Passenger Train Killings

On April 12, at 11:40 a.m., near the Grdelicka Gorge, 18 kilometers south of Leskovac, NATO planes took direct shots at the international passenger train Belgrade - Salonika No. 393, using several projectiles to execute their mission.  The passenger train was traveling in the direction from Nis to Vranje.  It appears that the first projectile hit the framework of the railway bridge, damaging among other things the electrical lines.  The train came to a full stop.  Following this the projectiles hit two cars, setting them on fire.  The two cars were located at the end of the train, with one of them having already reached the railway bridge.  NATO airplanes also shot the nearby highway, better known as Sarajevo Highway.  One Yugoslav official told the Reuters agency that after the train stopped in the Grdelicka Gorge, "the airplane returned to hit the train."

Eyewitnesses who are mostly residents in this area stated NATO airplanes were flying all night above this region, having unloaded four projectiles.  Similar testimony was given by Dejan Petkovic, a student from Belgrade who was sitting in the firs car of the train.  He crawled out through the broken window.  He said that upon exiting the train he heard several more detonations.  Radomir Janjic, a pensioner who was sitting in the back part of the second car, stated for "Politika" that the explosion ejected him out of the train car, throwing him as far as the closest house nearby.  The daily newspaper from Rome, "Republika", in an article by its correspondent in Leskovac, entitled "Corpses Among Charred Beams," wrote about "the astonishment by residents of Grdelica because of such direct killing of civilians."  Several residents of Grdelic stated for various media that this is not the first time that this railway bridge has been targeted, and that during the attack carried out on the previous day, the train had been short of the bridge by only 100 meters.  All houses within a 150 meter circle of the bridge have been damaged, with broken windows and damaged roofs, with telephone lines leading to Skopije having been cut off.

When Dr. Tomislav Cvetanovic arrived on the scene with his team of emergency medical personnel, two cars were still burning, while others were strewn about on both sides of the rails.  People were groaning, while some of them crawled out of broken windows.  Journalists, who headed toward Grdulicka Gorge at about 3 p.m. that day, could see melted steel and observe that at least ten people had been killed, 16 wounded, and were faced with the possibility of a higher number of casualties, since the Southern Morava River might have carried away several bodies.  Director of the Health Center of Leskovac, Er. Tomislav Cvetkovic, stated for the Beta agency that on that day around 3 p.m., 16 people had been accepted at his hospital, including 4 children.  The Beta reported counted 7 completely charred bodies, while he saw human body parts strewn all over the ridge above the rails.  According to the injured conductor who remains at the hospital in Leskovac, the train was carrying 50 passengers.  Among the injured there were 4 children, with speculation that the count of those injured is higher, as some of them were immediately taken to the emergency hospitals in Grdelica and Predejan.  The Commander for the Region of Jablanica, Zivojin Stefanovic stated that now it is clear that NATO is attacking civilians.

In the description of the event, one detail, indicating the scrupulousness of the perpetrator, is nothing short of astonishing.  Some time passed between the first projectile and the ones that followed, certainly enough for the pilot of the plane   assuming that he saw the train on the railway line which he bombed at noon, and it certainly appears that he could clearly see it   not to be charged of criminal negligence, but with clear intent to kill.

NATO Spokesman, Jamie Shea, claims, word for word, that "the bridge is a vital line for supplying FRY military and security personnel in Kosovo," pointing to the fact that "incoming military intelligence reports indicate that a train was located on or near the bridge at that time."  Shea stated that NATO, as he put it, "deeply regrets any civilian casualties which arise as the result of air strikes," but added that NATO is "intensifying its campaign against legitimate military targets," and that "such casualties, as tragic as they are, cannot turn NATO away from its ultimate objective."  Answering the question whether an investigation will be carried out concerning this event, and whether he can guarantee that the pilot responsible will be punished, Shea stated: "This mission will be examined like all others, but do kindly remember that a bridge constitutes a legitimate military target."

NATO Commander in Chief, General Wesley Clark, stated the next day at the NATO Command Center briefing in Bruxelles, that the NATO pilot had shot the train in two goes, that "the pilot's mission was to destroy the bridge" and that he, "once he realized at the last split second that a train is beginning to cross the bridge," he "was unable to stop the rocket."  However, General Clark self-accusingly defended himself when he stated that the pilot "still wanted to get the job done," even though "he realized that with the first shot he had hit the train," which is why he returned...

