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THE BOSS PUSHES FOR CIVIL WAR IN
YUGOSLAVIA
The following article of necessity assumes certain agreements, namely that:
Of course, some readers will have different views. Please see the end of this report for articles which go into these issues deeply. But irrelevent of where readers stand on these questions, every decent person may want to read the following, which is by way of a warning. Meeting in Montenegro Peter Galbraith is no ordinary U.S. citizen. He was Ambassador to Croatia during the planning and execution of Operation Storm. In that massive military assault, during which he was shown on Croatian TV riding a tank, 250,000 Serbs, mostly farming families, were driven from their ancestral lands by the Croatian Army. Galbraith was the US emissary who helped effect a political deal between Bosnian Islamic Fundamentalists and Croatian Fascists that made that vicious assault possible. Under the leadership of Galbraith and others, US planes buzzed the fleeing farmers like cowboys herding cattle, strafing the stragglers, killing 14,000 civilians. The entire Krajina section of Yugoslavia, ancestral home to over 250,000 Serbs, was emptied. It's villages are silent to this day. Property worth tens of billions of dollars was grabbed by Croatia. President Clinton congratulated Ambassador Galbraith, his trusted 'Peacekeeper.' According to Serbian opposition sources, the same Mr. Galbraith was in Montenegro recently. He met with Serbian politicians from the Alliance for Change and urged them to start a Civil War in Serbia. He promised that the Milosevich government would be destroyed quickly; he promised US help; and then, he promised, they would get everything they want. A continuing tragedy Reports that the Serbian opposition was planning to incite civil war have been circulating for weeks. Indeed rarely has a coup d'etat received so much public attention and evaluation before the fact. I am convinced the civil war (or attempted civil war) rumors have a basis, at least in the desire of the plotters; and they are openly supported and encouraged by the US government, which has much military and economic strength. So I will provide readers with the information I have. First, a letter and some news reports from Italy. Second, an AP dispatch, Sept. 12. And third, a note from Diana Johnstone in Paris. A Report from Italy A few weeks ago I received the following letter from some friends in Rome: "Here are the articles you asked for. But first, a little introduction to put them in context. During the bombardment of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by NATO, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic refused to carry out emergency defense measures. Montenegro, as you know, is part of the Yugoslav Federation, the other part being Serbia, and the defense measures were constitutionally required. Moreover, they were ordered at the Federal level. Not only did Djukanovic refuse to help with defense against NATO, he even went "on tour" of Europe, currying favor with the very heads of states which were bombing Serbia - and Montenegro as well! An Italian journalist wrote that on May 13th some Djukanovic advisers received a huge cash "gift" from the USA. We are searching for this article to send to you. You probably already know about the Montenegrin "proposal" to transform the Yugoslav Federation into a loose "Union" with two currencies, two armies, and so on. We put "proposal" in quotes because it is hardly a sincere proposal. It is, like the Rambouillet agreement, a case of "making you an offer you cannot accept." In other words, Montenegro proposes, Serbia rejects, Montenegro secedes, Serbia goes to war to preserve the union, and so on. Civil war. The Montenegrin government gave Federal and Serbian institutions 6 weeks to reply. Afterwards: referendum and independence. The deadline is the third week in September. Some easy calculations show that the secessionist "line" has the majority in the Montenegrin Parliament, though narrowly; there is some disagreement within the ruling parties and moreover most Montenegrins are pro-Yugoslav. That is, they are against Montenegrin secession, against civil war. The rest of our information is taken from two sources - Il Piccolo, a regional Italian newspaper and Il Manifesto. Il Manifesto is perhaps the main left-wing newspaper in Italy. It may be surprising to your readers in The U.S., where the left is far weaker than here, that since the inclusion of "former communists" in the ruling circles, Il Manifesto has had quite strong ties with leading institutions. This newspaper seemed to share the attitude of Foreign Minister Lamberto Dini, who was considered a sort of "friend" of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. During the NATO bombing, the newspaper was clearly against the war. There have been a lot of contradictions in the Italian left as well as the government itself about the war. Now Il Manifesto writes that Lamberto Dini and the Italian government are actively supporting Montenegrin Pres. Djukanovic's secessionist policy, which of course is hardly pro-Yugoslav. Given their intimate relations with governing circles, we can assume Il Manifesto is really well informed on this account! The August 27th issue of Il Manifesto (http://www.ilmanifesto.it/Quotidiano-archivio/) had quite a lot of stuff regarding this secession-to-come:
