On January 16, 1999, the US-American head of the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), William Walker and journalists of the international press, were led by members of the KLA to a gully at the edge of the village of Racak, where the bodies of some twenty persons were lying. Speaking in emotional terms to international media, Walker immediately accused Serbian security forces of having committed a frightful massacre of ethnic Albanian "unarmed civilians". He declared: "I don´t hesitate to accuse the Yugoslav security forces of this crime."

The "Berliner Zeitung" (March 24, 2000) reported:

The following day, the OSCE mission summarized in a "special report" written under Walker´s direction that proof of "arbitrary arrests, killings and mutilation of unarmed civilians" had been found. The report listed details: 23 adult men in a gully above Racak, "many shot at extremely close range", another four adult men, who were apparently shot while fleeing, as well as 18 bodies in the village itself. Among the last group were also a woman and a boy.

The US president Clinton condemned the "massacre" in the most absolute terms and spoke of "a deliberate and arbitrary act of murder".

A statement made public by the German foreign ministry proclaimed: "Those responsible have to know that the international community is not prepared to accept the brutal persecution and murder of civilians in Kosovo." For Joschka Fischer, Racak is a "turning point".

NATO immediately convoked an emergency meeting. Jan. 19, Madeleine Albright, called for bombing Yugoslavia as "punishment".

The Yugoslav government categorically denied the allegations and called it a manipulation. It accused the KLA of having gathered the corpses of their fighters, killed in the preceding day´s battle, and arranging them so as to resemble a mass execution of civilians. The day before, there had been a battle between the Yugoslav police and KLA terrorists in Racak.

The "Racak massacre," is without a doubt the "trigger" event making NATO´s war against Yugoslavia ineluctable. The "Washington Post" (April 18, 1999) described Racak as having "transformed the West´s Balkan policy as singular events seldom do." Though much is still shrouded in secrecy, the facts that have come to light give grounds for a prima facie case for believing that the "massacre of Racak" is a hoax, staged in order to pressure hesitant politicians and the populations of the NATO countries into accepting a war of aggression against Yugoslavia.

According to the version of events that was subsequently broadcast around the world, the Serbian police and military entered the village, in an operation resembling that of a Latin American death squad, kicked in doors, forced the women to remain inside while gathering the men in the middle of the village. The men were then marched to the outskirts of town to a hill where they were executed - shot in the back of the head and neck. Some were tortured before being killed.

This Walker/KLA version forms the basis of the indictment before the Tribunal in the Hague, May 24 1999, against the government leaders of Yugoslavia. The indictment was handed down during the bombing of Yugoslavia, at a time when European governments were becoming more and more uncomfortable with the further escalation of the bombing campaign against more civilian targets.

The indictment charges Slobodan Milosevic and other leading members of the Yugoslav government with "crimes against humanity and violations of the laws or customs of war". One of the concrete crimes charged, was specifically relating to what is called the "Racak Massacre":

This Walker/KLA version of events quickly proved to have serious flaws. Doubt was cast that the police had been a death squad commando, the victims, innocent civilians, and their death, an execution.

A Death Squad operation of the Police?

A few days following the incident in Racak the French daily press began publishing information that shed a different light on Walker´s version of events.

The correspondent Renaud Girard, reported in Le Figaro (Jan. 20, 1999):

At dawn, intervention forces of the Serbian police encircled and then attacked the village of Racak, known as a bastion of KLA (Kosovo Liberation Army) separatist guerrillas. The police didn´t seem to have anything to hide, since, at 8:30 a.m., they invited a television team (two journalists of AP TV) to film the operation. A warning was also given to the OSCE, which sent two cars with American diplomatic licenses to the scene. The observers spent the whole day posted on a hill where they could watch the village.

At 3 p.m., a police communique reached the international press center in Pristina announcing that 15 KLA "terrorists" had been killed in combat in Racak and that a large stock of weapons had been seized.

At 3:30 p.m., the police forces, followed by the AP TV team, left the village, carrying with them a heavy 12.7 mm machine gun, two automatic rifles, two rifles with telescopic sights and some thirty Chinese-made kalashnikovs.