If the world were such as it should be, some people might easily relocate from Bruxelles to the Hague...
On the same day that the passenger train was hit, a NATO propaganda program could be caught on TV screens in Belgrade, albeit with a lot of video problems, but with loud and clear audio, with the following message: "Dear Serbs, you realize probably from the bombing thus far that NATO only bombs military targets   with surgical precision..."  In fact, with such precision that after every bombing, an entire surgery clinic is not enough to treat the wounded.

Is it not the case that the intervention was justified by "disproportional use of force" by Yugoslav Armed Forces?  In which way is this military campaign now proportional?  In one announcement, the Yugoslav Army Spokesman compared the amount of high explosives used thus far with the destructive power of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, while the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs, one week later, stated Russian estimates that the amount of explosives which had been dropped on Yugoslavia up to that point was equivalent for two Hiroshimas.  General Clark stated that until April 13, 5924 sorties had been flown above Yugoslavia.

According to our statistics, over 300 civilians were killed in these attacks, with over 3000 seriously injured (in Kursumlija, for instance, the first attack left 13 dead and 25 injured; in Vranje two people were killed, 23 wounded; in Aleksinac there are 12 dead and over 40 wounded; in Pristina, 10 killed and 8 wounded).  Chief of the VMA Military Hospital Complex, General Zco Jovicic, stated that in NATO attacks on the neighboring army barracks during the previous night, between 16 and 20 patients at the VMA had suffered injuries from the bombing, some of them having come there for treatment from previous bombing injuries.

At least six bridges have been destroyed, with eight damaged bridges: the Varadin Bridge on the Danube, in Novi Sad,  was destroyed on April 1, 1999; the "Sloboda" Bridge, on the Danube, in the same city, was destroyed three days later, on April 4; highway traffic and railway bridges near Backa Palanka were damaged on April 4; the bridge near Bogojevo, on April 5; the bridge over the Ibar River, near Miljanovac, on the same day...  With the assistance from an Ecumenical humanitarian organization, journalist of the "Nezavisni," a magazine in Vojvodian, released a series of six color postcards of Novi Sad with photographs taken by photographer Martin Candir.  These horrid postcards with words "Greetings from Novi Sad," on which the time of destruction and damaging of bridges is inscribed, are now traveling around the whole world as a unique message.
After the bombing of about TV transmitters on April 13   on Jastrebac, on Gucevo near Loznica, on Cota (Mount Fruska), Cigot and Tornik, near Uzice, on Crveni Vrh near Jagodina   the Baciste Hotel, located near the peak of Kopaonik Mountain, which is famous for its family holiday atmosphere, was burned to the ground by NATO bombs that same night.  The ground satellite antenna in Prilike, near Ivanjica, also became a target during that same night.  Does anyone remember how exciting was the opening of this satellite in this small village, which until that time was only known for being 5 kilometers distant from Ivanjica.  Now those five kilometers are strewn with broken roofs and shattered glass.  Yugoslavia is left without satellite links to Australia, Aftica and Europe, with only alternatives been round about, or at the very least, extremely difficult.  The destruction of this station indicates nothing else but the intention to add complete isolation and complete degradation of all aspects of life to the systematic destruction of this country.  At NATO headquarters they are gleefully "calculating their successes," while they cynically claim that the result of the destruction of antennas on every other hill in Serbia is that commanders will no longer be able to use cellular phones for communicating.

In Pancevo, Novi Sad, Sombor, Smederevo and other places, gasoline refineries and storage tanks of crude liquid components and chemicals for use in the gasoline and the chemical industries have been destroyed, along with storage tanks of crude oil, petroleum, and gasoline.  Night in and night out the refineries in Pancevo and Novi Sad were the scenes of real infernos cause by bombs, with firefighters working round the clock to contain the fires.  It is very likely that in the upcoming winter, New Belgrade, Zemu and Kragujevac, along with several other cities, will have great difficulties in providing heating for their entire populations because their heating plants have been bombed.
On Good Friday, at 1:16 p.m. vital parts of the "Zastava" car factory in Kragujevac which supports over 20,000 families were bombed.  Images speak for themselves, especially the one showing a crumpled up body of a little white Yugo on the assembly line.

