|
Milosevic
Wants Clinton To Testify, Says He Ordered Chinese Embassy Bombing
THE
HAGUE, Feb. 15 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Slobodan Milosevic told his
war crimes trial Friday that former U.S. president Bill Clinton had ordered the
1999 bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade because he wanted to "go
down in history."
Milosevic,
who has unleashed a rambling and combative counter-attack by blaming NATO for
war crimes in the war on Yugoslavia, said the order for the May 7 bombing, which
killed three people at the embassy, came straight from the White House, Agence
France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"It
is quite clear that the attack was launched directly from the United
States," Milosevic told the court trying him for genocide and crimes
against humanity over the 1990s wars in Bosnia, Croatia and Kosovo.
"Clinton
wanted to go down in history as the first man to have bombed Chinese territory
by bombing the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. This was no accident,"
Milosevic said.
NATO
apologized for what it said was a "tragic mistake," which it blamed on
an outdated map used in error while planning the 78-day air campaign against
federal Yugoslavia.
However,
the British daily newspaper, The Observer, reported in October 1999 that the
bombing was indeed ordered, because NATO had learned the embassy was being used
to transmit Yugoslav army communications.
The
report, citing senior U.S. and European sources, as well as NATO officers, said
the Chinese were also believed to be allegedly monitoring U.S. cruise missile
attacks on Belgrade in order to develop ways of countering the weapons.
Meanwhile,
Milosevic said earlier Friday he wanted to call Clinton and other Western
politicians to testify at his trial for war crimes at The Hague, BBC's online
news service reported.
Milosevic,
who is conducting his own defense, said he also wanted to question British Prime
Minister Tony Blair, Germany's former Chancellor Helmut Kohl, U.N. Secretary
General Kofi Annan, and former U.S. Secretary of State Madeline Albright among
others. He has already said he wanted French President Jacques Chirac to
testify.
Milosevic
is allowed to call whoever he likes and the court has the power to subpoena
them. But the judges do have to be persuaded that their testimony will be
relevant.
The
thrust of his argument, as on Thursday, is that NATO itself is to blame for the
deportation and killing of ethnic Albanians from Kosovo in 1999.
During
his arguments on Friday, the ex-Yugoslav leader also said his forces had
intercepted radio communication between the NATO Command Center and the pilots
in Kosovo in May 1999.
He
said that when a pilot reported one of his targets was a convoy of civilian
tractors, he was told: "Carry out your orders."
"This
entire war was pointless and it constitutes a crime," Milosevic said on
NATO's 1999 air war against Yugoslavia. "Those who come to kill children
who are asleep can hardly sleep peacefully themselves if they are human at all.
All the laws of international law and the statutes of NATO were infringed
upon."
Accusing
NATO of targeting civilians in 1999, he said, "They were targeting peasants
plowing their fields outside their village. They targeted a bus full of
passengers. The bus was hit with a direct strike and cut in two... the bus was
targeted by NATO, killing so many civilians, on the 3rd of May."
|
