"Fifth Column," Not Street "Revolutionaries" Toppled Milosevic (Oct 25, 2000)

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TiM GW Bulletin 2000/10-9

Oct. 25, 2000

How the West Won Serbia: “Like Frankenstein's Monster, the Monster Created by Mr. Milosevic Ended by Turning on Him”

"Fifth Column," Not Street "Revolutionaries" Toppled Milosevic

Kostunica Accepts Responsibility for Yugoslav Forces’ “Genocide” in Kosovo; UN Panel Urges Kosovo Independence: Holbrooke, One of the Biggest Serbophobes, Meets and Praises Kostunica

Belgrade 1. “Fifth Column,” Not Street “Revolutionaries,” Toppled Milosevic

Skopje 6. Holbrooke, One of the Biggest Serbophobes, Meets and Praises KostunicaOct. 25,2000

BELGRADE, Oct. 24 - Two Serb police generals had met with CIA operatives in Budapest several weeks before the Yugoslav “coup d’etat” on Oct. 5, hailed around the western world as a “democratic revolution,” said Vojislav Seselj, leader of the Serb Radical Party and a vice president of the former Yugoslav government, during a televised Oct. 23 debate in Belgrade with Nenad Canak, leader of the Vojvodina Social Democratic Party and the newly elected president of the Vojvodina parliament.

Seselj said these two CIA moles inside Slobodan Milosevic’s security apparatus orchestrated the wresting of the police control away from the government of Serbia, according to several TiM sources in Belgrade who watched the debate on TV Pink. Seselj didn’t name the two “fifth columnists,” but we will name some such Milosevic insiders in the next story, with the help of a Wall Street Journal report (see Item 2 of this TiM Bulletin).

Furthermore, Seselj said that these same two Milosevic police generals - CIA moles, were in charge of the clumsy police operations in Kosovo in 1998-1999, including real or imagined massacres of the Kosovo Albanians for which the Serbs were blamed (e.g., at Junik and Drenica). Which were later used as a pretext for the launch of the 1999 “humanitarian war,” the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia.

Seselj also said that the “special” American envoy for Yugoslav affairs, William Montgomery, whom Madeleine Albright sent from Zagreb to Budapest in early August to direct the Serb opposition efforts leading up to the Sep. 24 elections (see Washington’s Move - “a Kiss of Death” to Democracy in Serbia, Says Serb Opposition Leader, Aug. 16), has now set up shop in Serbia. Montgomery is reportedly working out of an office on the campus of Milan Panic’s ICN Galenika pharmaceutical factory in Zemun, a western Belgrade suburb of which Seselj was mayor.

Seselj was certainly in a position to know all these things beyond what’s happening in Zemun. Not only was he Yugoslavia’s vice president and a Milosevic government coalition partner, but also a man who has been very well connected with the Serb security and military establishment throughout the turbulent 1990s.

Seselj’s latest allegations confirm our own assessment that the Serb “ostrich revolution” was just that. Ostriches marched and screamed while a quiet CIA-orchestrated “coup d’etat” took place in the background (see Serb "Ostrich Revolution" Was Anything But Spontaneous).

“Like Frankenstein's monster, the monster created by Mr. Milosevic ended by turning on him”

BELGRADE, Oct. 23 - The Wall Street Journal reporters, Robert Block and Matthew Kaminski, staged a coup of their own when they dug out and published identities of the Milosevic insiders who turned coat on their boss. To write a fascinating account of insiders’ betrayal, headlined “Milosevic Insiders Let Him Fall, Some Assert, Obligating Kostunica,” and published in the Journal’s Oct. 23 issue, these two reporters had gained access to Zoran Djindjic, a western lackey and the real DOS boss who masterminded Kostunica’s campaign, and a number of other DOS and Yugoslav government officials.