Several projectiles hit the "Zastava-Energetika" plant, which is a part of the "Zastava" Auto Factory, a plant which serviced the factory and provided heating for the city of Kragujevac, its apartments, schools, government buildings and hospitals.  Bombs also destroyed a part of the factory designated as "Zastava Trucks", which is also called by some "Industrial Vehicles" or "Iveko".  The distance between those buildings is over a mile.  74 workers were injured, of which 27 have been kept for further treatment.  Two people were urgently operated on, with another three having been transferred to the surgery department of the Kragujevac Hospital Center.  Injured workers were still being dragged out of the rubble on the morning of the next day.

The Serbian Orthodox Church from the time of Knez Milos, whose portals were witness to several important meetings in the history of modern Serbia, with Serbian independence having been declared there in 1878.  This historic church is lodged between Lepenica and the old part of the "Zastava" factory, with its windows having been shattered in the blast.  The walls on the adjoining buildings for the priests are cracked, their windows are shattered, roofs damaged, with some doors having been dislodged from their frames.  Damage evident on the buildings of the old assembly, a historical monument located in the portal of the church.  The wave after the explosion shattered everything which could be shattered on the apartment buildings which the residents of Kragujevac call "Zastava's high rises".  In the pedestrian zone and along the main street, the shop windows on nearly every store, bank and restaurant are shattered, with this tornado of destruction having extended right up to the Community Court building, located at the very center of Kragujevac.

It could be said that with the killing of "Zastava", this city which literally grew up with this 140 year-old factory, has now been brought to its lowest point not since October 21, 1941, when the Germans bombed Kragujevac, but since the liberation in 1944, when the old factory was emptied of all its equipment, the Germans having taken everything to Germany.  "Zastava" is one of the rare factories in Serbia in which three generations of families all work at this factory.  Immediately after the bombing, "Zastava's" workers, who tried to protect the factory with their bodies, as human shields, gathered in front of the factory with the intention of joining the firefighters and rescue teams, according to "Nezavisna svetlost" ("Independent Light") daily reports.  However, workers were prevented in this out of security reasons, because many secondary fires broke out, continuing right into the next day.  Tomorrow, around 12 o'clock, a protest meeting was held in front of the directorate building.  Thousands of people later walked through the factory complex, like a procession, stepping over rubble and passing destroyed factory buildings.

In the second bombing of "Zastava" of Kragujevac, which NATO carried out on April 12, 1999, between 2:43 and 2:50 a.m., hence in the night between the first and second days of the Orthodox Easter, 36 workers were injured.  They received emergency treatment at Zastava's Institute for Health Care, from where they were taken to the Kragujevac Hospital Center, where four seriously injured workers were kept for further treatment.

Fourteen projectiles directly hit and destroyed several buildings in the factory complex, causing enormous financial damage, with one projectile remaining unexploded near the entrance to the factory, near a place which the residents of Kragujevac call "Six Poplars".  Fire brigades from "Zastava", the city of Kragujevac, the Yugoslav Army, the "Filip Kljajic" factory, and the Kragujevac "Municipal Cleaning Authority" all worked jointly all night and the next day to contain the fires.

That night bombs were dropped for the second time on the Automotive Factory, destroying "Zastava's" Smithy which is renowned among metallurgists, with all that remains of the heavy steam hammers and vices are butted wrecks.  "Zastava's" prized Tool Shop was also destroyed, the place where the highest skill of the old smiths ("he can make you whole out of steel as you stand") and the new technology is concentrated.  Standing between the destroyed smithy and the remains of the ERC (Electronic Computer Center, among the first of its kind in the Serbian industry, with the running joke that the workers of Kragujevac once caused interruptions in the electronic system by chilling beer on the electronic system cooler), Borivoje Radic, MP and president of local government, who is otherwise a quiet and withdrawn man, says with some difficulty for local TV that "This indicates that the people who did this are losing their mind!"  Milan Beko, Director of Zastava, helplessly explains that immediately after the first wave of destruction, they attempted to establish contact with other factories in Serbia in order to make use of the Zastava's undamaged equipment, and to find programs which would put the factory back into operation.  But now they simply gave up since they simply don't know when the destruction will end, with the vital parts of the factory having been bombed, so that its operating has been made impossible at this moment.  Reports indicate that one of the bombs fell on the very spot on which Mirko Marjanovic, President of the Serbian Government, stood yesterday when he gave a speech to the workers, near the entrance to the "new automobile factory", close to the location of the destroyed Smithy.
Kragujevac coped with great difficulty the developments in the Yugoslav crisis thus far.  Before the Yugoslav crisis, this city was ranked tenth in Serbia for its standard of living, but during the crisis it fell to 163rd place.  An American Vietnam war veteran signed a plan and issued an order for condemning an entire city to a state of collective social destitution on the Orthodox Easter of 1999.  Milan Beko estimated that the destruction of Zastava, which automatically puts a hold to an entire chain of partnerships in production, directly threatens the existence of around 100,000 people.

