Nato admits war blunders
by Patrick Wintour in London, Stephen
Bates in Brussels, and Burhan Wazir in
Skopje
Sunday April 4, 1999
Britain has admitted that fundamental
errors were made in planning the war
against Serbia, including a failure to
foresee the savage 'ethnic cleansing' of the
past week and the humanitarian
catastrophe it has provoked.
Officials in Downing Street conceded that
the Government suffered 'a failure of
imagination. We did not expect Slobodan
Milosevic to move the levels of population
that he did. We had not expected the
speed, scale and savagery with which he
has emptied whole towns in Kosovo'.
The admission came as the first pictures
of the slaughter inside Kosovo were
smuggled out of the Yugoslav province
yesterday. The BBC showed graphic
footage of young men executed in the
village of Krushe Male, apparently taken
by a survivor.
The survivor, Miljan Belimika, said that
more than 100 men had been executed,
many shot in the back of the head, by
Serb forces who had surrounded the
village on 25 March, one day after Nato's
bombing campaign began.
The tape substantiates accounts of the
killings given to The Observer by other
survivors.
Britain's recognition of mistakes were
echoed in Brussels where Jamie Shea,
Nato's chief spokesman, told The
Observer: 'It is always very difficult to
anticipate in advance how dictators are
going to brutalise their own populations.
Nobody could have guessed it would reach
such proportions.' Describing the exodus
as a demographic earthquake, Shea said
the number of displaced persons in the
region is now 765,000, close to 40 per
cent of the Kosovo population, including
290,000 who have left the country.
The extraordinary mea culpa was issued
as Nato warned yesterday that Kosovo
could be emptied of Albanians within 10 to
20 days at the current rate of ethnic
cleansing, and Europe stepped up
preparations for the biggest aid operation
within its borders since the end of the
Second World War.
As hundreds of thousands of refugees
continued to converge on Kosovo's
borders, the situation was plunged into
crisis by Macedonia's announcement that
it was closing its borders to further
refugees, tens of thousands of whom are
now stranded on the Yugoslav side of the
border in appalling conditions.
Responding to the Macedonian
announcement, Foreign Secretary Robin
Cook yesterday called for the creation of a
'safe sanctuary' in Macedonia for the tens
of thousands of Albanians still trapped
inside Kosovo and trying to cross the
border. The idea won immediate support
from President Clinton, who condemned
Serbia's policy of 'ethnic dumping'.
British officals, however, defended their
decision not to prepare for an exodus of
refugees from Kosovo. One said: 'We were
not looking to make arrangements to
receive 500,000 people, because that
would have acted as a magnet and an
invitation to ethnically cleanse.'
As Nato struggled to catch up with the
humanitarian situation by announcing that
it was establishing a military air bridge to
ferry aid to Albania and Macedonia, Prime
Minsiter Tony Blair tried to regain the
initiative. He insisted there would be no
end to the bombing until Yugoslav
President Slobodan Milosevic agreed to
reinstate the displaced Albanians and
allow a Nato-led ground force into Kosovo
to protect them in their homes.
Promising the Kosovan Albanians they
would not be deserted, Blair said: 'We are
in a position where we have to continue
until the whole policy of ethnic cleansing
in Kosovo is defeated. Milosevic should be
under no illusion that we intend to carry on
until that is achieved.'
He added: 'Your policy of ethnic cleansing
is an act of barbarity. We will defeat you
over it. We will not allow you to carry it
through. The gains you think you have
made will be reversed, and those people in
Kosovo will be allowed to live in peace.'
Downing Street, however, rejected calls for
the establishment of 'safe havens' in
Kosovo, saying it would not deal with the
policy of ethnic cleansing and had failed to
work in Bosnia. Reflecting thinking in
Nato, Blair predicted Milosevic will offer a
peace deal in the next few days, probably
using the former Kosovo leader Ibrahim
Rugova as a front man. Downing Street
sources said Rugova was operating with a
metaphorical gun to his head since his
wife and children had been captured.
Britain also now fears Milosevic may try to
pour some of the 600,000 Serbs displaced
by previous civil wars in Croatia and
Bosnia into Kosovo to entrench his power.
To forestall such a move, Nato promised
to strike further blows into central
Belgrade after cruise missile strikes in the
early hours of yesterday morning turned
the Interior Ministry into a blazing inferno,
narrowly missing a maternity hospital.
The Ministry is regarded as the nerve
centre of the paramilitary drive to cleanse
Kosovo and led to Serb claims that Nato's
campaign was as brutal as the Nazis'
carpet-bombing.
The dramatic hardening in targets has
been borne of frustration at the failure of
the bombing campaign so far. Pleading for
patience, Nato spokesman Jamie Shea
claimed: 'We only need a couple of days
of good weather. We hope President
Milosevic's breaking point is not too far
away.'
The scenes in the camps were described
as chaotic yesterday with most Nato
troops on the border being switched to
relief work, including transport of food and
water. Nato announced yesterday it was
sending up to 6,000 Italian troops to
Albania to protect a mounting
humanitarian relief effort for more than
100,000 refugees there. Britain announced
it was sending £20m to the region and that
Clare Short, International Development
Minister, would be flying to the region.
Russia lashed out yesterday at Nato's
'barbaric' bombing of central Belgrade,
saying that the alliance was mounting a
war of extermination against Yugoslavia. |