At 4:30 p.m., a French journalist drove through the village and met three orange OSCE vehicles. The international observers were chatting calmly with three middle-aged Albanians in civilian clothes. They were looking for eventual civilian casualties.

Returning to the village at 6 p.m., the journalist saw the observers taking away two very slightly injured old men and two women. The observers, who did not seem particularly worried, did not mention anything in particular to the journalist. They simply said that they were "unable to evaluate the battle toll".

The scene of Albanian corpses in civilian clothes lined up in a ditch, which would shock the whole world was not discovered until the next morning, around 9 a.m., by journalists soon followed by OSCE observers. At that time, the village was once again taken over by armed KLA soldiers who led the foreign visitors, as soon as they arrived, toward the supposed massacre site. Around noon, William Walker in person arrived and expressed his indignation.

All the Albanian witnesses gave the same version: at midday, the policemen forced their way into homes and separated the women from the men, whom they led to the hilltops to execute them without more ado.

The most disturbing fact is that the pictures filmed by the AP TV journalists -- which Le Figaro was shown yesterday -- radically contradict that version.

It was in fact an empty village [smoke was rising from only two chimneys, reported Le Monde Jan. 21, 1999, the grand majority of the inhabitants of the village having fled Racak during the summer of 1998 during the Serbian offensive] that the police entered in the morning, sticking close to the walls. The shooting was intense, as they were fired on from KLA trenches dug into the hillside.

The fighting intensified sharply on the hilltops above the village. Watching from below, next to the mosque, the AP journalists understood that the KLA guerrillas, encircled, were trying desperately to break out. A score of them in fact succeeded, as the police themselves admitted.

What really happened? During the night, could the KLA have gathered the bodies, in fact killed by Serb bullets, to set up a scene of cold-blooded massacre? A disturbing fact: Saturday morning the journalists found only very few spent cartridges around the ditch where the massacre supposedly took place.

Intelligently, did the KLA seek to turn a military defeat into a political victory? Only a credible international inquiry would make it possible to resolve these doubts. The reluctance of the Belgrade government, which has consistently denied the massacre, thus seems incomprehensible.

The correspondent of Le Monde in Kosovo, Christoph Châtelot, raises the question in his report January 21, 99, whether the version of a massacre in Racak is not a bit too perfect. His own investigation led him to have considerable doubt about William Walker´s version. He asks:

How could the Serb police have gathered a group of men and led them calmly toward the execution site while they were constantly under fire from KLA fighters? How could the ditch located on the edge of Racak have escaped notice by local inhabitants familiar with the surroundings who were present before nightfall? Or by the observers who were present for over two hours in this tiny village? Why so few cartridges around the corpses, so little blood in the hollow road where twenty three people are supposed to have been shot at close range with several bullets in the head? Rather, weren´t the bodies of the Albanians killed in combat by the Serb police gathered into the ditch to create a horror scene which was sure to have an appalling effect on public opinion?

March 24, 2000 the "Berliner Zeitung" explains:

Christophe Châtelot had been in Racak the preceding day - the day of the massacre was supposed to have taken place. Together with representatives of the OSZE, he entered the village in late afternoon, as the Serbs were withdrawing. The foreigners discovered four wounded and heard of one having been killed. As it began to get dark, Châtelot returned to Pristina. In Racak nothing special had happened, he told his colleagues. The following day, when Walker and a big troop of journalists drove to Racak, Châtelot turned down the invitation and remained in the Hotel. How it is possible for the OSCE - who could only register a single casualty in the village of Racak on the afternoon of Jan. 15th - to suddenly find 13, even 18 corpses, in the streets and the back yards the following morning is a mystery to Châtelot: "This riddle is beyond me."

A Yugoslav press statement adds the following details about further developments following the battle in Racak.