NATO commanders appear to take literally the slogan which appeared at a meeting in Niksic: "Why don't you bomb us, we're not lepers..."

Our correspondent from Valjevo writes that the residents of this city which is renowned for its love of freedom jokingly say that after all this passes by they "wont be able to look in the eye" anyone from Cacak (bombed six times) or Kragujevac.  The peasants in Tupanci, which is ten kilometers distant, could not find words to describe what happened to them.  On "Vujic" Television, Srdjan Vujic, Red Cross Secretary, answers to the question whether humanitarian help arrived yet, that for now the only thing which arrived is a package from the American people with the message: "From the American people to the Serbian people, with love!" and he "confirms" the story in a way particular to people from Valjevo that "beside all the hard feelings, the package was accepted anyway."

And then, on Tuesday, April 13, the night sky began to thunder with the sound of planes which a little before 6 p.m. hit the biggest factory in Valjevo, called "Krusik."  That fact that the damage was greater than initially thought was ascertained after the visit by the President of the Assembly of Citizens of the Yugoslav Parliament, Milomir Minic, who saw first hand that the nearby residential area, the hospital, the daycare center and the Agricultural School were all damaged...  By analogy with Cacak and other places, the residents of Valjevo, slightly sobered up, are now bracing for another attack...

Threats that NATO will bomb whatever it pleases, without regard for civilian casualties (people defending bridges with their bodies have been designated as volunteers), are being repeated constantly at briefings, slowly revealing the murderous intentions of an impossible mission without any clear political objective.

One city after another is being gutted of its infrastructure, electricity and heating plants, and industrial complexes   this is presently a method for "preventing the humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo."  The methods not- known-until-today for preventing humanitarian catastrophes also includes the detail that the Russian- Bielorussian humanitarian convoy of trucks was prevented for two whole days from crossing the Hungarian territory, "a partner for peace" who has opened its territory for the arrival of bombs.  The unheard of and totally unacceptable compromising of humanitarian personnel is included among NATO's methods   that is, of course, if it is proven in court that Steve Pratt's testimony of spying under the cover of the humanitarian organization CARE is true.

Another criminal act is the inciting of rebellion, encouragement of the separatist KLA, the servicing, and in Robin Cook's case, the reliance on information offered by the KLA leadership.  According to Beta Agency reports, on April 13, Russia expressed concern about the increasingly frequent headlines in the western press of "external aid" for the separatist KLA, stating that if those reports are true, this constitutes a "blatant breach of the embargo against FRY which the UN Security Council instituted with Resolution 1160."  "Russia is closely following all such worrisome news, and will demand that the UN Security Council and its Committee for Sanctions react in an appropriate way to all such blatant breaches of the Resolution," it is stated in the announcement issued by the Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Belgrade media report that on Monday, border units of the Yugoslav Army prevented an attempt by armed Albanian terrorists from entering FRY from the Albanian territory in the Kosara and Morina are, south of Djakovica, with 150 terrorists having been liquidated on that occasion.  Some foreign agencies are also reporting border squabbles, although without too much dramatization.  The Beta Agency and AP reported that on April 11, German authorities returned a bus full of KLA recruits which attempted to cross the Austrian border.  Sources in the KLA which are close to Reuters claim that 385 women and men from the so-called "Atlantic brigade" were assembled in a New York hotel, and that they planned to fly from the international airport in Newark to join the military training in one of the camps in Albania.

