I "Balkan Crisis Report" nr.99 fra IWPR følges saken om "The French
Connection" opp i artikkelen "Serbia Bids Au Revoir To France With String
Of Bizarre Charges".
Heller ikke denne gang slår IWPRs journalist fast hvorvidt anklagene om
attentatplanene er falske eller ikke, men diskuterer isteden hvilke motiv
Milosevic-regimet kan ha for å framsette disse anklagene. I denne nye
artikkelen hevdes det at Milosevic nå ønsker å gjøre det kjent at fransk og
serbisk etterretning arbeidet mye tettere sammen før bombingen i vår enn
det Paris ønsker å innrømme i dag. Dette samarbeidet har vært tettest i
Bosnia, hvor serbiske krigsforbrytere har vært ganske trygge i de franske
sektorene. Sitat: " The two 'most wanted' Bosnian Serbs - Radovan Karadzic
and Ratko Mladic - remain to this day in the French sector, apparently
without fear of arrest." Utdrag følger nedenfor:
Øistein Holen
----------
http://www.iwpr.net/index.pl5?archive/bcr/bcr_19991203_2_eng.txt
"Officially France has either refused comment or simply rejects the
charges. But in Belgrade the highly public allegations can be read as a
shift in Serbian-French relations. Serbia has always looked to France as
the European country most friendly - or at least, least hostile - to its
position.
But there has been a sudden deterioration in relations in the northern
sector of Kosovo, under French military control. Bernard Kouchner, the
Frenchman who heads the UN mission in Kosovo (UNMIK) has become an ever
more frequent target of attack by the Yugoslav regime and the media under
its control.
Behind the scenes it signals a definite end to relations between the French
and Serbian secret services - which at times has run quite deep. "
(...)
"Milosevic now wants it known that up to the NATO strikes and the war over
Kosovo this year the two country's secret agents cooperated much more
closely than Paris now cares to admit. This was especially true in Bosnia,
where French forces attached to the SFOR peacekeeping force turned their
sector into what Tribunal Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour into a kind of
"safe haven" for the accused war criminals, who could walk freely in front
of French soldiers.
This last claim was quite literally true. This journalist was present in
Foca, in the French zone of Bosnia, as Serbs known to have been indicted by
the Tribunal and French soldiers sipped coffee barely a hundred metres
apart. The two 'most wanted' Bosnian Serbs - Radovan Karadzic and Ratko
Mladic - remain to this day in the French sector, apparently without fear
of arrest.
Relations between the two reached a peak some months before the fall of the
UN protected zone of Srebrenica, in spring-summer 1995, during negotiations
to free French pilots captured by the Bosnian Serbs.
It has been frequently alleged that the French agreed to block air strikes
on the Bosnian Serbs in exchange for the safe release of the pilots, a
claim investigated but not substantiated by a UN investigation into the
Srebrenica massacre."
In the event, then UN field commander, French general Bernard Janvier,
refused the pleas of Dutch UN troops for air strikes to stop the Serb
forces overwhelming Srebrenica. Troops led by Mladic - who according to the
UN met Janvier three times before the massacre - killed more than 7,000
Bosniaks.
(...)
In the town of Bijeljina, on the border between Serbia and Serbian
Bosnia, and where the brother of one of the arrested still works as a
policeman, their friends and family believe that the whole 'French
Connection' story is concocted.
They believe the aim is to scapegoat the arrested men for crimes that would
otherwise be pinned on senior members of the regime by the Hague Tribunal.
Certainly Matic and others in the state media have sought to shift the
blame for a string of alleged Serbian state misdeeds onto the backs of the
arrested men. Even an apparent assassination attempt on SPO leader
Draskovic has been linked to their works.
Draskovic's motorcade was hit by a truck carrying a load of sand on October
3, killing everyone but Draskovic himself. The driver was never found, but
Matic has noted that that one of the arrested was "a specialist in killing
with a truck loaded with sand".
For in the mind of Matic and his colleagues, the arrested five have their
hands everywhere, even in the government of Montenegro. The government in
Podgorica is mounting its own challenge to Milosevic's authority, which is
perhaps why it too has become unwillingly embroiled in Matic's accusations.
(...)
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