thwarting of the later negotiations, such as Vance-Owen Plan, Owen-Stoltenberg Plan and the other peace agreements. Obviously, peace in the Balkans was not in the interest of United States, up until the moment when military and the other forms of US and NATO presence were secured, and until the conditions were ripe to reach a solution under the American patronage.
Criminal Clinton Administration Forms Dangerous Liaisons with World Wide Terrorists

The identical goal was also confirmed by the American insistence on the Rambouillet conference, where they demanded NATO military presence on the entire territory of Yugoslavia, as well as by the aggression, sole purpose of which, obviously, was occupation of Kosovo-Metohija, occupation of all of Yugoslavia, securing the permanent NATO presence in this part of the world.

Along the way, William Clinton administration formed dangerous liaisons and alliances with the Islamic fundamentalist organizations and individuals, such as Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, terrorist UCK [KLA] in Kosovo, and others. In a word, precisely with those organizations and individuals who are, especially after September 11, 2001, considered the greatest threat to the United States and the West in general.

The price of such criminal policy of Clinton administration is enormous and, unfortunately, it is being paid by the innocent citizens throughout the world, including the American citizens, but also those of other Western states, such as Spain and others.
Naumann's Dream Came True: European Union is Great Germany & Satellites

However, while the objectives of Germany, Vatican and United States in the Yugoslav crisis were more or less clear and obvious, the behavior of other European Community -- later, the European Union -- members is entirely shocking, especially the drastic changes of their position under the German pressure.

This in spite of the European Community's declaration about Yugoslavia which emphasized, quote, "that the united and democratic Yugoslavia has the best prospects of harmonious integration into the new Europe". Even after Slovenia and Croatia declared independence, and after the flaring of the armed conflicts, the European Parliament on July 9, 1991, adopted Resolution on Yugoslavia in Strasbourg, which did not support the unilateral acts of secession by the two Yugoslav republics. The Council of European Community Ministers, the European Council, as well as the European Community institutions have also supported the territorial integrity of Yugoslavia.

A wider European, or rather the Euro-American forum, the CSCE [Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe] Council of Ministers, at the meeting in Berlin on July 19, 1991, adopted a declaration which, among else, expressed its support to the unity and territorial integrity of Yugoslavia, in line with the Helsinki Accords. The preservation of the state's territorial integrity was especially stressed. That the similar attitude prevailed on the other side of the Atlantic at the time, was confirmed by the fact that the US State Secretary [James] Baker, at the end of his visit to Yugoslavia in June 21, 1991, stated that the US supports the united and democratic Yugoslavia, future of which has to be decided through the mutual agreement, and stressed that the United States will not recognize the unilateral acts of secession.

Still, the European Community, the organization created as a result of a progressive process in Europe and the world, finally chose at the end of 1991 to support an extremely retrograde process, secession of Slovenia and Croatia, as well as the other secessionist republics. On December 17, 1991, the European Community adopted a declaration on the criteria for recognition of the new states in the Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, and a Declaration on Yugoslavia, which called upon all the Yugoslav republics to submit their requests for recognition by December 23, with the proof that they have met the recognition criteria.

With this document, the European Community had not only trampled its own position from the March 26, 1991 Declaration on Yugoslavia, it has also violated a document it adopted only a month and a half earlier, the European Community Declaration published in Rome on November 8, 1991, which set out that the possibilities for recognizing the republics who so wish can only be considered within the overall solution. So, even though the role of Germany in this change of course in the position of the twelve is clear, it is still not only surprising, but also incredibly humiliating that eleven states allowed themselves to be forced to do something they initially and basically disagreed with, and under the pressure of only one, twelfth state, regardless of how influential and powerful that state may be.

I already mentioned Friederich Naumann who, during the World War I, presented the concept of the German domination over the Central Europe through the fragmentation of that part of the world and the creation of the small obedient states he called the satellite states. Of course, Naumann never thought about creation of satellites in the West. But the diktat which tied secession of the Yugoslav republics and their recognition imposed by Germany to the European Community members, and their bowing to that diktat in contrast to their own views and principles, and even while being aware of the secessionist tendencies in some of those very states, contrary to their most immediate interests, points to a humiliating fact that the members of this organization have also stooped so low to become German satellites. Thanks to the opportunism and the weakness of their incompetent leaders, some of the former Great Powers have also found themselves in this humiliating position. As shown by their later involvement in the score of NATO operations, including the aggression against Yugoslavia, they have also been degraded to a level of United States' satellites.
Crime Against Peace Remains to be Processed in the Real International Court

So, the Yugoslavia's right to survival cannot be questioned, nor can the unlawful character of its destruction, as the basis for eruption of the conflicts, be questioned. In all this it is, to say the least, cynical for those who have brought the Yugoslav nations to the mutual wars, cycles of violence and hatred, for them to now pretend to be naive and to administer justice. Our nations must never forget who is the main guilty party for the tragedy that took place on the territory of former Yugoslavia, and that will be clearly shown.