On Tuesday, April 13, some OESC observers and an Albanian Ministry reported that the Yugoslav Army entered the village of Kamenica, two kilometers into the territory of Albania, with tensions rising once again.  Milivoje Novkovic, Chief of the Information Bureau of the Supreme Headquarters of the Yugoslav Army, stated that such claims are malicious lies: "We have no need of anyone else's territory, while no one can take away what's ours," he specified, accusing NATO of inciting the KLA to enter the territory of Yugoslavia, and that the Albanian chaos was not created by the Yugoslav Army, but by NATO, which tries to cover up the political and moral failures of its aggression against Yugoslavia.  Miroslav Pajic, Advisor with the Yugoslav Ministry of Foreign Affairs, stated for CNN that around 6000 armed separatists attempted to infiltrate Yugoslav territory, and that the Yugoslav Army never wished to be on foreign soil.

London's The Economist claims that there are around 300,000 people in Albania presently without food, clothing and a roof above their heads, that this is about 10 percent of the Albanian population, that nearly every rickety tractor and truck is being used to transport Kosovar refugees to houses, camps, sports stadiums, abandoned political prisons and unused mines throughout different parts of Albania, that some 20,000 of them are in Kukus, that some have found a place in homes, and some on the streets, under nylon sheeting.  It is said about Kukus that it is a city which survived on the salaries of guest workers abroad, and the export to Kosovo of "household essentials such as automatic rifles."  Now they welcome NATO, Italian soldiers who are making tent settlements for refugees with tents which were headed for potential use in Yugoslavia, according to The Economist.  Beside the fear of Serbian retaliation which such deadly weapons can inspire, Albanians are afraid that the coming of Albanian refugees could contribute to their social balance in an indirect way.  According to The Economist, some of them are perceived as more "sophisticated", as people who did not grow up in isolation, as people who have connections with Europe, while some are perceived as being connected with drug trafficking.  They fear that the Kosovars might disturb the fragile balance between the impoverished norther region of Albania and its more prosperous southern region whose representatives presently hold power.  It is suspected that Salis Berisa might attempt once again to take power, as he already tried last fall, with the backing of his well armed supporters...

What follows is a "domino effect" which the Americans interpreted as the reason for the war, and are now using it as a pretext for a new escalation   in order to return refugees to Kosovo   which will deploy tanks and "Apache" helicopters.  The option of sending refugees to remote islands fell though: it appears that most refugees refuse to go too far from their homes; some reports indicate that an epidemic has broken out, while stomach problems are appearing in some locations because people are not used to the kind of food they are being offered (vegetarian goulash similar dishes), which was also observed in Somalia.

NATO, which appears to have lost its head, is abusing reports by humanitarians regarding the plight of the refugees.  It holds meetings and almost hysterically pumps the ears of its viewers and incessantly repeats at briefings statements given by refugees in Albania about being stripped of their documents, about being systematically driven out of their homes, with reports which are being aired in recent days of women who desperately squeeze their hands as they speak to attractive reporters, who are heavily made up and with expressions of horror, about being raped.  The Pentagon issued claims that there is evidence of so-called burial cites.  Some reports mention a fairly fantastic claim that the evidence of burial cites was observed inside an old monastery.  The Yugoslav Government, through its Ambassador to the UN, Vladislav Jovanovic, denies all claims that government forces stand behind any such activities, and that such things, if they do exist, are the work of irresponsible individuals.

And what is the Alliance doing?  It says that it will continue its bombing which it turns out began to be planned in May of 1998!  Furthermore, the Alliance is openly supporting a separatist rebellion which evidently suffered disastrous defeat on ground, while it calls upon its leaders as key witnesses (Taci, alias "the Snake", calls Robin Cook during a briefing in London, using his cellular phone, in order to say that what NATO is doing in Serbia is ver positive).  The height of cynicism comes from the mouth of NATO's spokesman, Shea, who at a briefing of that military machine praises "Iridime" and another company for securing free telephone calls for refugees, he announces quite shamelessly.