Immediately after the fighting, the police investigating team came to the scene headed by Magistrate Danica Marinkovic of the Pristina District Court and the Deputy Public Prosecutor Ismet Sufta, but the KLA who were concentrated in the neighboring highlands opened fire and prevented the further on-site investigation. The next day, on 16 January 1999, the on-site investigation was again prevented because the OSCE KVM insisted that the investigating magistrate carry out the investigation without the police presence, explaining that the fighting might be resumed. (Yugoslav Daily Survey, No. 2008, Belgrade, 18.1.99)

This was not only a flagrant violation of Yugoslavia´s and Serbia´s sovereignty but, given the fact that the KLA had already retaken the village of Racak, also a direct threat to the life of the magistrate.

On the other hand, no report was made of Walker or the KVM making an effort to secure evidence or to research the circumstances in which these people died or how their bodies came to be at this site. The Figaro Journalist, Renaud Girard, rushed to the scene with the other journalists January 16, and observed Walker in action.

"Walker is a Profi, when it comes to massacres", says Girard. "Every Profi knows, what he has to do in such a case: He closes off the area, so that the evidence can be secured. Walker didn´t do anything of the kind. He himself trampled all over the place and let the journalists fumble with the bodies, collecting souvenirs and destroy evidence." (Berliner Z. March 24, 2000)

According to journalist reports, Walker spent over half an hour in secret consultations with KLA leaders in Racak, but never went to the nearby Serbian police station to demand an explanation, a normal procedure for someone seeking to learn what really happened.

The victims: "unarmed civilians"?

The OSCE Reports "Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told" (OSCE Reports: Kosovo/Kosova: As Seen, As Told http://www.osce.org/kosovo/reports/hr/part1/p5sti.htm) shed light on the background leading to the police action and on the extent of the civilian nature of the inhabitants of the village of Racak. From a resumé of this report by Diana Johnstone one arrives at the following picture:

Racak, a village strategically located only half a kilometer south of the crossroads town of Stimlje, where the main road between Kosovo´s two main cities, Pristina and Prizren, connects to a southern turnoff to the important town of Urosevac on the road to the Macedonian capital of Skopje, had been abandoned by its 2,000 inhabitants and occupied by only about 350 people. Racak was unquestionably an KLA stronghold when attacked by Serb police on 15 January 1999. The KVM was quite aware of the KLA presence in Racak: "The KLA was there, with a base near the power plant". The village was surrounded by trenches, a common practice of the KLA which turned the villages it occupied into fortresses.

The KVM also knew that the KLA had been carrying out armed ambushes, abductions and murders nearby for several months. "A number of Kosovo Serbs were kidnapped in the Stimlje region, mostly during the summer of 1998", the KVM report notes (p.353). Moreover, the local KLA regularly abducted Kosovo Albanians in an obvious effort to establish the rebels´ power over the Albanian community.

A month before the police raid, on December 12, 1998, the KLA "arrested" nine Albanians for various offenses: "prostitution", "friendly relations with Serbs" and "spying". Rather than release them, the KLA told the KVM that the kidnapped civilians were "waiting to be sentenced" and generously granted their families the right to send them gift packages. Subsequently, first six and then two more Albanians were abducted by the KLA for a total of 17 missing persons. (This behavior never ceased but is not viewed in the general (western) public as reprehensible. The KVM reports that the KLA even took advantage of the February 11 funeral for Racak victims, attended by Walker, world media and thousands of Albanians, to kidnap nine Kosovo Albanians accused of such crimes as "having a brother working with the police; being suspected of having weapons; drinking with Serbs; having Serb friends; or having a Serb police officer as a friend".) Little of this information was "newsworthy" for the "western" media, only on the lookout for "atrocities" - real or imagined - committed by Serbs.

January 8, a KLA armed ambush on police vehicles left three policemen dead and one wounded. Three Kosovo Albanians in a passing taxi were wounded in the same ambush. "The ambush was well prepared: there was a camouflaged firing position for up to 15 men, which had been occupied for several days, and small arms, heavy machine-guns and rocket-propelled grenades were fired at the police convoy", the KVM reported (p.354).

