Kosovo : Political context of Operation Allied Force

Press briefing by the British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook,

29 March 1999

The Defence Secretary this morning is flying to Italy to visit our air crews and Service personnel engaged in the operations in Serbia. He is accompanied by the Opposition spokesman, John Maples and Menzies Campbell, and we believe that their joint visit will bring home to both our Service personnel, and also Serbia, that there is political unity and a common purpose behind the work of our crews from Italy.

In a few minutes the Chief of the Defence Staff will give you details of the NATO activity which took place last night. I first want to make a number of observations about the political context of this military action. We are getting increasing evidence of the brutality and the evil of President Milosevic's forces which we are combating in Serbia. The clearest evidence of the brutality on the ground in Kosovo is provided by the large volume of refugees fleeing from their villages which are being destroyed by heavy artillery and armoured fire power. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has confirmed 10,000 new refugees have been registered in Albania. The OSCE estimates that up to 150,000 more are beginning to approach Albania in an attempt to cross over into Albania. The situation on the border of Macedonia is also severe. In total we understand that there are now over a quarter of a million displaced persons inside Kosovo. We have also had alarming reports of some of these refugees being herded into concentration areas by Serb forces, in particular 20,000 refugees being concentrated around Srbica and a number more further south near Pristina. We can only estimate and guess at what is the purpose of the concentration of these refugees, but we remember the way in which many refugees were herded together and executed by the Serb forces during the civil war in Bosnia.

There have been widespread reports reaching us of Serb military forces and Serb paramilitary thugs burning villages in a co-ordinated programme of ethnic cleansing. Our reports now include seven villages on fire along the Pec- Klina road and villages gutted around Kozovska, Medrovica, the area around Prisrn and the Renica valley, an extensive programme of ethnic cleansing. We are receiving reports, some of which we are as yet unable to confirm, of executions taking place in villages in these areas. We do know that in Goden 20 teachers were executed by Serb forces. To add an extra dimension to the brutality of that massacre, they were shot in front of their school pupils.

Yesterday George Robertson told you about Arkan and his tigers who were responsible for so many of the atrocities carried out in Bosnia. We now know they are fully integrated into the Yugoslav Army's 52nd Pristina Corps. We have also heard that another notorious band of thugs, known as the Vucak Wolves, have left the Republic of Srpska in Bosnia to operate in Kosovo. All our information on their operations and their positions, and also on the operations of the Serb Special Police, the MUP, is being passed by us to the International Criminal Tribunal at The Hague.

I want to stress that what we are witnessing now has its roots in the past year of violent conflict in Kosovo. It was a year ago we saw the first pictures of the massacres that took place near Drenica, when whole families were wiped out. In the year since then, over 400,000 people have been driven from their homes, a fifth of the population of Kosovo. In the two days before we commenced military action, 25,000 new refugees were created in that 48-hour period alone. The people of Britain saw that, the human costs of Milosevic's repression, they could see it on the television in their homes, villages shelled, crops burned, farm animals slaughtered, women and children forced to leave their villages to try to walk to a safe refuge, they knew not where. The people of Britain would still be seeing that evidence of the brutality that is being carried out in Kosovo if Belgrade had not already acted to expel the television cameras from Kosovo so that we could not see for ourselves the evil that is going on there.

It is not NATO that is responsible for carrying out that brutality in Kosovo, it is Milosevic that is responsible for what is happening today in Kosovo. And we have known for some time that he has been planning a spring offensive such as this. For weeks he has been building up his tanks and his military in and around Kosovo in order to launch a spring offensive when winter was over. If we had not acted, all of you would now be asking why we stood by while this ethnic cleansing took place. It is utterly offensive that he should be waging war against a whole ethnic identity, trying to recreate a new apartheid in Europe based on the cleansing, the forcible removal and execution of people of the wrong ethnic identity in his region. That practice belonged to the Middle Ages, it does not belong to the modern Europe. We are right to fight it and that is why we cannot stop military action until we have stopped that repression on the ground.

In the meantime we have a major humanitarian situation to which we must respond. We are working closely with the international humanitarian agencies to respond to the emergency. Two weeks ago we provided another half million pounds to the UN High Commission for Refugees to help them deal with the situation. But the situation is changing, that is why we are today setting up a cross-cutting Whitehall group bringing together all the Ministries involved to work out how we can best help and how we can most quickly help with the humanitarian needs in Kosovo and the surrounding region. We are in dialogue with the UNHCR, we will be seeking dialogue with the governments of Macedonia and Albania, we need to know what resources they need most quickly and we need to know how best we can help them with the logistic support and airlift capacity to get those resources in place quickly.

But there is one other message that I have to make about that brutality and repression within Kosovo.

It is a message for the Serb security forces and for their political masters. Anyone who carries out atrocities against the civilian population, anyone who gives orders for them to carry it out, or is complicit in those orders being given, and anyone who fails to prevent such orders or to prevent those orders being carried out, anyone in any of those categories is liable to face indictment before the International War Crimes Tribunal. We will pass on all our information to the Tribunal, and we have a lot of information. We know who are the Field Commanders, we know the chain of command back to the political leadership in Belgrade. Shortly the Chief of the Defence Staff and Julian Moir will talk you through the specific units who are involved in the repression in Kosovo, the names of their commanders and the chain of command back to Belgrade. To each of these commanders I say this is your responsibility. It will not be a defence to say "I was following orders", it will not be a defence to say "I did not know" when you are in a position of command with a duty to know. We know what is happening, we do not believe that you, the Field Commanders, do not know what is happening and if you know, you have a responsibility to stop it.

Immediately after this press conference I will be placing a call to Judge Arbour, the Chief Prosecutor of the International War Crimes Tribunal. I will be assuring her of all our help in bringing to the bar of justice those who may be responsible for the brutality in Kosovo. We have a good record in bringing before the tribunal those indicted by it. Half of those currently indicted for war crimes in Bosnia are now in detention awaiting trials. I warn those with responsibility in Kosovo that they could be facing the same fate unless they halt now the reprisals and start to obey the laws of human decency and of humanitarian law.