Subject: SWISS PAPER REVEALS: HOW
KOSOVO VERIFICATION
MISSION WAS USED FOR NATO
SPYING
Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 15:06:10 EST
From: JaredI@...
To: JaredI@...




International Committee to Defend
Slobodan Milosevic www.icdsm.org

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=======================================
The next scheduled 'witnesses' at The
Hague are from the staff of the Kosovo
Verification Mission of 1998-99. In 1999,
a Swiss newspaper revealed: HOW
KOSOVO VERIFICATION MISSION WAS USED FOR
NATO SPYING

>From the Swiss journal La Liberté, 22
April 1999
Translated by Balkans Info
[Posted 19 march 2002]
=======================================

Note, this week the NATO court at The
Hague is scheduled to bring leaders of
the Kosovo Verification Mission as
'witnesses' against Milosevic. In fact,
the true story of the Mission bears
witness of its use to prepare for the
NATO attack on Yugoslavia. For more, see
further reading.
-- ICDSM

NATO SPIES CONFESS
La Liberté, 22 April 1999

It was done ultimately in the hope of
bringing peace. October 12, 1998, the
Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic accepted the
introduction into Kosovo of 2,000
observers from the OSCE (the Organization
for Security and Cooperation in
Europe). This "verification mission" was
to monitor the cease fire between
the Serbs and the Albanians and to
facilitate the search for a political
solution to the conflict. Once finally in
place, the 1,400 observers, among
whom were a certain number of Swiss
nationals, were placed under the
direction of American ambassador William
Walker. They remained in place until
NATO decided to begin its bombing the
following March.

Today the work of this mission poses some
serious questions, if one believes
the information collected by the Tessian
(Swiss) daily Giornale del popolo
that follows:

"It was obviously not Wm Walker who
pulled the strings on this operation,"
said one of the 1,400 verification
monitors who wished to remain anonymous.
"Nor was it the European diplomats who
headed the different departments. It
was 'The Fusion', a section in the
headquarters of the OSCE in Pristina. It
was under the direction of British
general John Drewienkiewicz, one of the
vice directors of the mission.
Officially, he was in charge of
co-ordinating
security. In reality, no one knew with
any certainty what his
responsibilities were. (. . .) Little by
little we came to understand that
this was a center for the co-ordination
of information going into the hands
of American and British military
personnel."

What kind of information are we talking
about here?

"All kinds," went on our monitor-witness.
"Beginning with the movements and
positions of Yugoslav army troops, which
means the army or the paramilitary
groups. (. . .)"

This information then went to NATO?

"Certainly. If not, how would they have
known the Serbs' objectives with such
precision?"

It is also the opinion of Pascal Neuffer,
the 32 yr. old Tessian (Swiss)
geologist who was part of the Swiss
contingent of the OSCE mission during its
last month.

"We understood from the beginning that
the information collected by the OSCE
patrols during our mission was intended
to supplement the information NATO
collected by satellite. We had a very
strong feeling that we were working as
spies for the Atlantic Alliance."

The OSCE was supposed to look into human
rights violations committed by
either party, the Yugoslav soldiers or
the Serb paramilitaries, and the KLA
rebels. But the verifiers noticed that
when the collected testimony did not
correspond with the general view ( and
certainly not the official view!) of
the mission, it was often manipulated.

Pascal Neuffer again: "The information
was selected and processed by The
Fusion. When the reports were not
sufficiently critical of the actions of
the
Serb troops, they were amended, or even
shredded.

"The investigators who wrote up reports
that were too critical of the KLA,"
confirms another monitor, "were
mysteriously not assigned to new
missions.

"Just before they were evacuated, the
Verification Monitors received an order
to destroy all written documents. In
executing this task, a member of the
Italian contingent who had just been
relieved of his investigation into human
rights violations, happened upon one of
his reports denouncing the KLA. But
there was a second report attached to
his, and edited by his Albanian
interpreter who was working under
contract to the OSCE. This second report
accused the Italian of falsifying the
testimony he had collected and of being
pro-Serb! On the basis of this second
report, all the testimony the Italian
Monitor had amassed was discarded,
without any investigation or additional
research.