On January 10, yet another policeman was fatally wounded in an ambush south of Stimlje. It was at this point that the Serbian police prepared their operation against the KLA base in Racak.

During the battle that took place, several KLA fighters were killed. The "Berliner Zeitung" (March 24, 2000) reports:

Already on the morning of January 16, the KLA announced in an initial communique, that eight of its fighters fell in combat around Racak. The names of these casualties do not appear among the names listed by the Tribunal in The Hague. Just as strange: Also on January 16, the KLA gave the names of 22 people who had been executed in Racak. Of these only eleven of those listed, appear in the protocol of the Tribunal. Only the number 22 comes close to the number of those found on the hill behind Racak. (...) KLA leader Hashim Thaci declared recently in the BBC: "We had a key unit in the area. It was a wild battle. We lost a lot of people. But the Serbs did also."

Serbian authorities have always insisted that the dead found in Racak, were KLA fighters who were killed in battle. Since the autopsies carried out by a team of Serbian and Belarus pathologists were not considered "sufficiently credible" by western governments and their media, the European Union (EU) called in an "independent" team from Finland, which was accepted by the Yugoslav government.

Execution - or Battlefield deaths?

The final report of the EU´s pathological expert team from Finland, which investigated the causes of death of the bodies found in Racak, was completed at the beginning of March 1999. It would take Helena Ranta, the team´s coordinatrice, another two weeks before she would confront the press.

From information in the "Berliner Zeitung" (March 10, 16, and 19, ´99) and "Die Welt" (March 8, ´99) evolves the following picture:

The EU had the publication of the final report postponed repeatedly. March 5 became March 8, the date Ranta said she would submit the report to the German EU Council Presidency and added that "the German Foreign Ministry has taken responsibility for deciding whether the report would be made public or not." A spokesperson for the ministry announced that only after the report had been submitted would "there be further thought about what comes next, how and when it will be made public."

Even though Helena Ranta explained March 2, that no more than 3 days would be required to wrap up the finishing touches on the report, the March 8 submission of the report was also canceled. Because of "unsolved technical details" the expertise on Racak had to remain in the hands of the team of experts for at least another week, announced the Finnish Foreign Minister, Ms. Tarja Halonen.

According to circles within the OSCE, the Finnish expertise, was at first withheld out of deference to the negotiations in Rambouillet. Only after repeated inquiry in Helsinki and Bonn and pressure from within the OSCE, did the German EU presidency declare that the report would be handed over March 17, - possibly in the assumption that the Kosovo Conference´s second round - having been originally planned to be limited to March 15 - would in any case be over.

Just before the expertise was to be officially handed over, the "Washington Post", in an apparent attempt set the tone of the atmosphere, reported that the report confirmed that a massacre had taken place in Racak. As the "Berliner Zeitung" (March 19, 1999) observed: "Observers saw in this a direct link to the hard negotiation line followed by the US in Paris and were reminded of the role played by this journal in the propagandistic preparations for the Golf War 1991."

"Whether it was a massacre, no one wants to know anymore" was the headline in the German journal "Die Welt" and quoted an OSCE diplomat in Vienna as saying: "This report is a hot potato, that no one wants to touch." The head of the OSCE mission, William Walker, had again in February repeated, "It will be confirmed that it was a massacre by the Serbs."

March 13 the "Berliner Zeitung" titled its article "OSCE representatives prove Walker wrong" and reported:

"The head of the OSCE Verification Mission in Kosovo, the US American, William Walker, should be replaced as soon as possible - according to the wishes of several European states. As the "Berliner Zeitung" learned in the lead up to the negotiations from OSCE sources in Vienna, Germany, Italy and Austria demanded that Walker leave. According to these sources, high ranking European OSCE representatives have the evidence that the 45 Albanians found in Racak in mid-January were not civilian victims of a Serbian massacre, as Walker alleges.

