BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS
Posing as defenders of the national rights of Albanians in Kosova, Washington and London have announced plans for deepening the imperialist assault against Yugoslavia - a move that foreshadows the future of other workers states in Eastern and Central Europe, the former Soviet Union, and beyond.

As the regime in Belgrade has unleashed a full-scale military assault against Albanians fighting for self- determination, the U.S. and British rulers have set in motion plans for NATO air strikes inside Serbia, deployment of imperialist combat forces in neighboring Albania and Macedonia, and invasion of Kosova by NATO troops.

"NATO should examine all military options," said U.S. secretary of defense William Cohen, on his way to a June 11 meeting of defense ministers of NATO member countries in Brussels. "I would not confine it to air or land or sea or any combination of the three."

At the Brussels meeting, NATO authorized simulated air raids and bombing runs over Albania and Macedonia, using U.S., British, and French aircraft on NATO carriers in the Adriatic Sea. Germany's defense minister, Volker Ruehe, said the military exercise "would serve as a serious warning to Belgrade."

According to Ruehe, the NATO defense ministers also instructed the commanders of the Atlantic imperialist alliance to draw up plans for direct military action into Kosova, with "particular consideration to air strikes against selected targets and the employment of air or ground forces if necessary to enforce a settlement for Kosova."

Meanwhile, the British government has drafted a resolution for adoption by the United Nations Security Council authorizing deployment of NATO forces along Kosova's borders with Albania and inside the province. Kosova, whose population of 2.1 million are 90 percent Albanians and overwhelmingly support independence, has been ruled by brute force by Belgrade since the regime of Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic revoked the province's autonomous status in 1989.

Moves highlight confrontation with Moscow
The moves toward a new direct imperialist assault on Yugoslavia have highlighted once again Washington's collision course with Moscow. Russian president Boris Yeltsin indicated during a June 9 visit to Bonn that his government will most likely veto any UN Security Council resolution calling for NATO attacks on Serbia.

The preparations for intervention in Kosova go hand-in- hand with NATO's expansion into Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic, which will bring U.S. troops closer to Russia's border. This imperialist encirclement of Russia extends to the oil-rich Caspian Sea region and further east, as the U.S. rulers build a zone of influence and pressure along Russia's southern flank and position their forces for possible military use to overturn the noncapitalist social relations in the republics of the former USSR.

Washington maintains 8,500 troops in Bosnia, dominating a NATO occupation force of 34,000 there, which is deployed indefinitely to enforce the terms of the Dayton accords. That was the agreement the U.S. rulers forced the rival regimes of the formerly federated Yugoslav republics to sign at the Wright-Patterson air force base, near the small city of Dayton in southeastern Ohio, paving the way for the NATO occupation and partition of Bosnia. One of the clauses of the Dayton treaty was the reestablishment of a "free market" - that is, the destruction of the remaining gains of the anticapitalist revolution of the 1940s and the return of the domination of capitalist social relations in Yugoslavia.

Assault by Belgrade rages
The Milosevic-led Socialist Party that rules the "new" Yugoslavia - comprised of the republics of Serbia and Montenegro - is a remnant of the former League of Yugoslav Communists, which broke up in 1989 as part of the sea change throughout Eastern Europe. The would-be capitalists of the Milosevic regime have attempted unsuccessfully to integrate Yugoslavia into the world capitalist market. They have often clashed with Washington and other imperialist powers, as they are presiding over a state where the mines, factories, mills, and land remain largely nationalized and where foreign investment yields little profit as long as the imperialist powers have not defeated working people and brought back capitalism.

The struggle of Kosovar Albanians for self-determination has threatened the privileges and bourgeois way of life of the government bureaucrats in Belgrade. After the first major crackdown in March by Serbian police and army forces, pro-independence Albanians in Kosova stepped up protests in Pristina, Kosova's capital, and other towns and villages.

At the same time, the Kosova Liberation Army (UCK) escalated resistance and gained in recruits and popularity. The UCK is a guerrilla group that has been waging an armed struggle for independence for several years. In May and early June, many photographs and interviews were published in the media documenting an influx of volunteers into Kosova to join the UCK in response to Belgrade's aggression.

The Milosevic regime, for its part, unleashed the most widespread and indiscriminate assault on Kosovar Albanians at the end of May, using tanks, heavy artillery, and its air force. Entire villages near the border with Albania have been burned to the ground. About 10,000 peasants and other Albanians have fled from Kosova into Albania as of June 10. Since March, 250 people have died in Kosova, mostly Albanians.

In response to the latest wave of attacks by Belgrade, more than 20,000 people demonstrated in Pristina June 10 demanding an end to the terror by Belgrade. "UCK! UCK!" was one of the most popular chants, according to the Kosova Information Center. A number of demonstrators called for NATO intervention, echoing the pro-imperialist perspective of the Democratic League of Kosova, the dominant political party among Albanians there.

A number of students and other working people, however, continue to distance themselves from reliance on the "international community" and support for Washington, which continues to describe the Kosova Liberation Army as a "terrorist group." As Lulezon Jagxhiu, a leader of the Independent Students at the University of Pristina, has repeatedly told Militant reporters in telephone interviews, "We rely on our own strength."  
 
 
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