APPENDIX 17
Memorandum submitted by Mr Robert Fisk,
The Independent
Thank you for your letter of 29 July, inviting me
to submit a written memorandum of evidence on the foreign policy
lessons of the Kosovo crisis. Your letter was forwarded to me
in Lebanon where it awaited my return from an outside assignment;
and I'm afraid the deadline for submission has already passed.
However, I feel I have little to add to the
many articles I have written on the subject of Kosovo. In short,
I believe that:
(1) When Kosovo might have been "solvablè—at
the time of the 1995 Dayton summit—we refused to address
the Kosovo Albanian grievances since we wanted Mr Milosevic on
our side in the Bosnian settlement.
(2) That the recent Kosovo war was made inevitable
by that part of the Rambouillet peace annex which demanded that
the Serbs allow NATO access to all roads, railways, airports,
radio stations, etc, throughout all of Yugoslavia. This annex
effectively called for NATO occupation of all Serbia and was bound
to be rejected—and was thus bound to lead to war. After
the NATO bombardment, the demands in this annex were quietly abandoned,
having presumably served their purpose. Yet no real discussion
has ever taken place—either in parliament or in the press—on
this critical issue.
(3) That an enormous increase in Serb atrocities
was inevitable after NATO began its bombardment (the Yugoslav
army warned that it would "settle accounts" if NATO
went to war). NATO then changed its war aims, claiming that bombardment
was being carried out to return to their homes the Kosovo Albanian
refugees—most of whom were in their homes when the war began.
|
