By David Brian
On March 24, 1999 the North Atlantic Alliance launched a campaign of missile and bomb attacks on the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia placing the majority of big cities across Serbia and Montenegro under martial law for the first time since the end of WW2.
18 NATO countries, with the notable exception of Greece, were in one way or another involved in the 78-day bombing campaign, codenamed Operation Allied Force, that lasted from March 24 to June 9, 1999. The Western Defense Alliance decided to go to war in the wake of failed talks over the future of Kosovo at Rambouillet and Paris in February and March of that same year. The bombings were called off on March 9 after Belgrade agreed to withdraw its troops and police units from Kosovo to be replaced by a multinational peacekeeping force.
On March 10 the UN Security Council adopted Resolution 1244 which recognized the deployment of UN forces in Kosovo while, at the same time, reiterating the region’s status as an integral part of the Serbian state. The material damage caused to Yugoslavia’s industrial, transport and civilian infrastructure by the almost three-months of non stop NATO bombings amounted to a whopping 100 billion US dollars and the overall human losses, both military and civilian, ranged between 1,200 and 2,500, most of them ethnic Albanians who fled Kosovo after NATO bombs started coming down…
NATO leaders and Western media justified the aggression by calling it a “humanitarian operation” to end Belgrade’s alleged persecution of Kosovo’s ethnic Albanian population. Including of hundreds of ethnic Albanians found in a mass grave and allegedly killed by Serbs. Forensic experts from Finland stated however, that there was no proof whatsoever of Serbian military or police been in any way involved in that atrocity.
The military operation against Yugoslavia - essentially a naked aggression against a small Balkan federation - aimed to break up a sovereign European state and also guarantee the material interests of West European powers poised to tap Kosovo’s impressive mineral wealth. In the walkup to the tragic anniversary, US President George W. Bush authorized arms supplies to Kosovo’s separatist leaders arguing that the move served America’s security interests and would further the cause of global peace and stability. White House officials say that, in keeping with a pertinent resolution by the UN Security Council, Kosovo is allowed to have a lightly-armed military force of 2,500 men to act under strict NATO oversight. In reality this only means that the local Albanian drug traffickers have nothing to fear now that their business is protected by American weaponry. This also means that the Europeans will now have to think real hard about the widening flow of illegal drugs being made available to their young ones…
President of self-proclaimed Kosovo thanks NATO for bombing Yugoslavia, Regnum
9 years ago, on March 24 1999, aggression (unsanctioned by the UN SC attack) of NATO against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was launched. President of the self-proclaimed Kosovo Fatmir Sejdiu has thanked NATO for bombing Yugoslavia. He reported that the ninth anniversary of NATO’s bombing of Serbian military and police targets were celebrated in the “independent Kosovo.” Kosovo’s president recommended his fellow citizens to be “grateful to the USA, European Union, and NATO forces.”
Kosovo prime minister Hashim Thaci, for his part, declared that the people of Kosovo would be eternally grateful to NATO and international community who nine years ago supported their struggle for the preservation of civilization values: freedom, peace, and democracy. “The people of Kosovo will be ever grateful to NATO and countries who supported its just struggle,” he claimed.
Former field commander of Albanian separatists, Hashim Thaci, whose direct participation in slaughters of civilians remained unproved by the Hague tribunal, voiced special thanks to heads of states who supported “the fight of the Kosovo people for freedom and democracy:” US president Bill Clinton, prime minister of Great Britain Tony Blair, US state secretary Madeleine Albright, NATO secretary general Javier Solana, and heads and officers of the international administration in Kosovo.
Related posts
No Comments yet »
RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URI
Leave a comment
Copyright © 1996-2008 Serbian Unity Congress
Entries and comments feeds.
Valid XHTML and CSS. ^Top^