WHAT IS MY OFFENSE?
Interview with Slobodan MilosevicETHNIC
GROUPS
The fact that different ethnic groups are in a country
could be a wealth for that country. Yugoslavia was a
modern federation with different cultures, heritages,
living mainly in harmony. When the question of who is
Macedonian, who is Croatian, etc., was imposed from the
outside, like a torpedo, it produced problems. How could
Croats have an interest in the dissolution of Yugoslavia
when a part of the Croatian people was living in Bosnia
and so on? Or Muslims? And what would become of us,
divided into little states?
The existence of Yugoslavia was a solution to the Serbian
people's national cohesion. Serbs were all together in
the same Federation. It was not in the interest of any
national group to destroy Yugoslavia.
In Europe there is no recognition of cultural and ethnic
differences. Every country needs new formulas adapted to
deal with cultural and ethnic differences in a respectful
fashion. Yugoslavia had such a code. That is one of the
reasons Yugoslavia was not recognized as a solution by
certain international forces. They didn't want our kind
of solution. They didn't want the example. They had
another solution, which is at the core of their strategy
for conquest, the solution of using ethnic differences to
destabilize, divide et impera.
As for the charge of racism, which originates from the
very forces which stir up race hate, let me ask them a
question. Why is it that most Serbs have been purged from
Croatia but not only have Croats stayed, unharmed, in
Serbia, but tens of thousands of Croatian, Bosnian Muslim
and Kosovo Albanian refugees have been welcomed here? Why
is that the Roma, bellwether of racism in Europe, are so
loyal to Yugoslavia and Serbia?
Today Serbia has a large non-Serbian population, the same
as before the destruction of Yugoslavia. But Slovenia and
Croatia are "pure".
US HEGEMONY
During the 1999 war I received different representatives
from the Italian political scene, from both the left and
the right. They said we are not functioning as an
independent country. Nobody was asking them, "Are
you ready to attack your neighboring country?"
NATO is supposedly an alliance. An alliance means equal
states. But in fact, NATO was a war machine imposed by
the US. Big Master didn't ask the Italians, "Do you
think we should bomb that Serbian passenger train?"
It's understandable for the USA, as the most powerful
nation, to aspire to a leading role. But precisely what
role?
I told the Americans in 1998: "You could have been
benevolent and everyone would have applauded. But instead
you chose the path of Caesar, spreading blood and killing
nations. So you missed the millennium, not just the
century. It would be comic if it wasn't tragic."
I told the US Balkans envoy, Richard Holbrooke, "Don't
tell me you're interested in Albanians. *I'm* interested
in Albanians. You have entirely different goals."
And Holbrooke said, "We have to be international
leaders."
And I said, "Why does that have to be at our
expense?"
Now we are seeing the destabilization of the whole of
Southeastern Europe including Greece. Macedonia is under
terrorist attack. They will start destabilizing Bulgaria
soon. They will of course create problems in Romania as
well.
1997 MEETING OF SOUTHEAST EUROPEAN LEADERS
Everything has become transparent. Consider this very
brief history. In October 1997, leaders of the Southeast
European countries met. All of us. We established a very
good understanding. I suggested, "Let's do something
for ourselves. Let's abolish customs fees among ourselves."
The meeting was very good. I had excellent person to
person discussions with Fatos Nano, the Albanian Prime
Minister. We discussed opening our borders and he said
Kosovo is an internal problem of our country. The message
of that meeting was that in Southeast Europe things are
going to be solved by mutual consultation.
A month later I received a letter from German Foreign
Minister Klaus Kinkle and French Foreign Minister Hubert
Vedrine stating that they were very concerned about
Albanians. And then of course the BND [German
intelligence] organized the so-called UCK [KLA] in 1998.
They started to shoot, to kill postmen, foresters; they
threw bombs in cafes, near green markets. We reacted as
any state would react. By summer of 1998 they were gone.
Destroyed.
At that point [U.S. Balkans Envoy] Richard Holbrooke came
here to insist that his armed personal be allowed into
Kosovo. As observors, he said
We talked. Our discussions were frustrating. We would
solve a problem one day and Holbrooke would re-open it
the next. I would say, "But we solved that problem
yesterday!" And he would say, "Instructions."
He wanted to send in 20,000 armed so-called observers.
