he ICTY's interim accounting is a step in the direction of uncovering what really happened. But many outstanding issues remain unresolved.
It is not clear from del Ponte's briefing if the bodies found so far are all the victims of Serb atrocities, combatants, Serb troops killed in NATO raids or some combination. Since many were killed in the fighting between Serbs and KLA during the war and, according to NATO, many Serb troops were killed in the bombing campaign, the location of bodies does not, by itself, explain how many of those killed were the
victims of Serb war crimes.
Using the evidence obtained by forensics teams, The ICTY must now determine how many of those killed died at the hands of the Serbs. This report does not shed any light on that question. We would expect
more information to be available shortly, since presumably forensic
teams have already provided the ICTY with a great deal of information on that subject.
Nathan Newman wrote:
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> > [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Carl Remick
> >
> > [Sorry for overposting, but I thought this story, from today's NY Times,
> > warranted it. Remember, in April the U.S. State Department was
> > charging the
> > Serbs with killing up to half a million Kosovars.]
>
> You are referring to the US ambassador for war crimes (David Scheffer) who
> argued that up to 100,000 (not 500,000) young men were unaccounted for and
> might be at risk- a charge he used to counter official NATO estimates of
> 3200 Kosovar deaths.
>
> It appears that the official NATO estimates were more accurate, a bit low
> compared to the actual killings by the Serbs, but even Sheffer only referred
> to higher possible death rates as a possibility.
>
> Actually, it was left critics of intervention (not left defenders) who hyped
> the Kosovar deaths after intervention, arguing that NATO intervention was
> leading to the mass murder of the very people who were supposedly being
> helped. Instead, the actual result of intervention seems to match
> relatively closely both the death rates expected by NATO and the political
> outcome - Kosovar autonomy.
>
> Lower than expected Kosovar deaths is good news. It means that the Kosovars
> were helped with less loss than expected.
>
> Attachment:
>
> From: Agence France-Presse
> Monday, April 19, 1999
>
> WASHINGTON, April 18 (AFP) - The scale of Serb atrocities in
> Kosovo may be much greater than previously thought, with the possible
> death toll running into tens of thousands, a senior US official
> indicated Sunday.
>
> "We have upwards of 100,000 men that we cannot account for," in
> Kosovo, the US ambassador-at-large for war crimes, David Scheffer,
> told Fox News Sunday.
>
> He said that NATO estimates of some 3,200 deaths in Kosovo were
> "very low."
>
> --Nathan Newman
-- Enrique Diaz-Alvarez Office # (607) 255 5034 Electrical Engineering Home # (607) 272 4808 112 Phillips Hall Fax # (607) 255 4565 Cornell University mailto:enrique at ee.cornell.edu Ithaca, NY 14853 http://peta.ee.cornell.edu/~enrique