Identifier
Created
Classification
Origin
09BELGRADE49
2009-01-16 12:02:00
UNCLASSIFIED//FOR OFFICIAL USE ONLY
Embassy Belgrade
Cable title:
SERBS REWRITE HISTORY: MEDIA CAMPAIGN GEARS UP AS NATO
how-toVZCZCXRO8831 PP RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHLN RUEHLZ RUEHNP RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSK RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG DE RUEHBW #0049/01 0161202 ZNR UUUUU ZZH P 161202Z JAN 09 FM AMEMBASSY BELGRADE TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0880 INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE RUEHPS/AMEMBASSY PRISTINA 0020 RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0040 RHEHNS/NSC WASHDC RUZEJAA/JAC MOLESWORTH RAF MOLESWORTH UK RHMFISS/HQ USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BELGRADE 000049
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
E.O.12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL KV SR
SUBJECT: SERBS REWRITE HISTORY: MEDIA CAMPAIGN GEARS UP AS NATO
BOMBING ANNIVERSARY APPROACHES
Summary
-------
UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BELGRADE 000049
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
E.O.12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL KV SR
SUBJECT: SERBS REWRITE HISTORY: MEDIA CAMPAIGN GEARS UP AS NATO
BOMBING ANNIVERSARY APPROACHES
Summary
--------------
1. (SBU) March 24th will mark the tenth anniversary of the start of
the NATO bombing campaign against the Socialist Republic of
Yugoslavia. With two articles published in widely-read dailies on
January 15, the Serbian media continues with its "Serbs as victims"
theme, casting the Albanians as the aggressors and NATO as aiding
and abetting them. This revision of history in advance of the
anniversary and the first hearings before the International Court of
Justice on Serbia's case challenging the legality of Kosovo's
independence will only accelerate in coming weeks. End Summary.
Albanian Atrocities in June 1999
--------------
2. (SBU) On January 15, Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti published
an article entitled "Albanians Killed, NATO Covered Up," which
alleged that Albanians committed war crimes, including ethnic
cleansing, after NATO forces entered Kosovo in June 1999. The
article was based on a December 18 article in the Italian weekly
magazine Panorama, titled "The Hidden Truth: Massacres of Serbs,"
which makes no mention of a NATO role in a cover-up, according to
the Italian Embassy. The Panorama article did quote (retired)
Italian General Mauro del Vecchio, in command of an Italian KFOR
brigade posted in Kosovo in 1999, and Peruvian diplomat Pablo Jose
Baraibar, who headed the UNMIK Missing Persons office, and also
included pictures reportedly taken by Italian soldiers, which
allegedly show bodies of Serbian civilians. (Comment: Serb media
has a history of showing photographs of victims and claiming them as
Serbs. While the international press was showing the horrors of
Serb-run Omarska Prison Camp during the war in Bosnia, for example,
Serb media used the same images claiming the detainees were Serbs.
End Comment.)
3. (U) The Vecernje Novosti article, which reprinted two of the
Panorama pictures, reported that del Vecchio, currently an
opposition politician in the Italian parliament, stated that during
his first 20 days in Kosovo he received daily reports of Serb and
Roma corpses left along the roads and that "the smell of death was
omnipresent." He also is quoted as saying that Albanians burned
Serb houses and destroyed Serb churches and monasteries.
4. (U) Baraibar in turn talked about an investigation that he
carried out in 2005 into the July 1998 kidnapping of Serb civilians
near Orahovac. Citing a female survivor of the kidnapping, he
implicated current Kosovo Assembly chairman Jakup Krasniqi, a Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) officer at the time, and former Kosovo Prime
Minister Agim Ceku in the crimes. Baribar further claimed that
neither the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) nor the Kosovo judicial system was interested in
the evidence that he collected.
Racak False Pretense for Bombing
--------------
5. (U) In its January 15 article, the daily Politika focused on
events that occurred 10 years earlier in the southwestern Kosovo
village of Racak when bodies of Albanians, whom the Serbs insisted
were KLA members, not civilians, were found. The article argued
that efforts to soften the court of public opinion for the NATO
bombing began that day when then-OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission
head William Walker characterized the deaths as a "massacre" in the
presence of foreign and Albanian journalists.
6. (U) Declaring that the past ten years have proven that Walker's
conclusions are far from indisputable, the article heavily cited
statements made by Finnish forensic dentist Helena Ranta in her
autobiography in 2008 and in a Russian documentary film. In these
statements, Ranta alleged that Walker and Finnish Foreign Ministry
officials pressured her to conclude as she told the media in 1999
that Racak was a "crime against humanity." In the film, she
reportedly stated that the bodies discovered in Racak were
"terrorists, Serb soldiers, and local inhabitants."