That by itself would not have been enough, however, were Djindjic and other DOS leaders not anxious to spill the beans. Why did they want to? Who knows. Maybe so they could claim credit for the “revolution” before anyone else did? Just as that mayor of Cacak did (Velimir Ilic - see Serb "Ostrich Revolution" Was Anything But Spontaneous). Whatever their motives, here are some excerpts from that Journal story, based on the DOS leaders’ tales:

“On Oct. 3, two days before Yugoslavia's revolution hit the streets of Belgrade, Serbia's democratic opposition received an unlikely visitor: Gen. Mihajlo Ulemek, a man better known and feared as "Legija," commander of one of Serbia's most notorious paramilitary police units: the JSO, or Special Operations Unit. […]

"They [Gen. Ulemek and his cohorts] gave us guarantees that during the demonstration [planned for Thursday, Oct. 5], they would not shoot at the people if the people didn't attack or kill police," said Zoran Djindjic, who coordinated the meetings with police and state security officials for the opposition. […]

Interviews with officials in the new regime and diplomats, as well as organizers of the opposition demonstration, point to a conspiracy backed by senior members of the country's most ruthless security forces, on which Mr. Milosevic had relied to stay in power. In the end, like Frankenstein's monster, the monster created by Mr. Milosevic ended by turning on him. […]

Dusan Mihajlovic, a leading member of the Democratic Opposition of Serbia, says that after the elections, senior police officials began contacting them. "Smart people inside the police wanted to prevent a catastrophe," Mr. Mihajlovic says. "And they wanted to help us resolve this without bloodshed. It was their initiative, not ours. They were the ones who called DOS; DOS didn't call them." […]

The turning point, say DOS officials, came when Gen. Ulemek and other state security officials abandoned their longtime boss for the opposition. Among the officers that opposition officials claim backed them were Gen. Vlastimir "Rodja" Djordjevic, who commanded Serbia's run-of-the-mill street police, and Gen. Geza Farkas, a chief of Yugoslav military intelligence, whose main role according to Mr. Djindjic was "keeping quiet."

The most important police were those with links to paramilitary units, such as Gen. Ulemek's Special Operations Unit, or JSO. While technically part of the police structure, the JSO took its orders from senior politicians such as Nikola Sainovic, the deputy prime minister in Yugoslavia's federal government and Mr. Milosevic's right-hand man.

These units were the shock troops of the failed Greater Serbia experiment, first in Croatia and then in Bosnia, which used drastic -- although ultimately unsuccessful -- means to keep those regions within a Serbia-dominated Yugoslav federation. The JSO later became the hammer of Serbia's efforts to crush an Albanian uprising in Kosovo. Most recently, Kosovo Albanians and local human-rights groups accused Gen. Ulemek of leading Serbian forces that massacred Kosovo Albanian civilians in Drenica in 1998. […]

Whether any deals were made for immunity from prosecution is unknown. The police have refused to comment, and journalists have been warned not to contact them by DOS leaders. "The recipe for such events had a price," says Nebojsa Covic, an opposition leader who played a prominent role in the days before the uprising. Asked how high that price was, he says "enormous," but offered no details.

According to Mr. Mihajlovic, who himself once worked for Yugoslav state security, the police gave the DOS "signals" that the party had to deliver large crowds of people in order for the security forces to withdraw their support for the regime. "They kept saying 'do this and we'll do that,' " he says.

The police told the DOS that no policeman would shoot at a crowd of more than 200,000 people. "The big question was whether we could do it. If there were only 100,000 people in the street they would have been run over by tanks. That was the order," says Mr. Mihajlovic.

As an added level of insurance, says Velimir Ilic, the mayor of Cacak in central Serbia and a fiery opposition figure, the Democratic Opposition of Serbia recruited its own militia of body builders, karate students and paramilitaries commanded by local police officers and disgruntled army reservists from the 63rd Paratroop Battalion. They had access to automatic rifles and other weapons. […]

On the day of the rally (Oct. 5), DOS security along with Otpor activists monitored police movements on radio scanners and hand-held radios. When people attacked the parliament and TV station, Slobodan Pajic, a former police captain who is now the DOS security chief, moved in with 50 men to rescue police from angry mobs.

