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

Seth Ackerman SAckerman at FAIR.org
Sun Nov 28 13:52:05 PST 1999


I don't think that's entirely true. The main body of the military annex was leaked in March but Appendix B was kept secret until after the bombing started. (In mid-April, there was a controversy about this in the German parliament.) I think Oberg's analysis only dealt with the main body, not Appendix B.


> -----Original Message-----
> From: Michael Pollak [SMTP:mpollak at panix.com]
> Sent: Saturday, November 27, 1999 12:09 AM
> To: 'LBO-Talk'
> Subject: Re: The Trojan horse that 'started' a 79-day war
>
>
> 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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