[L-I] Milosevic Attacks Testimony of William Walker

AP. 12 June 2002. Milosevic Attacks Testimony of U.S. Ambassador; Says
He Backed Kosovo Rebels.

THE HAGUE -- Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic challenged the
testimony of an American ambassador Wednesday, reaching back to the
Iran-Contra scandal of the late 1980s in an attempt to discredit the
U.S. envoy.

At his War Crimes Tribunal, Milosevic cross-examined William Walker, the
former U.S. head of a Kosovo peacekeeping mission, about his testimony
that he saw piles of bodies at Racak, a massacre that focused world
attention on atrocities by Serb forces.

As head of the mission for the Organization for Security and Cooperation
in Europe in the late 1990s, Walker was charged with monitoring human
rights abuses.

Before joining the OSCE, Walker dealt with Central American issues at
the State Department from 1985-88 and later served as ambassador to El
Salvador from 1988-92.

During that period the U.S. government became embroiled in financing
anti-communist Contra fighters in Central America with proceeds from
secret arms sales to Iran.

"In Kosovo, you supported a different kind of Contras," Milosevic said.

"The Contra Kosovo Liberation Army." He also suggested Walker was
involved in the murder of Jesuit priests and nuns in El Salvador.

Milosevic alleged that OSCE verifiers had been recruited by the CIA.
Walker said his main goal was "to get people to calm down and not
provoke further violence" in Kosovo.

In his testimony, Walker told the U.N. Tribunal for the Former
Yugoslavia that a day after the Racak massacre of around 25 ethnic
Albanians on Jan. 15, 1999, he saw the bodies of mostly elderly men
lying in pools of blood from bullet wounds.

Milosevic claimed the men were killed in clashes with Kosovo rebels and
displayed photographs of the scene that he said proved it was
fabricated.

"You are talking about pools of blood and on the soil there is no blood
at all," Milosevic said to Walker.

"Do you see blood on this picture?"

"No, not on this picture," Walker replied.
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Macdonald Stainsby
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/rad-green
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--
In the contradiction lies the hope.
                                     --Bertholt Brecht



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