Comment
--------------
7. (SBU) As the March anniversary of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign
approaches and with initial briefs due before the ICJ in April, we
can expect the Serbian media to continue to distort the NATO
intervention and its casus belli. Contacts close to the government
have told us that the MFA is pushing this effort along. Though the
intent is mostly for domestic consumption, comments of
BELGRADE 00000049 002 OF 002
"internationals" such as del Vecchio, Baraibar, and Ranta lend
credibility to Serbia's growing argument that Serb actions in Kosovo
were self-defense and that the NATO bombing further victimized
Serbs. End Comment.
MUNTER
SENSITIVE
SIPDIS
E.O.12958: N/A
TAGS: PGOV PREL KV SR
SUBJECT: SERBS REWRITE HISTORY: MEDIA CAMPAIGN GEARS UP AS NATO
BOMBING ANNIVERSARY APPROACHES
Summary
--------------
1. (SBU) March 24th will mark the tenth anniversary of the start of
the NATO bombing campaign against the Socialist Republic of
Yugoslavia. With two articles published in widely-read dailies on
January 15, the Serbian media continues with its "Serbs as victims"
theme, casting the Albanians as the aggressors and NATO as aiding
and abetting them. This revision of history in advance of the
anniversary and the first hearings before the International Court of
Justice on Serbia's case challenging the legality of Kosovo's
independence will only accelerate in coming weeks. End Summary.
Albanian Atrocities in June 1999
--------------
2. (SBU) On January 15, Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti published
an article entitled "Albanians Killed, NATO Covered Up," which
alleged that Albanians committed war crimes, including ethnic
cleansing, after NATO forces entered Kosovo in June 1999. The
article was based on a December 18 article in the Italian weekly
magazine Panorama, titled "The Hidden Truth: Massacres of Serbs,"
which makes no mention of a NATO role in a cover-up, according to
the Italian Embassy. The Panorama article did quote (retired)
Italian General Mauro del Vecchio, in command of an Italian KFOR
brigade posted in Kosovo in 1999, and Peruvian diplomat Pablo Jose
Baraibar, who headed the UNMIK Missing Persons office, and also
included pictures reportedly taken by Italian soldiers, which
allegedly show bodies of Serbian civilians. (Comment: Serb media
has a history of showing photographs of victims and claiming them as
Serbs. While the international press was showing the horrors of
Serb-run Omarska Prison Camp during the war in Bosnia, for example,
Serb media used the same images claiming the detainees were Serbs.
End Comment.)
3. (U) The Vecernje Novosti article, which reprinted two of the
Panorama pictures, reported that del Vecchio, currently an
opposition politician in the Italian parliament, stated that during
his first 20 days in Kosovo he received daily reports of Serb and
Roma corpses left along the roads and that "the smell of death was
omnipresent." He also is quoted as saying that Albanians burned
Serb houses and destroyed Serb churches and monasteries.
4. (U) Baraibar in turn talked about an investigation that he
carried out in 2005 into the July 1998 kidnapping of Serb civilians
near Orahovac. Citing a female survivor of the kidnapping, he
implicated current Kosovo Assembly chairman Jakup Krasniqi, a Kosovo
Liberation Army (KLA) officer at the time, and former Kosovo Prime
Minister Agim Ceku in the crimes. Baribar further claimed that
neither the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia (ICTY) nor the Kosovo judicial system was interested in
the evidence that he collected.
Racak False Pretense for Bombing
--------------
5. (U) In its January 15 article, the daily Politika focused on
events that occurred 10 years earlier in the southwestern Kosovo
village of Racak when bodies of Albanians, whom the Serbs insisted
were KLA members, not civilians, were found. The article argued
that efforts to soften the court of public opinion for the NATO
bombing began that day when then-OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission
head William Walker characterized the deaths as a "massacre" in the
presence of foreign and Albanian journalists.
6. (U) Declaring that the past ten years have proven that Walker's
conclusions are far from indisputable, the article heavily cited
statements made by Finnish forensic dentist Helena Ranta in her
autobiography in 2008 and in a Russian documentary film. In these
statements, Ranta alleged that Walker and Finnish Foreign Ministry
officials pressured her to conclude as she told the media in 1999
that Racak was a "crime against humanity." In the film, she
reportedly stated that the bodies discovered in Racak were
"terrorists, Serb soldiers, and local inhabitants."
Comment
--------------
7. (SBU) As the March anniversary of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign
approaches and with initial briefs due before the ICJ in April, we
can expect the Serbian media to continue to distort the NATO
intervention and its casus belli. Contacts close to the government
have told us that the MFA is pushing this effort along. Though the
intent is mostly for domestic consumption, comments of
BELGRADE 00000049 002 OF 002
"internationals" such as del Vecchio, Baraibar, and Ranta lend
credibility to Serbia's growing argument that Serb actions in Kosovo
were self-defense and that the NATO bombing further victimized
Serbs. End Comment.
MUNTER