Nato blunders drive down the price of
peace
John Simpson in Belgrade
Cook flies to US for crisis talks on war
YOU can tell how Slobodan Milosevic feels that the Balkans war is going by
the offers he makes. Ten days ago, on Thursday May 6, he was a nervous
man. He offered series of concessions: not much in themselves, but intended
to hint, like a dealer in carpets, that a further drop in price was only a matter
of time.
He would, his officials said, be prepared to accept a UN force in Kosovo that
was armed and could contain elements from Nato countries. He was also
prepared to start withdrawing his own forces from Kosovo; it could be done,
the official said brightly, inside a week.
But that Friday night everything changed. The American military, who always
seem to prefer mechanical means to human ones, used some out-of-date
maps to target the Chinese embassy (don't they have good old-fashioned
spies who can trudge round and check these things?) and Milosevic was off
the hook again. No more concessions, no more offers for an entire week.
By last Thursday, though, the Chinese embassy effect was starting to wear
off. The distinctly factitious moral anger of the Chinese government was
fading; President Jiang Zemin, like some insulted lover, was finally persuaded
to take a pleading phone call from Washington. It was time for Milosevic to
produce another offer.
He announced that the pull-out of his paramilitary police and troops from
Kosovo had begun. Television pictures showed men in uniform getting off
buses marked "Pristina-Beograd"; there was never any evidence that the
withdrawal was serious, but at least it indicated that the price was going to be
dropped again.
And then came the attack on Korisa in the early hours of Friday morning.
Anything up to 100 people may have died. By early Friday afternoon, just
after the news from Korisa appeared on Serbian television, Milosevic took
back his offer about withdrawing from Kosovo.
Since Nato had dismissed this hand proffered for peace, his officials said,
there would be no pull-out until all Nato forces left the surrounding countries.
The carpet was rolled up and put away, and unmistakeable signs were made
the shop was about to close. Milosevic was clearly feeling very good about
the situation.
When this whole business is finally settled, Nato's mistakes will surely be seen
as having played a major part in the outcome. Out of thousands of missions,
only 10 have gone badly wrong, by my count; that's if you don't include the
attack on the television station in Belgrade, which seems to have been
intentional. But these 10 have been so egregious, so damaging to Nato's
reputation and moral purpose, that they have coloured the entire conflict.
Milosevic's policies have led to the murder of an unknown number of ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo, and have contributed to the driving out of a vast
number of refugees. I am not yet convinced that this is as bad as what
happened in Bosnia from 1992-4, but it's worse than anything else that has
taken place in Europe since 1945. Nato's 10 mistakes are allowing people
across Europe and the world to claim equivalence between what Milosevic
has done and what Nato is doing to stop him.
True, some of these claims come from countries that have a vested interest in
discrediting international interference in internal crimes. China, for instance,
must believe that, if Nato is successful in stopping Milosevic in Kosovo, it
might be tempted one day to move in and stop the even worse things that
have been done on Peking's orders in Tibet. But for now, thanks to a few
pilots who were not careful enough, some gung-ho orders and a pack of
outdated maps, it is Nato rather than Milosevic which is feeling the heat.
I very much hope that by the time I come to write for this newspaper next
week there will have been no more mistaken attacks, no more cluster-bombs
gone astray, no more repetitions of the mantra that the alliance doesn't target
civilians and very much regrets what has happened, no more of the simulated
anger and private glee that follows each such disaster here. But in case it does
happen, let me throw a few facts onto the table. They may help.
Serbian television consists of several stations. All of them are pretty tightly
controlled at present, but only one - RTS - is actually state-owned. Studio-B
belongs to a consortium largely run by Milosevic's political opponents.
Nevertheless at present, under the state of emergency, Serbian television
mostly acts as a mouthpiece for the government. But when news comes in, the
various stations compete to get it on first and to get it, if possible, right. They
rush their camera-crews and reporters there.
In other words, there is usually confirmation of a sort quite quickly. And these
are men and women very much like Western journalists. Even under Tito,
Yugoslav journalists were well-known for their relative objectivity.
They will certainly report the official assessment of casualties in an attack, but,
if their reporters on the scene give a different figure, they will broadcast that.
And the reporters will use their own judgment.
My experience after 54 days of warfare here is that, when the first reports
come in that civilians have died in a Nato attack, they are almost always
correct. Sometimes Nato has issued denials, but it has usually been forced to
come round in the end.
Secondly, the early estimates of dead and injured are mostly quite
conservative. After the attack on the train near Leskovac, where around 60
people died, the first reports said there were 10 deaths. When Nato hit the
Albanian refugee convoy on April 14, we were first told that eight people had
been killed; the final total was more than 40. In the Korisa attack, 50 people
were said to have died; it could be as high as 100.
Milosevic's main concern is not with the outside world, it is with Yugoslavia.
And because he is an old-style Communist by background, he is very careful
not to stir up public opinion. In particular, he is worried about the effect of
high casualty figures, which could stir people up against him and lead to a
demand for the conflict to be ended on any terms. If anything, he and his men
try to underestimate the figures.
Viktor Chernomyrdin, the Russian negotiator, is coming here next week to try
out a new and revised set of proposals. Ten days ago, before the Chinese
embassy was hit, and the centre of Nis was scattered with cluster-bomblets,
and Nato pilots failed to notice the refugee encampment at the military base in
Korisa, Russia was lining up with the West.
After a week or more of completely unnecessary problems, it has got back
into line again. Nato's political leaders must hope now that mistakes by its
planners, intelligence assessors and pilots don't combine to give Milosevic a
chance of selling his carpets at a price that is too favourable to him.
John Simpson is World Affairs Editor of the BBC. His report appears by
permission of BBC On-Line
telegraph.co.uk |