In Nuremberg, the first and main crime was the crime against peace, which is not so in this illegal tribunal of yours only because, in that case, those who have established this unlawful court would have to be placed on trial first.

It is not hard to prove, looking at historical events which were all well documented and available to the side across ["prosecution"], that the nationalism on the territory of former Yugoslavia did not start in Serbia, from the Serbian nation or the Serbian leadership, but mainly from the extreme right-wing separatist movement in Croatia, in Kosovo and Metohija, in Bosnia and Herzegovina -- from the Ustashas and neo-Nazis, the Islamic fundamentalists and the Albanian terrorists.

It is not hard to prove, and you will see how that goes, that the fratricidal war on the territory of former Yugoslavia was instigated and militarily supported by the West, precisely by those who have established this farcical court: Germany, Vatican and United States. That they had carried out the destruction and dismemberment of a sovereign state in violation of both the internal and the international law.

It is also not hard to prove that they used extremely undemocratic methods for destruction of Yugoslavia, contrary to the constant assurances of their humanity.

Regarding this, it can be said that what they call the international community, on the territory of Yugoslavia -- Croatia, Kosovo, Bosnia and Herzegovina alike -- has been supporting a totalitarian chauvinist elite: terrorists, Islamic fundamentalists and neo-Nazis, whose goal was ethnically clean state, i.e. the state without Serbs.

The methods of cleansing the Serbian nation conducted by the Croat ultra-nationalist movement at the beginning of the 1990s with its paramilitary units, are quite identical to what was done 50 years earlier to the same nation, in the same region. At the beginning of the 1990s, it was the Serbs who were being killed and expelled from Croatia, even before Tudjman came to power. Serbs were the ones who were being killed and expelled from Kosovo and Metohija. The so-called international community headed by the US, sided with and was actively aiding the Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo-Metohija, which carried out numerous crimes against the Serbs. On top of everything, the crimes against Serbs in Kosovo and Metohija are being carried out with the full cooperation of the occupation forces headed by NATO, through the complete violation of the Security Council Resolution 1244 which codified the terms of ending the war offered to Yugoslavia.

When Yugoslavia could not be occupied and when the war had to be ended, the terms guaranteeing Yugoslavia sovereignty and territorial integrity were offered, stipulating that the United Nations protection forces will come to Kosovo to protect -- with an obligation to protect the entire population [in the province] -- and that the army and the police of Yugoslav state and Serbia will also have to be present to some extent and will return to Kosovo. None of this was fulfilled, but everything else was done. NATO soldiers came over shoulder-to-shoulder with criminals and expelled hundreds of thousands of people, killed thousands, torched dozens of churches... but I will come back to this later.
Hague Prosecution Demonstrated it Knew Fully Well Milosevic Did Not Start Any Wars

What I wish to say now is that there is an enormous amount of detailed documentation about the crimes against the Serbian nation committed during the past ten years. This documentation has been offered to this institution from various institutions throughout the world, but the side sitting on the opposite side hasn't even glanced at it. The reason for this is that the international community, while instigating conflicts in our part of the world, decided in advance that Serbs were to be blamed for everything. That is why everybody else could and had to be presented as a victim.

As to how the war was instigated in the territory of former Yugoslavia, the authors of the so-called Kosovo indictment against me, in paragraphs 79 and 80 stated one of the rare true assertions within the overall entirely false and shameful act. I'm quoting their text: "On June 25, 1991, Slovenia declared independence from the SFRY, which led to the outbreak of war." This is written in their "Croatia declared its independence on June 25, 1991, which led to fighting between the Croat forces, on the one side and JNA and paramilitary formations and the Army of the Republic of Serbian Krajina, on the other. Bosnia and Herzegovina declared independence on March 6, 1992, which, after April 6, 1992, led to a widespread war."

