NATO SPIES CONFESS

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Swiss Paper Revealed How Kosovo Verification Mission Was Used for NATO Spying-
From the Swiss journal La Liberté, 22 April 1999
Translated by Balkans Info
[Posted 19 march 2002]
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Note, this week the NATO court at The Hague is scheduled to bring leaders of the Kosovo Verification Mission as 'witnesses' against Milosevic. In fact, the true story of the Mission bears witness of its use to prepare for the NATO attack on Yugoslavia. For more, see further reading.
-- ICDSM

NATO SPIES CONFESS
La Liberté, 22 April 1999

It was done ultimately in the hope of bringing peace. October 12, 1998, the Serbia of Slobodan Milosevic accepted the introduction into Kosovo of 2,000 observers from the OSCE (the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe). This "verification mission" was to monitor the cease fire between the Serbs and the Albanians and to facilitate the search for a political solution to the conflict. Once finally in place, the 1,400 observers, among whom were a certain number of Swiss nationals, were placed under the direction of American ambassador William Walker. They remained in place until NATO decided to begin its bombing the following March.

Today the work of this mission poses some serious questions, if one believes the information collected by the Tessian (Swiss) daily Giornale del popolo that follows:

"It was obviously not Wm Walker who pulled the strings on this operation," said one of the 1,400 verification monitors who wished to remain anonymous. "Nor was it the European diplomats who headed the different departments. It was 'The Fusion', a section in the headquarters of the OSCE in Pristina. It was under the direction of British general John Drewienkiewicz, one of the vice directors of the mission. Officially, he was in charge of co-ordinating security. In reality, no one knew with any certainty what his responsibilities were. (. . .) Little by little we came to understand that this was a center for the co-ordination of information going into the hands of American and British military personnel."

What kind of information are we talking about here?

"All kinds," went on our monitor-witness. "Beginning with the movements and positions of Yugoslav army troops, which means the army or the paramilitary groups. (. . .)"

This information then went to NATO?

"Certainly. If not, how would they have known the Serbs' objectives with such precision?"

It is also the opinion of Pascal Neuffer, the 32 yr. old Tessian (Swiss) geologist who was part of the Swiss contingent of the OSCE mission during its last month.

"We understood from the beginning that the information collected by the OSCE patrols during our mission was intended to supplement the information NATO collected by satellite. We had a very strong feeling that we were working as spies for the Atlantic Alliance."

The OSCE was supposed to look into human rights violations committed by either party, the Yugoslav soldiers or the Serb paramilitaries, and the KLA rebels. But the verifiers noticed that when the collected testimony did not correspond with the general view ( and certainly not the official view!) of the mission, it was often manipulated.

Pascal Neuffer again: "The information was selected and processed by The Fusion. When the reports were not sufficiently critical of the actions of the Serb troops, they were amended, or even shredded.

"The investigators who wrote up reports that were too critical of the KLA," confirms another monitor, "were mysteriously not assigned to new missions.

"Just before they were evacuated, the Verification Monitors received an order to destroy all written documents. In executing this task, a member of the Italian contingent who had just been relieved of his investigation into human rights violations, happened upon one of his reports denouncing the KLA. But there was a second report attached to his, and edited by his Albanian interpreter who was working under contract to the OSCE. This second report accused the Italian of falsifying the testimony he had collected and of being pro-Serb! On the basis of this second report, all the testimony the Italian Monitor had amassed was discarded, without any investigation or additional research.

"The strange thing was," continues our witness, "the Albanian interpreter's report was addressed to The Fusion and not, as would have been the normal practice, to the Human Rights Section. From this he concluded that the interpreter was in the pay of The Fusion. . . . Unfortunately all these documents were destroyed. But I know for certain that this was not an isolated case."

AN ANTI-SERB PSYCHOSIS

Welcomed by the directors of the mission on their arrival in Kosovo, the Verification Monitors were surprised by the dominant point of view that the enemy was uniquely the Yugoslavs and the Serbs. "During the four days of training we received on arrival, those in charge of security, almost all Americans, tried subtly to instil an anti-Serb psychosis. No one took into consideration that the KLA might be shooting at us. Even though this had already happened."

A feeling shared by the Swiss Pascal Neuffer. "The bias of the OSCE was more than obvious. Collaboration with the Serbian police, however legitimate, in certain investigations was taken for collaboration with the enemy. And then it was forbidden. The Germans from the Police section, under the direct control of The Fusion, told me that their suggestion for how to deal with these collaborations was just to systematically block them."

Neuffer also points out a revealing detail. "Certain Verification Monitors in charge of human rights violations took part in funerals for KLA soldiers, but if the Serb police were ambushed we wouldn't even mention it. Obviously, only the deaths of Albanian rebels was considered a human rights violation. All dead bodies found in Kosovo were automatically assigned to be victims of Serbian police aggression.

"The situation on the ground, on the eve of the NATO bombing, did not justify a military intervention," declared Pascal Neuffer. "In many regions of Kosovo, you didn't feel a climate of war. All the incidents, all the battles between Serb forces and Albanian rebels, with the displaced populations that ensued, were limited to mountain villages near the strongholds of the KLA: at the beginning of the year, in Kacanik, in the South, and then in Podujevo. In the important towns like Mitrovica, Pec, Pristina or Orahovac, there weren't any deportations. Certainly Kosovo suffered an apartheid and an 'ethnic cleansing'. But before the bombing it was still limited. Many of us were shocked when we got the order to evacuate: we would certainly have been able to continue our work. And the explanations given in the Press, saying that the mission had been compromised by Serb threats, did not correspond to what I had seen. Let's say rather that we were evacuated because NATO had decided to start bombing.

"It's a pity, because the OSCE could have played a more important part. In light of what has happened, we started asking ourselves if we had ever been intended as a peace mission or only as a pretext to a military intervention."

The accusations against the OSCE mission unfortunately were not limited to a few cases of espionage or to the manipulation of testimony. Some were much more serious. The OSCE was not only used (however unwittingly) to lay blame for human rights violations exclusively at the feet of the Serbs, or nearly so. It might also have played an indirect role in the reduction of tensions that then exploded with the military intervention of NATO.

A DRAMATIC EPISODE

A dramatic event took place to support this theory. (. . .) The commander of the regular Serb troops, apparently on his own initiative, warned the OSCE mission of the fact that the Serb police were aware of an Albanian rebel project to transport arms from Albania into Kosovo. And he asked that 'the other camp' be warned so as to avoid a blood bath. The information was discussed at the very heart of the Security Council of the mission, which decided not to transmit the message to the KLA. The result: A few kilometres from the Albanian border, more than 30 Kosovo Albanians were killed by Serb forces. (This encounter took place on the 14th of December 1998, and was reported in the international press.) (. . .)

This was the most serious incident since the conclusion in mid-October of accords between Milosevic and the international community to institute a cease fire and to set up international monitoring in the province.

From the other side, it also seems that moderates from the KLA tried to communicate with the Serbs, through the offices of the OSCE, certain information about projected attacks against Serbs. All for naught. You have to ask yourself if there weren't some people who just didn't want the tensions relieved."

Sarah d'Adda, Giornale del Popolo, repris par La Liberté, 22 avril 1999.

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