This was accompanied by the threat that NATO would bomb
us. We tried to minimize the harm of this blackmail, to
rouse world public opinion. At the same time we whittled
down Holbrooke's demands from 20,000 to 2000. And from
armed to unarmed so-called observors. So, something less
than outright armed invasion. Though still an assault on
our sovereignty.
They put a criminal, William Walker, in charge of their
Observors. This is a man who worked with death squads in
El Salvador. Supposedly a diplomat. His Observors were
mostly intelligence operatives, behind the veneer of a
private American company. [Milosevic is referring here to
DynCorp - Ed.]
Walker created Racak, the phony massacre, based on his El
Salvador expertise. Racak was then used by Madeleine
Albright to justify their ultimatum to negotiate at
Rambouillet. We were told: negotiate or be bombed. Of
course, under international law, no treaty that results
from threats is legally binding. But that wasn't their
concern.
We decided to use these supposed negotiations to
illustrate our stand. Our delegation was a composite of
our national groups. It included ethnic Serbs, Albanians,
Gorani [Slavic Muslims], Roma ["Gypsies"],
Turks. The composition of Kosovo before the UCK [Kosovo
Liberation Army] drove most of them out.
Meanwhile, the complete text of the Rambouillet "agreement"
appeared in an Albanian publication three days before our
delegation even arrived in France. Do you see? It was
drawn up in advance.
So our delegates read the thing. One showed it to the
Americans, saying, "Look, this is badly done. It's
garbage." And one of the Americans said, "What
are you talking about? It was prepared by James O'Brien!
One of our best men! He drew up the complete documents
for the autonomy of Tibet!"
That's what we had to deal with.
And Clinton? He actually said Serbs were responsible for
W.W.I and W.W.II.
MEDIA LIES THAT KILL
An Israeli newspaper asked me if the anti-Serb media
demonization was a form of genocide. After all, the
demonization was used to justify the air war, which
involved almost exclusively bombing of civilians,
destroying normal life, the life of a people.
The Serbs are the only Europeans who have been bombed
since World War II. 22,000 tons of bombs. Without the
avalanche of media lies, ordinary Western citizens would
never have allowed it. So the demonization was a crucial
part of the war machine, limiting international protest.
It was part of the genocide.
People in the NATO countries are not yet aware they were
lied to. And they aren't aware how much harm this has
done to their societies. Clinton's administration put
lies into an ostensibly democratic institutional
apparatus thus preventing any possibility of democracy.
How can people make choices when they’re basing
their thinking on lies?
NEW TYPE OF COLONIALISM
The destruction of Yugoslavia is material proof that the
U.S. and other forces are engaged in a new colonialism.
If their big words about world integration were true,
they would have preserved Yugoslavia. It embodied
precisely such integration. Nobody can be against
integration if it is just, if people are treated equally.
The new colonialism consists in making the small part
richer, the big part poorer, and killing nations. If you
lose your country, your independence and freedom, all
other battles are lost. How can you organize a country
for prosperity when you don't have a country?
If we understand that we're facing a new type of
colonialism, one that attacks national sovereignty, we
can pull all our forces together. The Left once grasped
this idea, which is why Imperial forces penetrated the
Left.
Now the Left is often worse than the Right. In Germany
they removed Kohl and put in Schroeder, who will do
anything for the Americans. Gorbachev was an American guy
as well. He destroyed the Soviet Union for them.
For years the Russians have functioned as if under
hypnosis. The Americans succeeded in hypnotizing them
into believing their economy depends on the IMF and the
World Bank. Hundreds of Billions have been taken out of
Russia; the lives of ordinary people are destroyed; and
they waste time negotiating IMF loans.
Consider the possibilities. The whole of Western Europe
is relying on natural gas production. Why isn't Russia
the big supplier? It could if the Russians had that in
mind instead of playing this fool's game of relying on
the IMF.
Look at the economic models the IMF enforces! Kenneth
Galbraith, the American economist, said, "If the
Americans deployed these economic models in America
they'd be destroyed."
The question for Russians is: When will you realize the
need and possibility to be your own masters? There is no
way to play the Americans' game and win. The USA controls
the entire international banking system.
MILOSEVIC'S GOLD
I have been attacked for everything. The U.S. envoy,
Richard Holbrooke, once told me, the Swiss government is
going to freeze your accounts. I said, "Why stop
there? Here, wait a moment." I wrote a few words and
gave him the paper. "Here. I've signed all my
foreign bank account assets over to you. You may keep
every penny."
He was taken aback. "I may?"