"The strange thing was," continues our
witness, "the Albanian interpreter's
report was addressed to The Fusion and
not, as would have been the normal
practice, to the Human Rights Section.
From this he concluded that the
interpreter was in the pay of The Fusion.
. . . Unfortunately all these
documents were destroyed. But I know for
certain that this was not an
isolated case."

AN ANTI-SERB PSYCHOSIS

Welcomed by the directors of the mission
on their arrival in Kosovo, the
Verification Monitors were surprised by
the dominant point of view that the
enemy was uniquely the Yugoslavs and the
Serbs. "During the four days of
training we received on arrival, those in
charge of security, almost all
Americans, tried subtly to instil an
anti-Serb psychosis. No one took into
consideration that the KLA might be
shooting at us. Even though this had
already happened."

A feeling shared by the Swiss Pascal
Neuffer. "The bias of the OSCE was more
than obvious. Collaboration with the
Serbian police, however legitimate, in
certain investigations was taken for
collaboration with the enemy. And then
it was forbidden. The Germans from the
Police section, under the direct
control of The Fusion, told me that their
suggestion for how to deal with
these collaborations was just to
systematically block them."

Neuffer also points out a revealing
detail. "Certain Verification Monitors in
charge of human rights violations took
part in funerals for KLA soldiers, but
if the Serb police were ambushed we
wouldn't even mention it. Obviously, only
the deaths of Albanian rebels was
considered a human rights violation. All
dead bodies found in Kosovo were
automatically assigned to be victims of
Serbian police aggression.

"The situation on the ground, on the eve
of the NATO bombing, did not justify
a military intervention," declared Pascal
Neuffer. "In many regions of
Kosovo, you didn't feel a climate of war.
All the incidents, all the battles
between Serb forces and Albanian rebels,
with the displaced populations that
ensued, were limited to mountain villages
near the strongholds of the KLA: at
the beginning of the year, in Kacanik, in
the South, and then in Podujevo. In
the important towns like Mitrovica, Pec,
Pristina or Orahovac, there weren't
any deportations. Certainly Kosovo
suffered an apartheid and an 'ethnic
cleansing'. But before the bombing it was
still limited. Many of us were
shocked when we got the order to
evacuate: we would certainly have been
able to continue our work. And the
explanations given in the Press, saying that
the mission had been compromised by Serb
threats, did not correspond to what
I had seen. Let's say rather that we were
evacuated because NATO had decided
to start bombing.

"It's a pity, because the OSCE could have
played a more important part. In
light of what has happened, we started
asking ourselves if we had ever been
intended as a peace mission or only as a
pretext to a military intervention."

The accusations against the OSCE mission
unfortunately were not limited to a
few cases of espionage or to the
manipulation of testimony. Some were much
more serious. The OSCE was not only used
(however unwittingly) to lay blame
for human rights violations exclusively
at the feet of the Serbs, or nearly
so. It might also have played an indirect
role in the reduction of tensions
that then exploded with the military
intervention of NATO.

A DRAMATIC EPISODE

A dramatic event took place to support
this theory. (. . .) The commander of
the regular Serb troops, apparently on
his own initiative, warned the OSCE
mission of the fact that the Serb police
were aware of an Albanian rebel
project to transport arms from Albania
into Kosovo. And he asked that 'the
other camp' be warned so as to avoid a
blood bath. The information was
discussed at the very heart of the
Security Council of the mission, which
decided not to transmit the message to
the KLA. The result: A few kilometres
from the Albanian border, more than 30
Kosovo Albanians were killed by Serb
forces. (This encounter took place on the
14th of December 1998, and was
reported in the international press.) (.
. .)

This was the most serious incident since
the conclusion in mid-October of
accords between Milosevic and the
international community to institute a
cease fire and to set up international
monitoring in the province.

>From the other side, it also seems that
moderates from the KLA tried to
communicate with the Serbs, through the
offices of the OSCE, certain
information about projected attacks
against Serbs. All for naught. You have
to ask yourself if there weren't some
people who just didn't want the
tensions relieved."

Sarah d'Adda, Giornale del Popolo, repris
par La Liberté, 22 avril 1999.

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*************************
FURTHER READING:
*************************
* 'The Cat is Out of the Bag,' including
article on the Verification Mission
from London Times, entitled 'CIA aided
Kosovo guerrilla army,' can be read at
http://emperors-clothes.com/news/ciaaided.htm

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