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Yugoslav Troops Searched And Destroyed In Kosovo: Expert
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Former Yugoslavian President Slobodan Milosevic, |
THE HAGUE, April 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Yugoslav forces were on a "search and destroy" mission in Kosovo and did little to protect civilians during the war there, a former international observer testified Friday at the war crimes trial of ex-president Slobodan Milosevic.
Former British general Karol Drewienkiewicz, a deputy head of the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), said a Yugoslav military document presented by the prosecution showed that troops were ordered to carry out large-scale destruction, news agencies reported.
"This indicates a 'search and destroy' approach to terrorism rather than focusing on specific targets," Drewienkiewicz said, referring to the document.
He noted that despite written orders to the troops to protect the civilian population in the conflict zones, the soldiers ignored these instructions.
"I did not see any attempt to withdraw civilian populations to protect them, rather the opposite," the former general said, noting that civilians were regularly detained to establish whether they were rebels or not.
The Yugoslav military document also stipulated how the units should use weapons, notably allowing a "selective" use of artillery on Kosovo villages if members of the ethnic Albanian Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) were hiding there.
"This is a very dangerous document. There is no guidance [for field commanders]", Drewienkiewicz said.
The KVM was sent to the breakaway Serbian province of Kosovo to monitor a 1998 ceasefire brokered by U.S. diplomat Richard Holbrooke.
But Drewienkiewicz said on Thursday that the Belgrade authorities, headed by Milosevic, had hindered the work of the mission.
Another Yugoslav military document presented by the prosecution instructed the troops how to deal with civilians if they "collaborate with KLA or supply them with food or arms".
"They should all be considered as KLA and treated that way," the document said.
Drewienkiewicz said other orders from military documents quoted at the trial - which were seized by a UN war crimes investigator in the Kosovo capital Pristina - were "at odds" with what the observers had seen during the conflict.
Milosevic, who is defending himself against more than 60 counts of war crimes and other atrocities, including the genocide of Muslims in the former Yugoslavia rebuffed Drewienkiewicz's testimony on Friday.
Questioning Drewienkiewicz, he sought to establish that the mission had been more "military than diplomatic."
"Maybe we had not been as diplomatic in our approach as ... wanted. We were as polite as we could be, given the job we had to do," Drewienkiewicz said, insisting that the KVM observers "were not biased or anti-Serb."
Milosevic, quoting a report by French diplomat Gabriel Keller, who was a deputy KVM chief at the time and is now ambassador to Belgrade, accused the mission of dealing with "less pressing events" at the time of the conflict, instead of promoting a peaceful solution to the crisis.
Citing other Western officials, Milosevic insisted the NATO bombing campaign on Yugoslavia - which began in March 1999 after Serbian soldiers massacred 45 ethnic Albanian Muslim civilians in the Kosovo village of Racak - had been planned months before.
But Drewienkiewicz insisted that neither the Alliance, nor the Western capitals had done so.
"There was not a decision of that nature at that stage. There may have been contingency planning, because that's what NATO does," Drewienkiewicz said.
Drewienkiewicz again confirmed that former Yugoslav deputy prime minister Nikola Sainovic, indicted along with Milosevic for war crimes committed in Kosovo, was the key Belgrade official in charge of the province.
"Everyone accepted that he [Sainovic] was the man to deal with,..the man with authority," he said.
According to charges made by the U.N. tribunal, Sainovic, a 54-year old engineer, ordered Serbian forces to launch the attack on Racak, galvanizing international opinion in favor of intervention.
Milosevic faces more than 60 charges of genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity committed during the three conflicts that tore apart the former Yugoslavia -- the 1991-95 war in Croatia, the 1992-95 Bosnian war and the conflict in Kosovo.
The trial is to continue on Monday.
If convicted, Milosevic faces life imprisonment.
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