By then Mr. Milosevic was on the phone to Gen. Pavkovic ordering him to send in troops, says Ljubodrag Stojadinovic, a former army spokesman with close ties to senior officers. Gen. Pavkovic won't say if Mr. Milosevic ordered him to act, saying it was a "secret." According to Mr. Stojadinovic, an old classmate of the general, the chief of staff kept telling the president, "We are going to move," but never did.

"…His [Djindjic’s] colleague in the opposition, Mr. Covic, says that in the euphoria of the fall of the Milosevic government, "What happened and how it happened is our thing and should be left as our thing. Now is not the time to look into these matters".”

TiM Ed.: “What happened and how it happened is our thing and should be left as our thing?” What an extraordinary statement by a member of a new “democratic” government in Yugoslavia. For, it could have come right out of the KGB.

And what of the Serb ostriches who were duped into believing they voted for an open government, and that they carried the “revolution?” Don’t they have the right to know what sort of a new government they’ve now got; by what means it has gained power; and at what price?

If Gen. Ulemek is indeed responsible for some of the alleged atrocities that the Serb paramilitary or special forces have committed, and if he has been able now to strike a deal with ”Dindjic and pals,” doesn’t the Serb public deserve to know what that “enormous” price was to which Covic has alluded?

If answer is no, the public should mind its own business, and all that backroom wheeling and dealing with Milosevic’s henchmen is “our thing,” as Covic has also said, then why should the Serb public trust the new government any more than it did the Milosevic regime? Especially, if no one is prosecuted for the alleged crimes, and the old Yugoslav state security turncoats keep popping up in DOS uniforms, such as Dusan Mihajlovic, for example?

Finally, another sidebar of the Oct. 23 Journal story is that the much ballyhooed “march on Belgrade,” staged by the self-aggrandizing mayor of Cacak was just “an added level of insurance,” rather than the engine of the “revolution,” which is the way western media (e.g., CNN, MSNBC, New York Times…) had depicted it in their initial reporting.

3. Kostunica Accepts Responsibility for Yugoslav Forces’ “Genocide” in Kosovo

NEW YORK, Oct. 24 - Yugoslavia’s new president promised during the election campaign that power would not change him. But since the Oct. 5 “revolution” that swept him into power, Vojislav Kostunica has been changing his tune faster than a tap dancer changes his step.

His latest turn-about-face came in an interview with the CBS “60 Minutes,” which was released to the media in New York on Monday (Oct. 23). Kostunica acknowledged that, “Yugoslav security forces committed genocide in Kosovo, and said he was ready to take responsibility for crimes committed by his predecessor Slobodan Milosevic,” according to a Reuters newswire Oct. 24 report.

"Those are the crimes and the people that have been killed are victims," Kostunica said, adding: "I must say also there are a lot of crimes on the other side and the Serbs have been killed. I am ready to, how to say, to accept the guilt for all those people who have been killed so I'm trying to, taking responsibility for what happened on my part. For what Milosevic had done, and as a Serb, I will take responsibility for many of these, these crimes."

Kosovo legally remains part of Serb-dominated Yugoslavia, but has been run as a de facto international protectorate since June last year, when NATO bombing drove out Serb forces. But even that may not last long, as you can see from our next story (see Item 4 below).

Asked whether Milosevic would stand trial somewhere, Kostunica replied: "Yes, somewhere." Asked about Serb crimes against humanity, he said Milosevic was "among those responsible." Kostunica said his government had not arrested Milosevic because there were "too many things to be done at this moment, too many priorities."

TiM Ed.: Kostunica’s apology for Kosovo “genocide,” and the Yugoslav security forces’ alleged misdeeds, rings particularly hollow in view of the revelations by Vojislav Seselj and the above Wall Street Journal article. That violence against the Albanians may have been staged by the Milosevic goons so that Washington could blame the Serbs and use that as a pretext for a military intervention, makes Kostunica’s comments sound pathetic patsy.

