News Release

Bombing of Yugoslavia: One Year Later

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JAN HARTSOUGH
Shortly after the bombing of Yugoslavia started a year ago today, Hartsough traveled to the Balkans with a social-change organization called Crabgrass. She also attended the Women in Black international conference in October 1999 in Montenegro. She said today: “A police force that can establish law and justice in Kosovo still has not been established. I’m concerned about the prospects of another outbreak of war in the Balkans, this time in Montenegro.”
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JEREMY SCAHILL
Pacifica Radio’s “Democracy Now” program. He reported from Yugoslavia during the bombing last spring. Today he said: “One year after the initiation of the bombing of Yugoslavia, the country’s southernmost province Kosovo is as ‘ethnically clean’ as it has ever been. Thanks in no small part to the tactics and actions of the U.S.-led KFOR forces, Serbs, Gypsies and moderate Albanians have been forced to flee their homes by violent and extremist Albanian forces backed by the UN. Currently, Albanian militias are invading areas of eastern Serbia (beyond Kosovo) on a regular basis.”
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ERIC GORDY
Author of “The Culture of Power in Serbia: Nationalism and the Destruction of Alternatives” and professor of sociology at Clark University. Gordy said: More Information

SAM HUSSEINI
Communications director of the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini said: “Appendix B of the Rambouillet text allowed for the occupation of all of Yugoslavia, not just Kosovo. The State Department’s insistence on that provision — which was dropped in the final agreement — indicates that top U.S. officials wanted war. The administration successfully triangulated human rights and sovereignty as global values.”
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SETH ACKERMAN
Media analyst with Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting, Ackerman regularly monitors the European media. He said: “NATO described its war as a humanitarian campaign — a war for human rights. So the media have tended to evaluate it in those terms. But what’s missing is the recognition that the U.S. had strategic goals in Europe that shaped the way it addressed the Kosovo problem… Secretary of State Albright’s goal at Rambouillet was provoking a Serbian ‘no’ and an Albanian ‘yes’ so that the Europeans would be forced to approve NATO air strikes.”
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For more information, contact at the Institute for Public Accuracy: Sam Husseini, (202) 347-0020 or (202) 332-5055