Nato bombing 'caused ethnic cleansing' says Carrington
Nato bombing of Serbia caused, rather than prevented, ethnic cleansing in the Balkans, the organisation's former secretary general, Lord Carrington, said today.
The bombing "made things very much worse" and the European Union had made "catastrophically stupid decisions" in its dealings with the former Yugoslavia, he added.
Lord Carrington also questioned the branding of President Slobodan Milosevic as a war criminal. The UK was "a little bit selective about condemnation of ethnic cleansing, in Africa as well as in Europe", he said.
The views of the 80-year-old former Foreign Secretary came in an interview in the September issue of Saga Magazine published by the over-50s holiday company, Saga.
Lord Carrington said: "I think what Nato did by bombing Serbia actually precipitated the exodus of the Kosovo Albanians into Macedonia and Montenegro. I think the bombing did cause ethnic cleansing. "The whole business in the Balkans has been mismanaged from the start. It was obvious it was going to blow up.
"I am not sticking up for the Serbs because I think they behaved badly and extremely stupidly by removing the autonomy of Kosovo, given them by Tito in the first place. "But I think what we did made things very much worse and what we are now faced with is a sort of ethnic cleansing in reverse."
Speaking of Milosevic, Lord Carrington added: "I don't think he is any more a war criminal than President Tudjman of Croatia who ethnically cleansed 200,000 Serbs out of Krajina. Nobody kicked up a fuss about that."
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Carl