Also on August 27th, Italian press agencies distributed alarming reports concerning Montenegro-based smuggling and Mafia activities. The Montenegrin government is strongly linked to cigarette and stolen car smugglers, who virtually finance the small Republic. In recent times there has been a huge deal with Philip Morris cigarettes; there is also a kind of business trafficking in refugees from Kosovo (mostly Roma ('Gypsies') now, but Albanians previously) seeking a better life in Italy. The most important report on these issues comes from DIA, the Italian Agency against Drogues, part of the Ministry of the Interior. It says the activities of the Montenegrin and Albanian Mafias are linked with those of the Italian one, particularly from Puglia in the extreme south-east peninsula of our country. That's all for now. Signed, Italian newspapers: Plans for a civil war T. Di Francesco writing in Il Manifesto, 08.08.99 Italy, which has historically been on Djukanovic's side, keeps apparently quiet, but meanwhile sends Secret Service officers to Podgorica [in Montenegro], with the official aim of stopping the flow of Roma ("Gypsy") refugees from Kosovo, which have now changed status from refugees to illegal immigrants. [They no longer have the right to asylum in Italy because the war, which was never actually declared, is now nevertheless declared "finished" ... Even though people die every day in Kosovo by hand of NATO's ally the KLA, alias UCK] But these hundreds of Secret Service officers are probably indeed the evidence of Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs Lamberto Dini's support for the destabilization of Yugoslavia and for the new crisis that is being prepared by the devoted Montenegrin President, who has strong connections to criminal organizations in the region. Mikla Tadic, quoted by M. Forti in Il Manifesto, 08.08/99. S. Chiarusi in Il Manifesto, 08.11.99. S. Maranzana in Il Piccolo [a regional Italian newspaper] 08.15.99. Guido Ruotolo in Il Manifesto 08.21.99. From the Associated Press, 9/12 On September 12th, AP ran a story on Serbian opposition plans. Here are some excerpts: Milosevic is trying to suppress Serbia's opposition parties and is also at odds with Montenegro's reformist, pro-Western leadership, which he has shut out from governing bodies on the federal level. The joint declaration is to be announced after a meeting of Serbian opposition parties and Montenegro's government on Sept. 18 or 19 in the Montenegrin capital, Podgorica…. Independent, Belgrade-based B2-92 radio reported that several Serbian opposition leaders met directly with Montenegro's president Milo Djukanovic on Saturday to discuss future cooperation (AP 9/12/99, our emphasis.) Some thoughts about this AP dispatch. First, by saying the Serbian government is "trying to suppress" the opposition, the AP gives the impression Serbia is a police state. This is inaccurate. The Serbian government has been strikingly gentle with Djindjic's 'Alliance for Change' given that its leaders a) have met with agents of the US, which bombed Yugoslavia for 78 days and b) have rejected the government's call for early elections, instead threatening to force a government change through extreme street actions, i.e., by force. The Alliance for Change people have in fact held demonstrations virtually unmolested, including one in the heart of Belgrade. In addition, recent visitors to Yugoslavia report that most of the media, including newspapers, is (as always) anti-government. This is hardly a police state. So the AP report is superficial and misleading. Most AP readers are uninformed about Serbian politics, so they would have no way of knowing from this report that the attack is coming from the opposition, not from the government. In this way, if and when civil strife develops, readers will be pre-conditioned to view it as the Serbian government's fault. The strife will in itself seem to confirm what is in fact AP misinformation. The same is true of the coverage of the Montenegrin situation. During the bombing of Yugoslavia, the Montenegrin government, constitutionally required to aid in defense, refused to do so. Since then, Montenegrin leaders have openly conspired with the US and Germany to split Montenegro from Yugoslavia. This, the AP mis-describes as the Milosevich government being "also at odds with Montenegro's reformist, pro-Western leadership, which he has shut out from governing bodies on the federal level." Despite the misinformation, the AP dispatch does include an important piece of news: last Saturday, members of Djindjic's Alliance for Change met in Montenegro with Montenegrin leaders. Visit from an aspiring Mephistopheles Also on Sept. 12, the following report arrived, from Diana Johnstone: ''Tonight I learned in a telephone conversation with a friend in Yugoslavia that former U.S. Ambassador to Croatia, Peter Galbraith has been in Montenegro, chiding Serbian opposition politicians for their reluctance to plunge Yugoslavia into civil war. (Galbraith was a key backer of Croatian President Franjo Tudjman's August 1995 "Operation Storm" that drove the Serbian population out of the Krajina region of Croatia four years ago.) Galbraith assured the opposition leaders that such a civil war would be short, and would 'solve all your problems'". I checked with Diana Johnstone. Her source is reliable. So Peter Galbraith, who specializes in making deals that make mass murder possible, was in Montenegro trying to make a deal. There he met with the more extreme (greedier?) elements of the Serbian opposition and, one would assume, some leading Montenegrin politicians linked to the Mob. He made rosy predictions. He made promises. He prodded his hesitant proxies to strike now, for democracy. The same plotters met again in Montenegro last Saturday. Never have plotters planned more thoroughly. Never have secret meetings been held with more publicity. Absent the Opposition pols suffering a failure of nerve and/or complete incompetence, are we about to witness another act in the U.S. government's production, The Rape of Yugoslavia? Or will their open sponsorship by the State Department (including Peter Galbraith) so discredit the Alliance for Change and the Montenegro Mafia-pols that this attempt at Tragedy will instead be played out as Farce? * * * Notes or more on US government motives in Yugoslavia, check out the following four articles: Yugoslavia: Through a Dark Glass, by Diana Johnstone Germany and the US in the Balkans: a Careful Coincidence of National Policies? by T.W. Carr NATO's Humanitarian Trigger, by Diana Johnstone What
does NATO want in Yugoslavia? by Sean Gervasi If you're reading this article in a site other than Emperors-Clothes.com and would like to see other articles please click here or go to http://emperors-clothes.com |