Halloo,
Anyone who has been exposed to reportage of the current war in Yugoslavia
from mainstream Canadian or American sources will be familiar with the
terms of the affair as framed by NATO (North Atlantic Treaty
Organization.) Principal features of this account are that the United
States and other nations, actuated by humanitarianism, first attempted
through diplomacy to end the persecution of the ethnic Albanian population
of the Yugoslavian province of Kosovo by federal government forces. These
efforts proving unavailing (ostensibly in the face of the obduracy of
Yugoslav officials) the Kosovars' paracletes saw nothing for it but to
initiate hostilities against Belgrade under the NATO banner.
Last week as a possible end to the war hove in sight, coverage by North
America's major newsmedia remained true to form - indefatigably and
uncritically disseminating the official NATO perspective. Thus on Friday a
Canadian Press correspondent in Belgrade wrote :
Caving in to Russian and western demands, Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic accepted a peace plan for Kosovo on Thursday designed to end mass expulsions of ethnic Albanians and end more than 70 days of NATO air strikes...Though cloaked in language meant to make it palatable to the Belgrade government, the peace plan itself contained tough conditions Milosevic had until now resisted, including the deployment of foreign troops on Yugoslav soil.
--'Milosevic accepts plan,' Canadian Press, Friday, June 04/99--
In order to realize how fallacious such a presentation is it is necessary
to understand that the received wisdom on the war - i.e. the NATO
construction which passes for unbiased reporting in the North American
mainstream - is, in a word, rubbish. Setting aside the question of the
motives of US and other leaders in taking up the cause of the Kosovars,
the claim (repeated endlessly in Canadian and American newsmedia) that the
peace talks which immediately preceded the present conflict were stymied
by Yugoslavia's resistance to compromise, is false. In reality the
Yugoslav delegation assented to the main body of the
Rambouillet Agreement (the document which arose from said
negotiations.) It is true that the Yugoslavs did reject an annex to the
Agreement (apparently drafted unilaterally by the American mission) which
set out the protocols for implementation of Rambouillet's articles but,
pace Canadian Press, this did not entail a refusal by Belgrade to
countenance the deployment of an international military force in
Yugoslavia.
On February 20/99 Agence France Presse and the Russian news agency
ITAR-TASS both reported that Belgrade was willing to accept the stationing
of foreign soldiers in Kosovo (provided that they were under the command
not of NATO but of the United Nations or of the Organization for Security
and Cooperation in Europe.) On the other hand US Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright insisted that : "We [i.e. the Clinton administration]
accept nothing less than a complete agreement, including a NATO-led force"
(1). As late as March 23/99 - the very eve of
the NATO bombing campaign - the Yugoslav government reiterated that it was
amenable to an "international presence" in Kosovo; equally, US officials
remained adamant that only a NATO corps would do.
So much for the myth of Yugoslavia's derailing the peace process - and
also for the suggestion by Canadian Press that Slobodan Milosevic had
"caved in" by consenting to the stationing of a foreign military
contingent in Yugoslavia. As shown above his administration had already
agreed to such a proposal prior to the NATO bombardment, reserving only
the condition that the alien force must be under the auspices of a body
other than NATO; and, sure enough, article 3 of the eirenicon brokered
last week by Finnish President Martti Ahtisaari called for "Deployment in
Kosovo under UN auspices of effective international civil and security
presences"(2).
To be sure article 4 of the Ahtisaari accord stipulates that the
international force is to incorporate "substantial NATO participation" but
even this formula marks a compromise rather than the surrender
jingoistically touted by Canadian Press. Furthermore the implementation
protocols of Rambouillet's Appendix B were rejected by the Milosevic
regime because they allowed for the virtual occupation of all of
Yugoslavia (3). By contrast the current
proposal envisages an international presence in Kosovo alone.
Note should also be made of the absence from the Ahtisaari compact of any
promise of independence for Kosovo; "substantial autonomy within the
Federal Republic of Yugoslavia" (article 5) is as much as the new accord
offers. This is a retreat of the first importance from Rambouillet, which
contained measures for a referendum on Kosovo's future (4) - with secession from Yugoslavia seen to be
one of the options. Amongst other elements of the Ahtisaari accord which
imply a mitigation of the Rambouillet protocols is the absence of detailed
instructions on instituting a free market economy in Kosovo.
For those not predisposed to the sycophancy of the US/Canadian mainstream
newsmedia it should be clear that the Ahtisaari proposal is rather more
modest than Rambouillet. So the question presents itself, why has NATO
spent three months bombing Yugoslavia - killing two thousand people
outright and leaving the balance of the Yugoslav population in mortal
peril of cholera and other epidemics - only to present Milosevic with an
agreement which he had assented to in principle before hostilities
began?
Some will point to the increasing opposition within NATO countries to the
war : in Europe scores of thousands have demonstrated against the war and
even some governments - notably Greece - have threatened to break ranks.
In the US Bill Clinton is facing a lawsuit for violating the War Powers
Act of 1973 (the Act specifies that the US President can only commit US
military forces to action for a period of 60 days without authorization
from Congress; Clinton failed in a bid to secure such approval.)
While protests may have played some part in tipping NATO's hand I would
suggest that the more fundamental reason for Washington's newfound
willingness to accept a negotiated solution is that its primary objective
in the area has already been achieved. Reports have emerged that US
negotiators privately admitted to prominent journalists that the
conditions of the Rambouillet Agreement were consciously designed to be
unacceptable to Yugoslavia with a view to generating a casus belli. In a
June 02/99 press release the US media watchdog FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy
In Reporting) quotes two accounts of confidential briefings at Rambouillet
in which senior US officials acknowledged that : "We intentionally set the
bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need some bombing, and that's
what they are going to get" (5).
It remains to be seen whether NATO is willing to actually accept an end to
hostilities at this time : it may be that the present discussions are
designed merely to give NATO an irenic air with a view to frustrating its
critics. If the Ahtisaari accord is implemented, however, this will only
demonstrate the mendacity of the NATO apologists - for all that the
present proposal offers could have been obtained without the use of
violence. Of course, then the Serbs wouldn't have "got what they
deserve."
---Antoni
(1)
'Forgotten Coverage of Rambouillet Negotiations,' Fairness & Accuracy
In Reporting media advisory, May 14, 1999.
(2) The text of the Ahtisaari peace proposal (as posted by
the BBC online service) can be viewed at :
http://www.flora.org/flora.mai-not/11880.
(3) See especially paragraph 6, Appendix B of the
Rambouillet Agreement, which states that "NATO shall be immune from all
legal process, whether civil, administrative, or criminal"; also paragraph
8 which reads "NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles,
vessels, aircraft, and equipment, free and unrestricted passage and
unimpeded access throughout the [Federal Republic of Yugoslavia]."
(4) See paragraph 3 of the Amendment, Comprehensive
Assessment, and Final Clauses section of the Rambouillet Agreement.
(5)'What
Reporters Knew About Kosovo Talks - But Didn't Tell,' FAIR Media
Advisory June 2, 1999.