The Trojan horse that 'started' a 79-day war

Michael Pollak mpollak at panix.com
Fri Nov 26 21:09:13 PST 1999


On Fri, 26 Nov 1999, Seth Ackerman wrote:


> The Independent
> The Trojan horse that 'started' a 79-day war
> By Robert Fisk in Belgrade
> 26 November 1999
> In the last days of the Paris peace talks on Yugoslavia last March,
> something extraordinary happened. The Serb delegation - after agreeing to
> a political revolution in Kosovo - was presented with a military appendix
> to the treaty which demanded the virtual Nato occupation of all
> Yugoslavia.

<snip>


> Even the text of the military appendix was not known to journalists
> reporting the two sets of "peace" talks in Rambouillet and Paris.

It worries me to disagree with Fisk about a matter of fact, but I think he's wrong here -- not about the general stance of the negotitating, but that there was anything secret about it. The military appendix (the notorious "Appendix B") was neither secret nor last minute nor unavailable to journalists. Journalists simply ignored it, seemingly because they were spun silly. But it was included in the Februrary 23 interim agreement and posted on the internet within the week. (There is still a copy up at the Monde Diplomatique website at

Linkname: Kosovo Interim Agreement - 2/23/99

http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/dossiers/kosovo/

rambouillet.html#Appendix.B:StatusofMulti-NationalMilitary

Jan Oberg of the Transnational Foundation (http://www.transnational.org) wrote two internet circulars drawing attention to the objectional parts of the agreement agreement and the appendix in his Pressinfos number 57 and 58 -- which admittedly were released just before the ultimatum (on March 17 and 18th, respectively). But he came to essentially the same conclusions a month earlier based on an analysis of the (publicly available details of the) diplomacy and published his conclusions in Pressinfo 56, "Rambouillet -- A Process Analysis" (February 21). And while we're on the subject, his circulars 55 and 54 were pretty good too -- 54 coming out in January.

Oberg can be wearisome sometimes, but IMHO he was spot on during the three month run up to the bombing.

Michael

__________________________________________________________________________ Michael Pollak................New York City..............mpollak at panix.com



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