The great machine which is evidently not programmed for correcting, is evidently filling psychological banks by forcing a necrophiliac voyeurism which was known in previous wars   we wrote books about the psychological production of this programmed language   and is pumping more adrenaline into public opinion by parading on TV magnified, naked, bloody, dirty human tragedy.  Under the inertia of this machine gone mad, a beautiful country is being destroyed, a country full of sinful beings who are rescuing their lives and anything else of worldly value, with something that is a mixture of collected endurance, awakened resistence and light-hearted fatalism in tragic moments.  The famous singer from Vojvodina, Djorjde Balasevic, puts it in his lyrics: "Rockets fly - that's the way they go, My friend the farmer, knocked down a U.F.O...."

Regarding the destroyed bridges between Srem and Backa in Vojvodina, Balasevic jokingly shouts out to his public in Belgrade's Square of Freedom: "What, you thought we wont be able to make it?  Heck, Backa is not a jacket that you can break open with two buttons..."

Is it possible to harness this enormous energy of the citizens of Yugoslavia, energy which is causing so much anger among the planers of war, for consolidating the domestic situation in the area of high conflict?  Slobodan Jovanovic stated some time ago that a country at war is in far greater need of politics than a country at peace, for mistakes in war are harder to correct and consequences are longer lasting.  That is why it is worth listening carefully to people who propose (Vuk Draskovic, on Tuesday) that at this moment Yugoslavia should begin its own peace initiative, for the military objective of this country is not to defeat NATO, but to successfully resist the aggressor, to survive with dignity and to open its doors to the future.  It would be intelligent to lower all party flags and not to infiltrate the people's popular resistence against war and aggression.  This is the energy which "caused the computers in Bruxelles and the Pentagon to crash", and it should under no circumstances be wasted on petty party squabbling and suppressed differences.  What is at issue is the life and death of an entire country and thousands of people.

In its blindness, the NATO war machine is ignoring all attempts at consolidating the situation with the intercession of Rugova.  It is clear why those who took up the KLA cause are now firmly refusing everything else, and persisting in their military solution, mistakenly thinking that NATO soldiers on ground could be treated objectively differently from the Wermacht army fifty-four years ago.

On April 14, the Beta Agency and Associated Press that the US and NATO officials who are considering the option of sending ground troupes to Yugoslavia are intensely studying the history of Yugoslavia's resistance during World War II, when hundreds of thousands of highly trained German soldiers did not manage to brake the decisive resistance offered by the Partisans.  The Nazi campaign, nicknamed "Operation Punishment", reflected Hitler's anger "with Yugoslav Partisans who overthrew the government when Belgrade signed a pact with Berlin."  Agency reports point to the fact that the name of the Nazi campaign was appropriate, for "Yugoslav civilians were attacked with a savagery which goes beyond anything that NATO might take into its consideration."  Ultimately, it was Wermacht which was punished.  When for the first time, last spring, NATO studied the option of sending in ground troupes, Clinton Administration planers pointed to the German experience as one of the reasons against sending in ground troupes in solving the Kosovo crisis.

"We always study historical battles   that's something we always do," stated the Representative of American Ground Forces, Major Sheila Stelvagen.  But she adds, "history by itself is not enough   you must look at the big picture."  Agencies note that Pentagon planers are paying attention about not going overboard in their comparisons between the two armies which used different weapons and fought within different political frameworks.  But the difficulty of the terrain and the feistiness of the Yugoslav people still remain a big common denominator, the Pentagon notes.  The number of the German invading force of 200,000 thousand   which is still a figure which some American officials cite as necessary for an invasion of Yugoslavia today   changed after 1941 from 60,000 soldiers to a maximum of 700,000, the Pentagon observes.  Despite this, the Germans never managed to defeat the Yugoslav resistence force.  When they are searching through history, the people who on the basis of a Fukujima novel, in its digest version, believe that the end of history has really come about, and who at every mention of the cause of events disdainfully retort that history should be left aside, and the future should be looked to, might ask Ms. Medlin Albright, if she hasn't forgotten, about how Germany championed the protection of Germans outside of Germany as a justification for expansion and war.  And what followed...