So, the very authors of this fake indictment, probably without thinking that they will later be putting together also the Croat and Bosnian indictment against me, have said who caused the war in former Yugoslavia. The participants in this enterprise, which can most certainly be called criminal, and they include both the internal and the external protagonists, have acted in complete contravention of both the internal, Yugoslav, and the international law. By such violation of the law and through the realization of the forceful secession of Slovenia, Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina, they have committed the essential and the gravest of all crimes processed in Nuremberg and Tokyo -- the crime against peace, which falls under the jurisdiction of the legal and permanent International Criminal Court [ICC].
Defending Yugoslavia, Serbia was the Only One on the Side of Law

As opposed to the Croat and Slovenian authorities, and the Muslim-Croat authorities in Bosnia-Herzegovina, which have carried out the armed secession, and as opposed to their instigators and supporters from Germany, Austria, Vatican, the rest of European Community and later on the US and NATO pact, Serbian nation and Serbian leadership, including me, kept trying to preserve the Yugoslav state. By doing so, we were on the side of law, while the destroyers of Yugoslavia were flagrantly violating both the internal and the international law. Their invocation of the right to self-determination was nothing but a smokescreen, an effort to obscure the essence of their criminal act -- the unlawful and forceful secession. Because the Yugoslav nations, and especially its republics, did not have the right to unilaterally desert the Yugoslav state, neither by the Yugoslav Constitution, nor by the constitutions of the individual republics. They especially did not have the right to reach for their objective over the corpses of their co-citizens from the common state.

Article 5 of the Yugoslav Constitution which was in force at the time -- the Constitution adopted in 1974, states: "The territory of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia is integral and comprised of the territories of the socialist republics. The borders of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia cannot be changed without the consent of all the socialist republics and autonomous regions". Based on this, it unambiguously follows that not a single republic or nation in SFRY, as explicitly stated in the Constitution, was independently endowed with the right to secede from SFRY, or to secede any part of its territory. This was possible only through the consent of all.

Bearing all this in mind, along with the desire expressed in Slovenia and Croatia, and later in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Macedonia, to leave the Yugoslav Federation, and precisely in the effort to avoid any conflict, as confirmed by the witness Borisav Jovic -- the President of the Yugoslav Presidency and later on member of the Presidency, Serbian side tried to persuade, since August 1990, the representatives of the other republics in the federal bodies to adopt a law which would appropriately regulate the realization of the right to self-determination. But, as Jovic said in his book you have quoted here, "they were determined to go to the very end, even at the cost of incidents and conflicts."

I will remind you of a grand Tudjman's speech cited here, when he said that "there would have been no war had Croatia not wanted it". Because without war, without that kind of war, no one could expell half a million Serbs from the territory they populated for centuries. At the time of Croat secession Serbs in Croatia did not request any kind of state, but only autonomy since, up to that moment and according to the Croat own constitution they were a constitutive nation in Croatia, because Croatia was defined as a state of Croat, Serbian and other nations, but they were simply deleted from the Croat constitution [when Tudjman came to power].

So, when the cited Constitution provisions are taken into account, the Yugoslav republics of Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina and Slovenia have declared their independence, or their secession through the violation of the Constitution. And being that the secession of these republics was carried out through the armed force, this was an illegal, armed, violent secession. An illegal, armed, violent secession, consequences of which are tens of thousands of deaths, is a crime according to both the internal, Yugoslav, and the international law, as much as the encouragement and aiding of such a horrific act by the side-protagonists is a crime. These are the same ones who are behind this illegal court, the purpose of which is to exonerate them, while shifting the blame from them onto the victims of their crimes. Those victims are among all the Yugoslav nations.
Hague's Former President: Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia... Secessions were Illegal

From the point of the international law too, the secession of the former Yugoslav republics was not permitted in the way it was carried out. The confirmation of this regarding the former Yugoslav republics was explicitly offered by Antonio Cassese, the former president of this institution in his monograph dedicated in entirety to the right to self-determination ["Self Determination of People -- a Legal Appraisal", Cambridge University Press, 1995]. On the pages 269 and 270, he pointed out that Yugoslav republics did not have the right to external self-determination, neither by the international law, nor by the internal law. Cassese said in these pages: "As in the case of the 12 Soviet republics, according to the international law, the six Yugoslav republics did not have the right to external self-determination. Also, such right was not provided by the Yugoslav Constitution either. However, unlike the Soviet, Yugoslav Constitution does not contain the provisions which would allow the six republics comprising Yugoslavia to secede." And he also quotes the Yugoslavia Constitution.

Therefore, just like this illegal prosecution in the moment of, I'd say carelessness, pointed out in the quoted paragraphs 79-80 of the so-called Kosovo indictment who actually caused the war in Yugoslavia, the former president of this court, at the time he was still heading this institution, in the same book, on page 273, after assessing that the secessions were illegal, draws the conclusion identical to the one that the so-called prosecution inadvertently slipped into these paragraphs. The Cassese's conclusion is the following, quote: "It is well-known that both in Croatia and in Bosnia-Herzegovina, just like in few of the former Soviet republics, the secession brought back to life the old hatreds and led to horrific bloodshed."

