|
|
|
 |
 |
|
| The need to provide shelter and
subsistence to the half million refugees ethnically cleansed
from Croatia, Bosnia and Kosovo has added to the burden of the
stricken nation. Little international financial assistance has
been forthcoming and what has been promised has been tied to
conditions that any self- respecting nation would find difficult
to accept. |
|
 |
|
| Next month the United
States Congress will vote on a 100 million dollar aid
package for Serbia but it will be conditional on Serbia
cooperating with the Hague Tribunal. The latest strident
and emotional charges by the chief prosecutor of the
Yugoslav War Crimes Tribunal, Carla Del Ponte, that
Belgrade is harboring Radovan Karadzic seems timed to
ensure that the vote will be negative. This should tell
us something about Del Ponte’s function as an apologist
for United States policy in the former Yugoslavia and
her role as a salaried supporter of George Soros crusade
against Serbia. |
 |
|
|
|
|
|
| In some respects Carla Del Ponte
has done more damage to Serbia than was done by the NATO
bombing. She has obviously a pathological hatred of Serbia and
Serbians and is determined to classify them all as war criminals
and murderers. Frustrated by Milosevic’s ability to point out
inconsistencies and outright fabrications by the prosecution
during his trial she seems set on adding more and more Serbs to
the list brought before her kangaroo court. It was not by
accident that she waited until the deaths of Tudjman and
Izetbegovic before hinting that given time they too might have
been brought before her court. |
|
|
|
|
|
She single handedly
guaranteed a heavy Serbian vote for the Serbian Radical party
by indicting four Serbian Generals before her court on the eve
of the Serbian election. Her removal from the court would be a
blessing for Serbia and would permit the country to get on
with its recovery. Unfortunately, she will continue to operate
like the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland with her demands of,
‘off with their heads,” and “first the sentence-then the
verdict!” |
|
|
|
|
She is scarily
reminiscence of Hitler’s favoured prosecutor, Roland Fiesler,
who presided over the trials of those Germans who were involved
in the July 20 plot against Adolf Hitler. Fiesler took sadistic
satisfaction in humiliating his victims before condemning them.
More serious than the physical damage caused by the illegal NATO
attack has been the psychological damage done to the Serbian
people. They have been portrayed by the Western media as
barbarians guilty of mass rape and murder. There has been little
attempt by Western Governments to set the record straight on
these lies because to do so would call into question their own
role in the tragedy that swept through the former Yugoslavia in
the 1990’s. |
|
|
|
|
Unfortunately, the once proud
Serbia that had shared with Greece the honour of being the most
democratic and freedom loving country of the Balkans is now
looked upon by many as an international pariah whose leaders and
people are guilty of crimes against humanity.
This was the little country with a population of four and one
half million people that in the First World War defied the
Austrian- Hungarian and German empires. This was the Serbia that
at horrendous sacrifice refused to abandon the allied cause and
continued to fight with courage and effectiveness until the end
of the war. |
|
|
|
|
| This was the Serbia that
refused to make a deal with Hitler in 1941 despite being
hopelessly surrounded by Axis countries. Yet it stood by its
traditional allies, Britain and France, and did so in the clear
knowledge that defiance meant destruction, occupation and the
subsequent decimation of its population.
The price that Serbia paid for their brave demonstration
of loyalty to their friends was genocide at the hands of the
Ustashi, Nazi and Muslim fascists and a savage civil war between
communist partisans and anti-communist forces. The nation was
torn apart, suffered over a million dead and was totally
devastated by the war - a war that led to the dictatorship –
benevolent or otherwise of Josip Broz Tito. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
Serbia like many other
small nations has found itself throughout its history
used as a pawn in the power struggles of great nations.
Its geographical location in the Balkans on the
religious and cultural divide – between Roman Catholic
and Orthodox, between East and West, between Hapsburg
and Ottoman, between conflicting ideologies – has
inevitably entangled it in great power rivalry. |
|
 |
|
|