According to the OSCE, inside the organization it has long since taken for granted that Racak "was a hoax arranged by the Albanian side." This conclusion was arrived at on the basis of data from the communication center of the Kosovo Mission, in other words independently from the awaited expertise of Ms. Ranta´s team of experts. "Most of the dead were gathered from a wide radius around Racak and deposited where they were later found." Most of the Albanians died in combat under fire from Serbian artillery. Many were "subsequently dressed in civilian clothes" according to a representative of the OSCE.

This evidence concords with the Serbian version of events in Racak: that the Albanians were killed in combat between the KLA and Serbian units, and the scene of a massacre arranged afterward from the Albanians."

Up to the very end, Helena Ranta did not know if her team´s investigation results would be made public, "The decision will be made at the last minute when we see what happens at Kosovo Negotiations in Paris."

From the time Helena Ranta took on the job as head of the expert team, she repeatedly under pressure particularly from the German government which at the time was president of the EU Council. Also at the press conference March 17 in Pristina, where the final report of the Finnish team was supposed to be transmitted to the German presidency of the EU Council and the Serbian Circuit Court, she had to follow the German ambassador´s instructions when she responded to questions from the media. ("Berliner Zeitung", 16.3.99)

March 17 a written press statement was distributed that had been prepared by the press department of the foreign ministry in Bonn. The statement announced that on the same day, Dr. Helena Ranta would transmit the Finnish forensic team´s final report to the relevant Serbian officials. The following 5 pages are comments that were introduced with the following: "These comments are based upon the investigation of the EU team´s forensic expert in Pristina, as approved by the Circuit Court of Pristina in accordance with the Yugoslav penal process standards. (...) The comments reflect the personal opinion of the author, Dr. Helena Ranta and do not represent an authorized statement from the Pathological Medicine section of the Helsinki University or the EU forensic experts.

These comments and the answers given by Helena Ranta during the press conference in Pristina, were in the decisive points kept so vague that no clear-cut conclusions could be drawn. She declared "the garments most probably had neither been changed nor removed". This answer to the question of whether a number of the dead had not been originally wearing KLA uniforms, as the Serbian side claims, is left as inconclusive as that of the time of the victims´ death. According to Ranta, "at best, it could be ascertained that the victims appear to have died at around the same time.

Was it a "massacre"? Helena Ranta does not want to answer, because "such a conclusion is not within the EU pathological team´s competence. She refuted the "Washington Post´s" article, according to which the results of their investigation confirm that a massacre had taken place in Racak. Under pressure of persisting questioning she stated that the dead of Racak were victims of a "crime against humanity". The possibility that the dead were inhabitants of Racak, who could have gotten caught in a cross fire between Serbian units and the KLA, she also did not want to exclude. Ranta also did not contradict the Yugoslavian and Belarus pathological experts, whose investigation arrived at the conclusion that the victims had not been shot at close range.

The Pathologist Branimir Aleksandric, at the University in Belgrade stated after Helena Ranta´s press conference that she had only spoken in her name as a private person and had not reflected the views of the Finnish team, led by the world renowned Pathologist Antti Penttilä. From the medical standpoint, her answers were kept so vague so, one could surmise, as if she wanted to avoid contradicting William Walker and those who pull his strings. Her answers show also that she does not know about gunshot wounds. "She is a dentist by profession. Her expertise in forensic medicine is limited to identification. She is not competent therefore to give an opinion on the mechanics of inflicting injuries, which is what the Yugoslav, Belarus and Finnish pathologists were entrusted with doing in their medical examination of the Racak bodies." Her comments and answers along with the fact that her name was missing on the 40 individual findings of the Finnish team shows that their is a gulf between the professional and the political in the Finnish team. ("Tanjug", March 8, 1999)

Yugoslav and Belarus pathologists published the results of their investigations already in February. These were carried out in accord with the Finnish pathologists, even though at the time they did not sign the reports. To consider the refusal of the Finnish experts´ signatures as resulting from a difference of opinion was repudiated by Helena Ranta, who insisted that on the professional level there was no problems in cooperation and that all had agreed on common methods and procedures. The difference was lay apparently only in the time that the documents were signed. The Finnish team did not want to sign solely on the basis of the autopsy, but wanted first to perform a comprehensive evaluation of the data at the Pathological Medicine section of the Helsinki University before signing.