I said, "Yes! Unfortunately, there are no accounts."
Generally in banking you cannot have presidents of
countries hiding vast amounts of money. It's simply
nonsense. The goal of all the news reports about how they
haven't yet found my money is to give people the false
impression that there's something to look for.
THE MEDIA AND BLAMING THE VICTIM
The other night I was watching TVBK, a private Serbian TV
station. Someone was criticizing the media, and right in
the middle, the station cut the power. Just like that.
The screen went black. It shows how worried this DOS
regime [installed in a coup d'etat in October 2000] is
when faced with the least critical thought.
They accuse me of having been a dictator. That's
ridiculous. Before the DOS coup d'etat we had democracy.
95% of the media was privately owned and the opposition
controlled most of it. In Kosovo the Albanians had more
than 20 different media. In any neighborhood you could
buy a newspaper attacking the government.
We didn't have one political prisoner. But this new
regime has issued so-called 'amnesty' laws, freeing
members of the KLA convicted for murdering children and
the like. They call this 'the new political freedom.' I
call it legalizing terror.
How did my supposed dictatorship manifest itself? Ibrahim
Rugova, the Albanian secessionist leader, could have a
press conference in Belgrade. He could walk around
freely, have lunch, and criticize everything. And he did.
Nobody bothered him.
They've accused me of being behind a rash of killings
that occurred before the coup d'etat. The Defense
Minister was killed. The Prime Minister of the province
of Vojvodina was killed. The Secretary General of the
Yugoslav Left. The Deputy Interior Minister of Serbia.
The Managing Director of Yugoslav Airlines, a friend of
mine since Gymnasium, he was killed. These were people I
worked with, friends. No opposition leader was killed.
So, I was killing my friends and sparing my enemies. A
unique strategy.
When a crime occurs, shouldn't one ask: Qui bono? [Who
gains?] Isn't it obvious that these killings were carried
out to benefit our foreign opponents? That they were an
attempt to intimidate men and women in our government?
But the Western-controlled media says I was responsible.
The opposition media demonized our government and me and
my family in every possible way. They accused my son of
being a criminal.
The TV mixed these slanders with programs imported from
America; flashy images, seductive especially to young
people. They are doing this all over the world. It is a
cultural attack.
Of course it had some effect. People in our country
aren't used to advertising techniques based on the
repetition of false images. The opposition learned these
techniques from their US and other NATO handlers.
I've been using the term 'opposition', but in fact we had
no opposition. We had a Fifth Column. It was paid huge
sums by the people who bombed us. This was openly
admitted.
And this Fifth Column, who now occupy government
positions, has gone so far as to agree to cooperate with
the Hague Tribunal, a false Tribunal created as another
part of the genocide against the Serbs. Once in awhile
they arrest an Islamic Fundamentalist or a Croatian
fascist, to imply balance. But the goal is to destroy
those who uphold Yugoslavia, who defend Serbia, to leave
ordinary people vulnerable to attack and to make the
world think resistance is impossible.
This past week the current authorities in Belgrade
shipped their first victim to The Hague. He is a Serb
from Bosnia, active in refugee work.
And we are seeing Hague-type justice in Belgrade as well.
The present authorities have arrested Dragoljub Milanovic
the director of RTS [the State TV station].
This is how it went. In January, Hague Prosecutor, Carla
del Ponte, came to Belgrade. She accused me and Dragoljub
Milanovic of murder. Why? Because on April 23, 1999 NATO
bombed RTS, killing 16 people in one of their cruelest
bombing raids. And, she said, NATO had made it clear they
would bomb; so by her mad logic, we were responsible.
On April 8th French officials did threaten to bomb RTS.
On the 9th we surrounded the TV station with a human
shield, journalists, managers, officials, all together,
arms linked. Serbian citizens were doing the same on
bridges and in factories, everywhere. Then Wesley Clark
seemed to withdraw the threat, but in any case what were
we to do? Not go to work? Employees occupied our biggest
auto plant and wrote a letter appealing to NATO not to
bomb. NATO bombed anyway, killing and wounding scores of
people. Were the victims guilty? Mr. Milanovic was
working at RTS all month and could have been killed as
well. Would that have made him responsible for 17 deaths,
instead of 16?
Of course, Carla del Ponte works for NATO, for the
bombers. And the new Belgrade authorities who have now
actually arrested Dragoljub Milanovic on this crazy
charge, these people work for NATO too.
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