The Yugos down 3-0, down to 10 men, pull off the impossible and salvage a 3-3 tie with Slovenia...damn it no TV coverage here of Euro2000...
Milosevic hails Yugoslav army as "invincible"
BELGRADE, June 15 (AFP) -
President Slobodan Milosevic hailed Thursday his Yugoslav army forces as "invincible" in the defence of the country, state news agency
Tanjug reported.
In a speech to officers ahead of Yugoslav Army Day on June 16, Milosevic said its units "have shown they have surpassed their adversaries" during NATO
"agression" as Belgrade refers to the Alliance's air strikes of last year.
"In the past year, and especially during NATO agression, our officers have shown that, not only morally and patriotically, but also professionally, they have surpassed
their adversaries," Milosevic said.
NATO launched its raids on Yugoslavia in March last year to counter what it saw as an ethnic cleansing operation in Kosovo against the ethnic Albanian majority
there.
Yugoslav troops and police units pulled out from the Serbian province of Kosovo last June, following the UN resolution which effectively ended the 11-week-long
bombing campaign.
Milosevic praised the "creativity" of the Yugoslav army, which, by using "relatively limited means and sometimes even improvisations," had proved its "expert" status,
the agency said.
Such characteristics "also bind" the army to be "always ready to show it is invincible and in a condition to efficiently defend its country," Milosevic said.
"I am positive that this will be the case," Milosevic, who is indicted by the UN tribunal for war crimes in Kosovo, insisted.
And the Yugoslav army chief of staff, general Nebojsa Pavkovic, accused NATO-led peacekeepers in Kosovo and the UN mission in the province of failing to
"execute any task" set by the UN resolution, Tanjug said.
They "have become accomplices of the biggest ethnic cleansing and genocide after the World War II" by failing to provide security for the Serb and non-Albanian
population in Kosovo, who have been targetted with serious and sometimes deadly attacks over the past year.
"The international forces have become a tool of the United States and NATO," Pavkovic said, insisting that the Yugoslav army "is morally and combat-ready for a
return to Kosovo... in accordance with the UN resolution."
The resolution provides for the return of a certain number of lightly armed Yugoslav soldiers and police to the province, but the number dates have not yet been set. |