The reports of the autopsies of the 40 bodies from Racak performed by the Yugoslav/Belarus pathologists and those done by the Finnish pathologists show do not contradict one another. (Both autopsy reports are at our disposal.)

The following is a summary of the autopsy reports:

• The corpses show essentially no wounds other than gunshot wounds (some light scratches and bruises etc. - only one elderly male showed traces of a violent blow to the face with a blunt instrument)

• 3 corpses had been postmortem bitten by animals (head and neck)

• Gunshot wounds was the cause of death in all cases

• Both teams conclude: there is no evidence of wounds caused at contact discharge or close-range firing (only one corpse showed the possibility that one of two gunshot wounds could have been inflicted at a relatively close distance)

• In the reports of the Finnish team is repeated for each case: "Based on the verified autopsy of (classification number), the categorization of manner of death, as recommended by the World Health Organisation, could not be determined. On the basis of external findings, the applicable alternatives are criminal homicide, war, or inconclusive."

• None of the finds showed evidence of an execution.

Strikingly the reports made no mention of results of examinations for traces of powder on the hands of the corpses. This would have furnished essential evidence about whether the victims were unarmed civilians, as The Hague indictment claims, or KLA guerrillas, whether it was an execution or battlefield deaths. To such a question posed by a journalist of the "Berliner Zeitung" (March 24, 2000), Helena Ranta responded that the Finnish team had not even examined the hands for traces of powder.

The KVM Report refers repeatedly to the decisive event that determined the attitude of the "international community", but unlike William Walker, the report admits that the event in Racak remains a mystery. Five months following NATO´s destruction of Yugoslavia, the "Berliner Zeitung" explains under the headlines: OSCE will reopen the case of Racak; European Union report about the tragedy remains secret (15.1.2000):

"The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) will again concern itself with the case of the corpses found in the Kosovo village of Racak in January 1999. This was announced in Vienna by the new OSCE Chairman, Austria´s Foreign Minister, Wolfgang Schüssel, in answer to a question posed by Willy Wimmer, Vice President of the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly. Wimmer raised the question before the Assembly´s Standing Committee, where he referred to media reports concerning the Finnish Pathologist, Helena Ranta´s return to Racak for new investigations, months following her having submitted her findings - still held secret - to the European Union. In view of the significance the finding of the corpses in Racak had for the developments leading up to the Kosovo War, stressed Wimmer the necessity for comprehensive clarity in the affair. Schüssel promised to "examine the case."

The exact text of the final report, terminated in March 1999, has yet to be rendered public. The Foreign Ministry of Germany, having placed this report - made under the auspices of the European Union - within the confines of the German Archive Law and is holding it secret even from the other member states of the European Union.

OSCE Mission: A House Divided

As with the other Yugoslav civil wars, also the civil war in Serbia was seen by the US government as an opportunity for insuring further, its uncontested hegemony over its European allies through the further extension of the power, prerogative and presence of NATO under its leadership to also this region of Europe. The "Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung" (Dec. 12, 1998) wrote in its report on the OSCE summit meeting in Oslo (Dec. 1998), "that some of the delegations suppose that NATO and the USA, they wouldn´t put it past them, only wanted to let the OSCE get engaged as ombudsman in the Kosovo conflict, to set a trap: If also the OSCE, after already the UN has failed to measure up to Milosevic, is not up to the task and fails, NATO can be left to pose as the last bulwark and the primadona. Such conspiracy theories nevertheless do have grounds, the unarmed OSCE observers on the ground will hardly be able to develop authority without NATO Operation Eagle-eye aerial surveillance."

"At this time the media in the USA was applying pressure for military intervention in Kosovo" wrote Heinz Loquai (ret. Br.Gen. of the German armed forces and assistant to the German representation to the OSCE in Vienna) in the "Blättern für deutsche und internationale Politik", (Sept. 99). "The USA evidently also wanted to establish a precedence for NATO´s military engagement outside of a UN mandate. But not all European allies, at the time were in accord. Particularly France was blocking. Also in Germany there were doubts. Besides, in Bonn a change of government was in the making."

