NATO synes ikke å ha truffet den serbiske hær i det hele tatt, men nesten
bare sivile mål, til tross for forsikringer fra en Leif Klette, tidligere
ansatt på NATOs generalsekretærs kontor, som hevdet at NATO ikke bevisst
angrep sivile mål i Jugoslavia (Dbl 18. juni). Vi har sett de uskadde
tanksene mm på TV. Når skal NRK-teamene (med Steinfeldt i forgrunnen) vise
oss bilder av ødeleggelsene av de sivile mål i Kosovo? Skal vi ikke få se
bildene fordi de vil vise at det er NATOs fly som står bak?
Knut Rognes
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Serb army 'unscathed by Nato'
Robert Fisk in Belgrade
NATO killed far more Serb civilians than soldiers during its 11-week
bombardment of the country and most of the Yugoslav Third Army emerged
unscathed from the massive air attacks on its forces in Kosovo, according
to evidence emerging in Yugoslavia.
Nato officers have been astonished that thousands of Yugoslav tanks,
missile launchers, artillery batteries, personnel carriers and trucks have
been withdrawn from the province with barely a scratch on them. At least
60,000 Yugoslav troops - rather than the 40,000 estimated - were waiting to
fight the Western armies in Kosovo.
Yugoslav military sources said that more than half the 600 or so soldiers
who died in Serbia were killed in guerrilla fighting with the Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) rather than by Nato bombing. They added that
preparations for war began a year ago when military intelligence in
Belgrade learned that the United States was building a secret satellite
targeting navigation station in Bulgaria.
Meanwhile, it has become clear that the entry of Russian forces into Kosovo
- far from being the act of "renegade soldiers"or a "misunderstanding", as
the White House would have it - was organised a week before Nato troops
entered the province. The Ministry of Defence in Moscow sent a coded
message to Russian troops at Uglevik in Bosnia ordering them to take
Pristina airport in advance of British forces. It was known as "Operation
Shield".
Wartime statistics are notoriously unreliable, but investigations by
Western correspondents and humanitarian agencies of Nato bombing incidents
appear to confirm the official civilian casualty toll of around 1,500. At
least 450 of these died in Nato's repeated "mistakes", when alliance
aircraft bombed a train at Grdelica, a bridge at Varvarin, housing estates
at Surdulica, Aleksinac and Cuprija, a bus at Luzane, an Albanian refugee
convoy in Kosovo and made other attacks on civilians. Many others died in
what Nato referred to as "collateral damage" in attacks around Belgrade,
Kraljevo, Kragujevac, Nis and Novi Sad.
According to figures given to The Independent by a Yugoslav military
source, only 132 members of the armed forces were killed in Nato attacks.
General Nebojsa Pavkovic, the commander of the Yugoslav Third Army, has
given a different figure: 169 soldiers killed in Kosovo under Nato assault
and 299 wounded. Yugoslavia's President, Slobodan Milosevic, says that 462
members of the Yugoslav army and 112 police (including the MUP, the
interior ministry forces) were killed.
But more than 300 soldiers are thought to have died in guerrilla attacks.
Inquiries by The Independent suggest that Serbian troops died at KLA hands
in Djakovica, Stimlje, Pudujevo and Pristina.
Military fatalities among soldiers whose homes were in the centre of Novi
Sad - Yugoslavia's third largest city - turned up only two names.
(http://www.independent.co.uk/stories/B2106902.html)
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