This is true. It is well-known to anyone who wishes and has the minimum of honesty necessary to admit the obvious as a fact. Those who do not have that minimum of honesty, can allow themselves to pervert the obvious and well-known facts into their opposite, unless it happens that the truth sometimes slips out here and there, even to them. Still, one shouldn't forget that having the truth for an ally is a safe guarantee of winning sooner or later. Having the truth for an opponent is the certain path to a humiliating defeat. And everything I am saying is the truth about the bloody dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the internationally recognized state which had the right to survival, according to law, according to the ethics, according to the historical facts, and finally, most importantly, according to the real interest and the genuine wellbeing of all its citizens.

Time does not permit me to present even some of the indispensable facts and conclusions. I hope you will not oppose, when it comes to Kosovo, to consider as the integral part seven White Books of the Yugoslav Government which were also listed as the evidence and submitted, along with the entire documentation, to the regular and legal International Court of Justice in Hague, pertaining to the aggression against Yugoslavia. I will later introduce other documents too.
West's Dishonesty and a Habit to Dishonor Every Agreement Caused Another Catastrophe in Kosovo Province

Regarding Kosovo, I just wish to stress few things which, viewed from present-day perspective, show how correct and valid was the approach by Yugoslavia. What happened and what are the consequences? Only within the first year of the foreign presence in Kosovo and Metohija, actually, from the moment the Yugoslav Army and Serbian police withdrew from this Serbian province in June 1999, on the territory of Kosovo and Metohija in the first year, 5,000 terrorist acts were perpetrated, several thousand people were killed and kidnapped, 150 churches were razed... Gentlemen, if 150 mosques were destroyed in some place, 150 [Roman] Catholic churches, 150 synagogues, the whole world would have been buzzing. All of these crimes were committed under the auspices and protection of the United Nations -- in violation of the UN Resolution, by turning the UN security forces into the occupation forces, in collaboration with the Albanian terrorists.

More than 300,000 inhabitants were expelled under the UN auspices and in collaboration with them. On the other hand, more than 200,000 Albanians, foreign citizens, mostly from Albania and Macedonia, entered the province and moved in. The persecution and terror against everything non-Albanian, and especially against everything Serbian, continued with undiminished fervor to this day. If there is any reduction in the numerical volume of this criminal hysteria, that is only because in Kosovo-Metohija everything that is Serbian and non-Albanian has already been almost entirely cleansed. The little that is left in this southern province of the Serbian republic is too little to satiate this collective thirst for violence. And even this token of the non-Albanian and Serbian leftovers in Kosovo-Metohija has been too much for the chauvinist Albanian hordes. So the new culmination of the anti-Serbian violence, now in almost entirely cleansed of Serbs Kosovo and Metohija, took place on March 17 this year, after the latest authorship coup of your witness here, Halit Barani.

Of course, he is not the only war criminal who was called to testify here. Many war criminals have been testifying here, but this one was proven. This Halit Barani initiated a hysterical mass charge against everything Serbian with his new invented story about the alleged Serbian crime against three Albanian boys who drowned in the river after, supposedly, fleeing from their Serbian chasers. KFOR arrested Barani because of this, following the action of another one of your witnesses, also war criminal and a terrorist Shukri Buya who confirmed here he commanded the UCK unit in Racak. A unit. And that he was the first one to open fire from the heavy machine-gun on the policemen who were approaching the village. And, of course, together with his pogrom-sharing fellows and followers.
Joint Criminal Enterprise Indeed

Or, to use your terminology, this recent, as well as the earlier pogrom of the Serbian and other non-Albanian population in Kosovo and Metohija is, in fact, a result of the joint criminal enterprise of precisely this institution -- these are the witnesses it cooperates with and whose interests it defends here, as well as of those behind them, with the most morbid and most retrograde movement the Europe gave birth to in the recent history.

And, once the events in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina are taken into consideration, especially more than obvious continuity between the separatist and nationalist tendencies and movements with their pro-Nazi and extreme predecessors from the time of the WWII, and once the irrational fervor, almost a zeal with which this so-called prosecution tries to support and justify the acts by those who keep trying to revise the results of two world wars and achieve what they couldn't due to their defeat, then a very worrisome conclusion becomes unavoidable, that the joint criminal enterprise of which this institution is a part is much wider, both by a number of participants and by the criminal plan, and both in time span and the territory involved.

To be continued....