With the accord reached between Richard Holbrooke and Slobodan Milosevic, October 13, 1998, under threat of a NATO aggression, the US moved a step closer to its goal of direct NATO warfare against Serbia. During his negotiations in Belgrade, Holbrooke insisted that NATO, augment the military pressure on Yugoslavia by threatening intervention. Heinz Loquai explains further:

Already Sept. 24, 1998 NATO unambiguously threatened the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia with bombing attacks. Oct. 13, 1998 - the same day that the Holbrooke/Milosevic-Agreement was reached - the NATO Council authorized the Secretary General of the Alliance to give the go ahead for "bombing attacks" against Yugoslavia - in other words, to begin the war. This unmistakable threat of war, according to participants in the negotiations in Belgrade, was what made the Yugoslav leadership to yield. (...) During the negotiations the Yugoslav side repeatedly demanded the annulment of NATO´s war threat. The threat remained intact.

Milosevic accepted a strong OSCE presence in Kosovo, which he before had always even in weaker proportions linked to preconditions. The verifiers were assured full and unhindered freedom of movement. The Federal Republic of Yugoslavia accepted responsibility for their security. She committed herself to supporting the OSCE mission administratively in its carrying out of its duties, to establish liaison posts to the mission and to cooperate. Army and police must inform the OSCE of troop movements. The armed forces and the special police were to be reduced to a predetermined level. This was concretized in a special accord Oct. 25, 1998."

Yugoslavia was forced to accept responsibility for maintaining the peace and security in this region of Yugoslavia, while "agreeing" to limiting its possibilities to do so, and thereby "accepting" to leave the opposing partner in this civil war, a free hand to profit from all limitations imposed. It must be noted that the accord was made only between Yugoslavia and the US, the NATO and the OSCE. (The KLA was not only not a party to any of the accords nor was the KLA even mentioned in the accords. The accords had no binding effect on the KLA. This means that Yugoslavia was even held accountable for the consequences of KLA behavior.)

Such accords could not bring peace and stabilization to the region. The fact is, they created optimal conditions for the KLA to continue its war against Serbia and its peoples. Racak must be understood in this context.

Just a few weeks before the Holbrook-Milosevic Accord, "The KLA appeared to have been completely eliminated as a result of the Serbian summer offensive of 1998. Only to reappear like a phoenix from the ashes, reorganized, with newer weapons and determined "to draw NATO into its fight for independence by provoking Serb forces into further atrocities" as a U.S. intelligence report frankly put it. "More and more often KLA terrorists were seen in new German camouflage uniforms - even bearing the black-red-gold emblem of the German flag." (Matthias Küntzel, Der Weg in den Krieg, pg. 155)

The principal deputy Head of Mission of the KVM, the French diplomat, Gabriel Keller explains:

The KLA never really tried, as a whole, to participate in the improvement of the situation on the ground. Every pullback by the Yugoslav army or the Serbian police was followed by a movement forward by its force, which the other side of course considered as a violation of the cease-fire (or at lease a violation of the commitment to restrain, for the KLA did not sign a cease-fire). OSCE´s presence compelled the state forces to a certain restraint, at least at the beginning of our mission, and KLA took advantage of this to consolidate its positions everywhere, continuing smuggling arms from Albania, abducting and killing people both civilians and militaries, Albanians and Serbs as well. (Keller Gabriel The OSCE/KVM: Autopsy of a Mission; Statement delivered by Amb. Gabriel Keller, principal deputy head of mission to the watch group on May 25th)

William Walker, having been picked by Madeleine Albright to head the OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM), proved not the the person to successfully handle such a delicate non-partisan job. The German daily, "Die Welt" (Jan. 20, 1999) described William Walker and his mission:

The 63 year old Walker until now had mostly been engaged in Middle and Latin America to defend US interests. What has made his name an evil omen for Belgrade is his deployment in Panama.