Meanwhile, the TiM readers who responded to the latest TiM poll proved they weren’t being fooled by either Kostunica or his DOS allies. Here are the TiM poll results, as of today (Oct. 24).

Q: Vojislav Kostunica has vowed he would never let power change him. Has he kept his promises?

As you can see, about three quarters of respondents think Kostunica has changed, and only 18% think that he has kept all his promises.

NEW YORK, Oct. 24 - Taking turns at gradually slicing up like salami the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica, Washington’s European and South African stooges combined to produce a 297-page report that said Kosovo “should become an independent country after it fulfills a host of conditions,” according to an Oct. 24 Associated Press report from the United Nations in New York.

An international panel recommended that the Serb province become a separate state when it can guarantee safety for its minorities and after it takes part in negotiations with other Balkan states on its future independence.

Washington dusted off an old Serb nemesis, South African judge Richard Goldstone, who was tapped to head the UN Commission on Kosovo. Goldstone was the first prosecutor of the UN War Crimes Tribunal at the Hague who proved his loyalty to the State Dept. by persecuting, rather than prosecuting, the accused Bosnian Serbs, and by ignoring the evidence that didn’t suit Washington’s purposes.

This writer, for example, twice wrote to Judge Goldstone offering to testify in the cases against Dr. Radovan Karadzic and Gen. Ratko Mladic (in 1995 and 1996). That’s because the TiM editor was actually in and around Srebrenica, and in the company of Dr. Karadzic and other Bosnian Serb leaders, when the alleged Srebrenica massacre was supposed to have taken place. Goldstone ignored both offers (see Bosnia: What's the Full Truth? - WSJ letter, 2/09/96) and A Balkan Affairs Potpourri - TiM GW Bulletin - 10/24/98).

Back the subject of Kosovo, Goldstone said at the Oct. 23 New York news conference launching the report, that the 11-member panel recognized that Kosovo's future status was controversial, but felt it had "a moral obligation" to make such recommendations. Considering Serb forces' ethnic cleansing of Kosovo Albanians, "it's not realistic or justifiable to expect the Albanians in Kosovo to accept rule from Belgrade."

TiM Ed.: A “moral obligation” should prevail over international law and a UN Security Council resolution? Now the TiM readers can see for themselves what sort of “kangaroo judges and courts” the UN uses.

So what’s really happening? Where did this UN Commission suddenly come from, appearing out of the blue and dropping a few pounds of worthless papers on the UN Secretary General’s desk? (Kofi Annan, by the way, the UN boss, was so impressed with the importance of that Goldstone Commission and their Kosovo recommendations that he skipped a scheduled meeting with “Goldstone et. al.” to make phone calls regarding the Middle East crisis).

Meanwhile, no country publicly supports independence for Kosovo, and diplomats at the UN have told the AP that the report's recommendation went beyond what Mr. Annan has been authorized to consider by the Security Council.

But these are fine legal points that can be easily dismissed on account of a “moral obligation,” as you heard Goldstone explain. “Might makes right” has been the only legal argument that the New World Order has depended on in dealing with the Serbs for the last 10 years or so. And especially at a time when 19 NATO nations ganged up on this small country, and bombed her to smithereens for 79 days, breaking all sorts of international laws in the process.

But don’t take our word for it. Just ask Goldstone and his commission. “The NATO intervention, the group concluded, was "illegal but legitimate," the Commission concluded. “Illegal because it did not receive approval from the Security Council, but legitimate because all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted, and there was no other way to stop the killings in Kosovo.”

“Illegal but legitimate!?” Now, that’s has got to be a new standard for oxymoronic double talk. Perhaps on a par with “guilty but innocent?”

