BY MAURICE WILLIAMS
U.S. secretary of state Madeleine Albright telephoned an
ultimatum to Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic to accept a
"Bosnia-style" occupation army in the Yugoslav province of
Kosova by noon February 20 or face an imperialist military
assault. "If there is no agreement then the Serbs need to know
what we have said earlier -whatever side craters [destroys]
the talks would be held responsible," she declared in a
television interview February 16. "In the Serb case that means
it would be followed by NATO bombings."
U.S. envoy Christopher Hill met with Milosevic in Belgrade that day to personally deliver the threat, but the Yugoslav president did not budge. Yugoslav information minister Milan Konnecic said Belgrade would not permit foreign troops on its territory. "If they bomb Serbia, there will be no more negotiations and a solution for Kosovo will be postponed for several years," Komnecic told reporters in Rambouillet, France February 17.
Washington is preparing to send 2,200 Marines to join a "rapid reaction force" of up to 10,000 NATO troops that would quickly move into Kosova within days after a delegation of Kosova Albanians and representatives from the Yugoslav government agree to swallow the U.S.-drafted "peace" deal. During the "peace conference" organized by the six-nation Contact Group in Rambouillet, U.S. government officials have threatened both sides to acquiesce on the accord or face NATO air strikes.
"These are not conventional negotiations," Albright admonished the participants in a meeting February 14. "The threat of NATO air strikes remains real."
"I believe America should contribute" to the military operation, declared U.S. president William Clinton February 13. His announcement was timed with Albright's flight to Paris that day to impose Washington's dictates on the Serbian officials, Albanians, and the European foreign ministers participating in the talks.
NATO officials said the invasion army would include the 1,800 French-led NATO troops already stationed in neighboring Macedonia. The imperialist occupation force could expand to nearly 30,000 soldiers. Pentagon officials say Washington will provide air and sea power from the Fifth Allied Tactical Air Force unit in Aviano, Italy, and the Sixth Fleet in the Mediterranean.
On February 15 London transported 400 British military vehicles, including tanks and armored cars, along with heavy guns from Germany to the northern Greek port of Salonika in anticipation of the intervention. British defense secretary George Robertson said London planned to move the military equipment on ships en route to the Balkans even before an accord is signed.
Under the U.S.-sponsored settlement, Kosova would be divided into zones, with 4,000 U.S. GIs occupying one of them. The British government plans to send 8,000 troops, the French government 5,000, and the German government 4,000. The imperialist army would begin to disarm the Yugoslav government military force and Kosova Liberation Army (UCK), as well as patrol Kosova's borders.
The 60-page document crafted by Washington requires the Albanian rebels to surrender their heavy weapons to storage depots under the supervision of the NATO occupation force. The rebels would also be barred from carrying light weapons or wearing the UCK emblem. The UCK has waged an armed struggle for independence from Yugoslavia. The U.S. plan would grant limited "self-government" to Kosova, less than the autonomy abolished by Yugoslav president Milosevic in 1989.
Kosova is a province in the republic of Serbia, which together with Montenegro makes up Yugoslavia. Ethnic Albanians, who comprise 90 percent of the 2 million people in Kosova, face widespread discrimination. Washington and the other imperialist powers are opposed to Kosova independence.
Albright told Milosevic the Albanian delegation "appear[s] ready to sign the agreement" and said Washington "expects him to do the same," the Associated Press reported February 17.
The Clinton administration has seized on Belgrade's war against the Albanians' struggle for self-determination as a pretext to prepare for military intervention. It is following the earlier pattern of imperialist intervention in Bosnia.
In the early 1990s the U.S. government sabotaged one initiative after another by the French, British, and German governments to act as power brokers in the Yugoslav workers state, where rival wings of the ruling bureaucratic caste were waging a vicious war for land and power. Washington successfully pushed for NATO air strikes in January 1994, as the European occupation force in Bosnia - waving a United Nations banner - faltered. At the same time Clinton initiated the proposal to extend the NATO war machine eastward closer to the borders of Russia.
Over the next year and a half, Washington led a military operation of more than 3,000 assaults - air strikes, naval bombardment, and ground shelling - against Serbian forces. In the aftermath of this barrage the Clinton administration forced all parties involved to a so-called peace conference on a U.S. military base near Dayton, Ohio. Under the Dayton accord, Washington spearheaded an occupation army in Bosnia of 60,000 NATO soldiers. Of the 20,000 imperialist troops remaining in Bosnia, about 6,700 U.S. soldiers are deployed with no scheduled departure date.
One little-publicized side of the "agreement" U.S. officials are now trying to impose would grant the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, based in The Hague, Netherlands, full access to Kosova. The Belgrade government would also be required to extradite three people accused as "war criminals" to appear before this imperialist-crafted body.
Moscow opposed to air strikes
The Russian government has maintained its opposition to
NATO intervention, although it may send troops to participate
in the "peacekeeping" operation planned for Kosova like it has
in Bosnia. "There are no diplomatic, legal, political or
especially economic levers in the [NATO] alliance's arsenal,
just naked military force," said Russian Col. Gen. Leonid
Ivashov.
U.S. capitalist rulers are on a collision course with the Russian workers state. In an acknowledgment of this tension, an article in the February 12 Christian Science Monitor stated, "The Kremlin is anxious to avoid setting a precedent [in Kosova] that might one day open the door to foreign intervention if one of its ethnic crises were to threaten the stability" in the region.
The imperialists' war moves in the Balkans powder keg are preparations for the day when they will attempt to use force to overturn the property relations in Russia, Eastern and Central Europe and try to reestablish the profit system. Imperialist troops deployed in Kosova would be the next step toward the Washington's military encirclement of Russia, which includes the expansion of the Atlantic military alliance.
NATO candidates Poland, Hungary, and the Czech Republic are opening air surveillance facilities that would provide the alliance with a view of all military and civilian air traffic in central Europe. In the next two years, Slovenia, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia will be included into the new spy network. The centers will be structured to add early warning against missiles.
The Polish government's "}Air Sovereignty Operations Center" opened February 12 at a military base outside Warsaw. That same day Polish government spokesman Jaroslaw Sellin announced that Warsaw will formally join NATO March 12. Hungary and the Czech Republic will be brought into the alliance that month as well. NATO's 50th anniversary summit will be held in Washington in April, at which the three former Soviet bloc countries will be formally taken into membership.