Walker had hardly arrived in Kosovo, when the Serbian leadership began to complain that the entire OSCE mission was only there for the purpose of fabricating excuses for a NATO military intervention. The mission and Walker were accused of systematically overstepping the bounds of their mandate.

This was true. Under Walker´s leadership the OSCE mission was experiencing what the Americans since the UN deployment in Bosnia call "mission creep" - the slow, steadily creeping change in the mandated profile of the mission. At first the OSCE monitors were supposed to only be observing and ascertaining if the cease-fire reached Oct. 12 is being respected, or who is responsible for its violation.

The monitors also did that. But they did much more. Repeatedly they transported wounded from both sides out of the battle zone and mediated occasionally between Albanians and Serbs to attain a return to the cease-fire. Following the attacks of Serbian security forces since Sunday on the village of Racak, the OSCE observers have been successfully escorting refugees through Serbian police roadblocks.

Racak has also become a symbol for the powerlessness of the OSCE. And also for an almost cowardly behavior, that Walker´s more aggressive interpretation of the mission countered. First, after observers determined that a massacre had been committed on more than 40 Albanians, Walker said publicly that this is a war crime committed by Serbian security forces, for which Yugoslavia´s head of state, Slobodan Milosevic could personally be held accountable.

This statement confirmed the fears of the Serbs: Walker was seeking grounds for a military intervention. The government declared him persona non grata. (Boris Kalnoky, "Die Welt" 20.1.99)

With military-like hierarchical structures the KVM was tailored to giving the Walker, the American "Head of Mission" (HOM) and his closest deputies, the maximum of control over the mission. Walker´s deputy, Gabriel Keller, made the following critical observations of the mission under Walkers leadership:

"The political dimension of the mission was too small. (...) Some of the mission members chose from the beginning to adopt a very aggressive behavior with the official [Yugoslav] authorities. The potential benefits of diplomacy were thus deliberately sacrificed. (...) We never tried, at the upper level of the mission, to associate the Yugoslavs to our work. In the Regional Committees, such a work was done, sometimes very successfully, which proves it was not an impossible challenge. A growing number of mission members, nationals of OSCE countries not belonging to NATO, who did not approve this behavior, felt more and more uncomfortable in a mission which did not reflect the sensitivity of their countries. (...)

The even-handedness of the mission was questioned from the very beginning. We never managed to clear this impression. (...) After some weeks of our presence, the global image of OSCE/KVM was to be anti-Serb, pro-Albanian and pro-NATO. It was easy, when we drove through different parts of the country, to guess by whom it was populated: in Serbian areas, bad gestures and sometimes stones (...), in Albanian areas, applauds, smiles and signs of victory. Nothing was done to correct this image.

I would distinguish two periods in the mission´s life: before Racak and after Racak. Before the 15th January, everything still seemed possible. Although difficult, some dialogue was possible with the Serbs, the level of violence in the field was acceptable. (...) After Racak and the disastrous decision from the Yugoslav authorities to declare [Walker] persona non grata, the mission faced crisis after crisis. The already low level of confidence with the authorities came down to zero. Our verifiers came more frequently under threats from MUP and VJ. Access to wider zones were restricted. More unjustified troop movements were observed. On the other side, the level of aggressiveness by KLA remained high: abduction of policemen, mine laying, murders of civilians were more frequent after January 15th.

General Loquai explains further:

The developments show that the possibility of finding a peaceful solution to the Kosovo conflict was existent. The chance was within reach in the period from mid-October to the beginning of December 1998. During these weeks the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia was embarked on a peace course. The doves had evidently won the upper hand. It would have been necessary to have brought - or forced - the Kosovo Albanians also over to this course. A swift stationing of the OSCE mission all over the area would have been able to secure the route to peace. Neither was accomplished.

Evidently Walker did not intend to give "a peaceful solution" a chance.

Walker and other American members of the mission had been under suspicion of sabotaging the functioning of the mission to prepare a justification for NATO to go to war. