Uvanleg informativ reportasje frå New York Times. I tillegg til å fortelje
om koffertar med kontantar som blir overlevert til den "demokratiske" og
"uavhengige" opposisjonen, bekreftar journalisten dei serbiske påstandane
om at meiningsmålingar i jugoslavia blir finansiert av USA.
Kostunica seier at delar av opposisjonen "ubevisst arbeider for amerikanske
imperialistiske mål". Men med si tilslutning til det marknadsreligiøse
programmet utforma av G17, høyer Kostunica sjølv heime mellom desse.
Asgeir Bjørkedal
http://www.nytimes.com/2000/09/20/world/20SERB.html
Milosevic, Trailing in Polls, Rails Against NATO
By STEVEN ERLANGER
BELGRADE, Serbia, Sept. 19 — In his race for re-election, President
Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia is running against NATO and the United
States, not against his democratic opposition.
He is not entirely mistaken to do so. The United States and its European
allies have made it clear that they want Mr. Milosevic ousted, and they
have spent tens of millions of dollars trying to get it done.
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While Mr. Milosevic is trailing the main opposition leader, Vojislav
Kostunica, in opinion polls, the anti- Western campaign is having an
impact. The money from the West is going to most of the institutions that
the government attacks for receiving it — sometimes in direct aid,
sometimes in indirect aid like computers and broadcasting equipment, and
sometimes in suitcases of cash carried across the border between Yugoslavia
and Hungary or Serbia and Montenegro. Most of those organizations and news
media could not exist without foreign aid in this society, which is poor
and repressive and whose market is distorted by foreign economic sanctions.
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As for the opinion polls that show Mr. Kostunica in the lead, the
information minister, Goran Matic, charges that the polls are orchestrated
and manipulated by the Americans and the Central Intelligence Agency, who
help pay for them. According to Mr. Matic, Mr. Milosevic is actually far
ahead of Mr. Kostunica, and the polls simply serve as a vehicle for the
opposition to claim that the government stole the election once Mr.
Milosevic wins.
Mr. Matic asserts that the Atlantic alliance has come up with various
scenarios, such as infiltrating soldiers wearing Yugoslav Army and police
uniforms, to make it possible for the opposition to start civil unrest in
the streets after the election while claiming that the police and the army
are actually on their side.
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Even before the Kosovo war, the United States was spending up to $10
million a year to back opposition parties, independent news media and other
institutions opposed to Mr. Milosevic. The war itself cost billions of
dollars. This fiscal year, through September, the administration is
spending $25 million to support Serbian "democratization," with an unknown
amount of money spent covertly to help the failed rallies of last year,
which did not bring down Mr. Milosevic, or to influence the current
election. For next year, the administration is requesting $41.5 million in
open aid to Serbian democratization, though Congress is likely to cut that
request.
Independent journalists and broadcasters here have been told by American
aid officials "not to worry about how much they're spending now," that
plenty more is in the pipeline, said one knowledgable aid worker. Others in
the opposition complain that the Americans are clumsy, sending e-mails from
"state.gov" — the State Department's address — summoning people to
impolitic meetings with American officials in Budapest, Montenegro or
Dubrovnik, Croatia.
But there is little effort to disguise the fact that Western money pays for
much of the polling, advertising, printing and other costs of the
opposition political campaign — one way, to be sure, to give opposition
leaders a better chance to get their message across in a
quasi-authoritarian system where television in particular is in the firm
hands of the government.
While that spending allows the opposition to be heard more broadly,
deepening the opposition to Mr. Milosevic, it also allows the government
here to argue that it has real enemies, and that the Serbian opposition is
in league with them.
Just today, in the state-run newspaper Politika, a long article used public
information from the United States — including Congressional testimony and
Web site material — to show that the United States is financing the
opposition.
" `Independent,' `nongovernmental' and `democratic' are the standard
phrases the C.I.A. uses to describe organizations established all over the
world to destroy the governments and the societies that the U.S. government
wants to colonize and control," the paper wrote.
The Congressional testimony, from July 29, 1999, cited American officials
then involved with Yugoslav policy, like Robert Gelbard and James Pardew,
telling Senator Joseph Biden of Delaware about their projects. They
describe the creation of a "ring around Serbia" of radio stations
broadcasting into Serbia from Bosnia and Montenegro, the spending of $16.5
million in the previous two years to support "democratization in Serbia,"
and another $20 million to support Montenegro's president, Milo Djukanovic,
who broke away from Mr. Milosevic in 1998.
The testimony listed some of the recipients of American aid here, including
various newspapers, magazines, news agencies and broadcasters opposed to
Mr. Milosevic, as well as various nongovernmental organizations engaged in
legal defense and human rights and projects to bring promising Yugoslav
journalists to the United States for professional training.
All such projects are portrayed by Politika and state television as a way
to undermine the legal government, and the recipients are labeled traitors
to their country.
Opposition leaders like Mr. Kostunica regard such tactics by the government
as crass propaganda, but even he is skeptical of American intentions in
paying for nongovernmental organizations, some of whom, he believes, are
even unconsciously working for American imperial goals and not necessarily
Serbian values.
Other democratic leaders, like Zoran Djindjic and Zarko Korac, regard such
attacks as an indication of Mr. Milosevic's desperation and anxiety on the
eve of the first election he is likely to lose in his entire political
career. Given the stakes for Mr. Milosevic, they believe that he will do
all he can, including the wholesale stealing of votes, to ensure a victory
in the first round of voting.
"The stakes are fundamental for Milosevic," Mr. Korac said. "These
elections are crucial, not necessarily for the immediate handover of power,
but because for the first time Mr. Milosevic will be delegitimized in the
eyes of his own people. He was an elected dictator, with popular and legal
legitimacy. But from now on he's a true dictator, and he will only be able
to rule by force — that's a big step for Serbia."
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