Milosevic's Wife on '60 Minutes'
Sunday, 2 May 1999
N E W Y O R K (AP)
THE WIFE of Yugoslavian president Slobodan Milosevic says there is
no ethnic cleansing in Kosovo and Serbs are merely defending their
territory.
In an interview with CBS' Dan Rather, broadcast Sunday on "60
Minutes," Mirjana Markovic compared the NATO bombing
campaign against Yugoslavia to the Vietnam War.
"These days I keep thinking about the poster I had in my room at the
university of an American soldier," she said. "And this is the famous
poster of an American soldier who was killed in Vietnam. ... And it is
written underneath: 'Why?"'
She continued, "I ask myself how much time is going to go by before
such a poster again appears in America or somewhere else in the
world?"
Rather asked Markovic, "Is there no ethnic cleansing in Kosovo?"
She replied, "No. There isn't any."
Markovic is her husband's closest adviser and head of a
neo-communist party that rules Serbia and Yugoslavia in coalition
with Milosevic's Socialists.
When she was asked, "What about the argument that the bombing
will stop when you, Serbs, stop killing Kosovar Albanians in Kosovo,
stop running them out of their homes," she answered, "But they are
not killing them. They are not expelling them. This is as if you told
me that today is Wednesday but today is Saturday."
Markovic said Yugoslavia "is defending its territory. Albanians would
never have rebelled against Yugoslavia. They would have never
wanted to separate from Kosovar territory if they had not been
encouraged by the outside world."
She brushed aside comparisons of her husband with Adolf Hitler,
saying he "doesn't hate any people" and "is not using violence against
anyone." |