In the third week of this action of destruction, with a big butterfly on her lapel, Ms. Albright, speaking in a voice of a little girl, in Oslo on April 13, announced that she agreed with the Russian Ambassador Ivanov that they disagree, that is to say, that they narrowed down the filed of their differences.  Ivanov stated that the sooner the bombing stops, the sooner a political solution can be achieved.  The Russian reconnaissance ship "Liman" is traveling as slowly as the folklorized French ship from 1914.  The Yugoslav declaration, dated Monday, April 12, regarding its joining of the Russian and Bielorussian Federation was characterized in Belgrade's newspapers as a historic step toward integration and the strengthening of stability, security and peace at the foot of a new century, while it is being carefully studied in Moscow from the perspective of international law.  One piece of news might be of significance in this context   Russian President Boris Yeltsin appointed his former Prime Minister Victor Chernomirdin for his "Special Envoy" in negotiating the Kosovo Crisis.  He stated that Russia has a chance of stopping the war in FR Yugoslavia, for there at this moment there are still no victors, nor the vanquished, so that he did not rule out the possibility of traveling to the US for talks "at the highest level."  The appointment of such a powerful man, with such strong references in the West, perhaps indicates a way toward some denouement.  And how long will that take?

After the Orthodox Easter there is no doubt in Yugoslavia that the NATO machine is entering the next phase of a war in which it no longer hides its intention of historically snubbing one country, of expressing complete disdain for historical memory, of destroying its resources, of making development impossible and of taking away its future, with the generals, the hawks among the politicians, no longer hide this intention.  Some senator from Arizona is gathering applause and is not coming off the TV screens with the message that the bombing should be greatly intensified, despite civilian casualties.  He criticizes Clinton: "You can't win a war if you don't wage a war!"

And he is not waging one, is he?  Judging by one of the reports issued by the Federal Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Yugoslavia, only in the first week of April 1999, in over 1000 sorties, the NATO alliance deployed 430 planes, of which 330 are fighter aircraft, with hundreds of cruise missiles fired, and 3000 tons of high explosives dropped.  Presently a new contingent of 300 planes is being sought for.  On Wednesday, April 10, the Beta Agency and Reuters reported that the US announced sending in another 82 war planes to Europe as reinforcement.  The Financial Times reports doubts expressed by some analysts that Clark's demand for new aircraft is in fact an indirect admission of the fact that the present tactic of gradual intensifying of attacks on Yugoslavia is misguided.  Clinton is demanding another four billion dollars for continuing the aggression.
UN Special Envoy for Human Rights in the Former Yugoslavia, Jirzhi Dinstbir reminded journalists on April 13 that the Albanians in Kosovo, even after their autonomy was discontinued, "had rights which the Czechs under a shaky communist regime could only dream of."

"When he was not in prison, Demaci could hop over to the west to accept the prestigious 'Sakharov' award, while we in Czechoslovakia published 'Lidov's newspaper' illegally, while kiosks in Kosovo completely legally sold the Albanian political weekly 'Koha ditore', right up to the moment when the first bomb was dropped," Dinstbir stressed. 

According to him, there was no ethnic cleansing in Kosovo last summer, but "only unjustifiable brutality on the part of Serbian forces in their battle against the guerillas, but after the Holbrooke-Milosevic agreement, the Serbs merely saw that the world, with its hands crossed, watched how all deserted Serbian positions were being taken over by the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA)."

The recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature, Aleksandar Solzhienitsin, stated on April 9 that he cannot understand why European governments are "applauding such actions" in which NATO wishes to destroy a beautiful European country.  "NATO threw out the United Nations, trampled the UN General Principles and established the law of the old ages   the right of the powerful.  And all of them are telling us to accept such laws and to enter the next century to live in such a world."

Former President of Portugal, acting President of the International Organization of the European Movement, Mario Soares, believes that the NATO intervention against Yugoslavia is creating bigger problems from those which it was supposed to solve, and that instead of preventing, it will increase human suffering and tragedies, with the attack against Yugoslavia and the marginalization of the United nations representing a very dangerous precedent with potentially grave consequences for the future.  He pointed out that he is not against the right to intervene when the defense of human rights is at issue, but not through a military-political organizations such as NATO.  Soares believes that every armed conflict is yet another defeat for humanity: "Wars, like dictatorships, can mark a beginning, even though that is sometimes unclear, but it is never now when and how it will end."

Team of VREME Journalists