9 minutes agoPetritsch for the NATO bombings: The US wanted to take the planes immediately after Recak, we Europeans requested negotiations
Periskopi(2 years ago)
(2 years ago)The European Union's chief negotiator in the Rambouillet peace talks in 1999, Wolfgang Petritsch, has recalled in an interview with the Serbian newspaper Danas how things turned out to the NATO bombing campaign on Belgrade, which started exactly 25 years ago. Petritsch discovered how the United States of America obeyed [...]
The European Union's chief negotiator in the Rambouillet peace talks in 1999, Wolfgang Petritsch, has recalled in an interview with the Serbian newspaper Danas how things turned out to the NATO bombing campaign on Belgrade, which started exactly 25 years ago.
Petritsch found out how the United States of America obeyed all other states and wanted to intervene militarily since the Recak massacre, where 45 civilians were killed in the small village of Shtime on January 15, 1999, the Express records.
The veteran Austrian diplomat confirmed that former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright examined the possibility even earlier, since 1998.
The “since October 1998, there is a so-called NATO activism order, the last step ahead of military intervention. Several embassies evacuated their offices and left Belgrade. They returned soon because Milosevic withdrew part of his forces from Kosovo and allowed the O Verifering Mission The SEU entering Kosovo. So it was a very serious situation now in late 1998. But after a short period of calm, the conflict continued and ended only in Recak in mid-January 1999, where special forces killed 45 civilians. This massacre changed the game. The US wanted to send out its air forces immediately, but we Europeans insisted that now it was time to invite both sides to start serious negotiations, given a temporary agreement the two sides had known for many months. The boom was indeed more than political will to find a compromise solution”, Petritsch said.
Asked how you view that intervention 25 years after, Petritsch said that as a diplomat who believes in the power of speech, it seems depressing that our “arguments in favour of compromise were not heard”.
If he had avoided shelling, the Austrian diplomat says Serbia would be a much more advanced state “economically, politically and possibly already in the EU”.
Both Kosovo and Serbia, Petritsch estimates they are “away from where they could be”.