So what’s really happening is as follows. Seeing a teeter-tottering Belgrade government, and a weak and vacillating new president of Yugoslavia - a politician who had already said that Serbia can exist without Kosovo (Kostunica - per a pre-election New York Times article), Washington and its allies have evidently decided to run a Mack truck through the UN Resolution 1244 (the one from June 1999 that guaranteed Yugoslavia’s sovereignty, and reaffirmed that Kosovo was an integral part of Serbia). And they put Goldstone behind the steering wheel.

Meanwhile, Slobodan Milosevic's Socialist Party (SPS) agreed on Oct. 23 to the makeup of a new transitional government for Yugoslavia's main republic, Serbia. Parliament speaker Dragan Tomic, an ally of Mr. Milosevic, confirmed an agreement was reached when he convened the Serbian parliament to approve the new government that will run the republic until early elections Dec. 23.

The 82 delegates from the Serbian Radical Party walked out as expected, but the remaining 130 deputies were enough for a quorum.

One day later, a new federal Yugoslav cabinet was also formed, with the DOS and G-17 candidates winning a majority of ministerial portfolios.

"That [diversity of opinions] is one of the remarkably good things about TiM. It represents a broad spectrum of views (Re. Prices in Serbia Triple, Oct. 24, 2000). One of the remarkably bad things about TiM is that it doesn't always agree with me."

6. Holbrooke, One of the Biggest Serbophobes, Meets and Praises KostunicaOct. 25,2000

SKOPJE, Oct. 25 - The man has been alternatively dubbed “Balkan Bully” and “Kissinger of the Balkans” by the sympathetic U.S. establishment media. He earned both epithets by his unceasing, relentless, multi-year repression of the Serbs.

This man demonstrated his deep-seated hatred of the Serbs when he called them “murderous assholes” in a discussion with ABC's Ted Koppel, according to a flattering Nov. 6, 1995 “NEW YORKER” article.

The racist remark seemed to shock even the veteran ABC newscaster... "That's very reassuring. I'll feel much better sending my son or daughter over there knowing that the Serbs are just murderous assholes, [expletive deleted]," Koppel replied tongue-in-cheek.

"Murderous assholes" is hardly the language graduates of this country's finest diplomatic schools are taught to use. Nor are the anchors of popular TV news programs expected to repeat them, so as to reinforce the negative impact, the TiM editor said in his Aug. 17, 1997 Washington Times column, WILL AMERICAN FORCES EVER LEAVE BOSNIA?

This man has also demonstrated his disrespect for the Orthodox Christianity when he snubbed the

Serb Bishop Artemije by ignoring him during a visit to Kosovo in June 1998, while posing for photographers with a Kosovo Albanian terrorist (see "Thugs of the World Unite!" - TiM GW Bulletin 98/6-7, 6/26/98).

This man was one of the world’s loudest cheerleaders of the NATO bombing of Serbia in 1999 which killed some 2,000 Serb civilians, many of them children, and destroyed much of the country’s civilian infrastructure (see TiM “Tour de Serbia” 1999).

In short, right alongside Madeleine Albright, the U.S. Secretary of Hate, who provoked and spearheaded the NATO bombing and who once said that the Serbs were “awful,” this man is one of the world’s biggest racists and Serbophobes.

Perhaps the only thing that exceeds his hatred of the Serbs is the size of his ego. When he and another State Department diplomat landed in Bosnia in 1997, enroute to Belgrade, one of the staffers wired back a terse message: “The egos have landed.”

Who is this man? His name is Richard Holbrooke, currently the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. But when he is not bullying or repressing the Serbs, the East Timorese or some other target nations on behalf of the New World Order (see Holbrooke in East Timor - Nov 28, 1999), this man enjoys the power and the perks of a Wall Street investment banker (Credit Suisse First Boston - between Dayton and the UN jobs).

Now you have a picture of what kind of a man swaggered into a Balkans summit meeting in Skopje (FYR Macedonia) today (Oct. 25), the first one also attended by the new Yugoslav president, Vojislav Kostunica.

