Racak's William Walker reflects

Chris Burford cburford at gn.apc.org
Tue Jan 23 23:49:52 PST 2001


At 14:53 23/01/01 -0500, you wrote:
> > from FreeB92 1/22/01:
> >
> > William Walker dreams of Belgrade
> >
> > BELGRADE, Monday -- The former head of the Kosovo Verification Mission,
> > William Walker, said today that he had not seen new reports from a team of
> >
> > Finnish pathologists which call into question whether a massacre occurred
> > in the Kosovo village of Racak.
> >
> > Many analysts believe that Walker's impassioned outburst over the alleged
> > massacre, which saw him deported from Yugoslavia, led directly to the NATO
> > bombing of the country in 1999.
> > Walker said today that he was hurt that so many Serbs believed he had done
> > something to harm Serbia.

Interestingly apologetic tone.

From one point of view figures like him can afford to be apologetic since they succeeded in stopping the permanent mass expulsion of a million Kosovans. (I know it is rightly said this accelerated rapidly into a general policy after the NATO bombing started, but the depopulations arising from the 1998 war against the KLA were of the order of 1/4 million). Tony Blair too was remarkable in avoiding any militarily triumphalist tone after the defeat of Yugoslavia. His main pay back was to get his defense minister placed as head of NATO.

On the other hand the west, and probably especially the USA, is well briefed on the attitudes within Serbia of people with whom they must work. The USA has just lifted all its economic sanctions except for ones targetted against specific families. Kostunica as a lawyer probably believes strongly in the rule of (bourgoeois) law and as an anti-communist is opening the area to peace under the domination of international finance capital.

B92 is probably a good platform for Walker to send conciliatory signals, which are clearly from the hymn sheet people like him are supposed to be singing.

Chris Burford

London



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