Knowing what you know now about how much harm Holbrooke has done to the Serbian nation, and given that Kostunica is very much aware of it all (this writer can attest to that firsthand), what would you do if you were in Kostunica’s shoes in Skopje:

1. Walk out of the conference room when Holbrooke entered it, explaining to other attendees that you were going out for some fresh air.

2. Stay, but refuse to shake Holbrooke’s hand, unless he first publicly apologized to the Serbs for his racial slurs, for the genocidal sanctions, and for the bombing that he has helped incite.

3. Stay, ignore Holbrooke, and demand in your speech that Washington and Brussels (NATO) pay for full and unconditional war reparations to the Serbian people (estimated at $30 billion), and not just dangle conditional IMF or World Bank loans to Yugoslavia.

4. Stay, pretend everything is forgotten and hunky-dory; smile as you shake hands with an unrepentant archenemy of the Serbian people.

5. Stay, pretend everything is forgotten and hunky-dory; smile as you shake hands with an unrepentant archenemy of the Serbs, PLUS spend more than two hours after the Balkans summit in a private tête-à-tête with Holbrooke.

Well, what would you have done? (You can vote on this, by the way, in the latest TiM poll, available now at our web site).

Whatever your personal choice, any Serb leader worth his salt hopefully would have chosen one of

the first three options. Or better still, rather than cause a diplomatic scandal, a smart president would have refused to attend a conference without prior apologies and promises as outlined in 2. and 3. above, by the Serb enemies who demonized the entire nation for over a decade.

Sorry to disappoint you. Kostunica actually behaved at today’s meeting according to the script in point 5. above. Here’s a summary compiled from the Oct. 25 Associated Press and Reuters wire stories:

“President Vojislav Kostunica made the pledge to improve relations with its neighbors and the international community while meeting regional leaders and the U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Richard Holbrooke, during a one-day Balkans summit in Skopje, FYR Macedonia.

Following the summit, Kostunica held a further meeting with Holbrooke, lasting more than two hours. Afterward, Holbrooke said Washington's admiration for the change in government in Belgrade "can hardly be expressed, it is so great."

Holbrooke said the two discussed a range of issues, including Bosnia, Kosovo and the question of Yugoslavia's U.N. membership, which it lost during the Milosevic era. "We look forward to the very near, future day when Yugoslavia will join the community of nations as a free and democratic country, a full member of the United Nations and other international organizations," he said.

"With a sensible and good-willed dialogue, without accusations and self-accusations in advance, patiently freeing ourselves of pent-up prejudice, we will be able to solve the problems that burden our relations," Kostunica said. "We must live in peace one next to another and cooperate as much as it would best suit us all. I am convinced it will be so."

TiM Ed.: But while Kostunica was cavorting with the Serb enemy, wagging his tail and making conciliatory remarks, the Albanian president, Rexhep Meidani, delivered a tough talk and demanded apologies and reparations - from Serbia!? Here’s an excerpt from today’s newswires:

“Albanian President Rexhep Meidani added a weightier contribution to the summit's sometimes platitudinous tone, in calling for the new Yugoslav leader to denounce his predecessor Slobodan Milosevic, turn him over to an international court and free all Albanians from Serb prisons.

Meidani said that the "anti-democratic and chauvinistic regime of Milosevic has to be condemned clearly, openly and officially by the new political forces (in Yugoslavia) as an apology for war crime atrocities."

In a harshly worded speech to an informal Balkan summit with Vojislav Kostunica, Meidani also said that Serbia should compensate Albania for damage caused by shelling the Albanian territory during the Kosovo crisis last year."

TiM Ed.: Besides the “Balkan Bully,” the Skopje summit was attended by the leaders of Balkan countries - Greece, Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania, Albania, Macedonia, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, and Croatia. Former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic attended only one such meeting, on the Greek island of Crete in 1997.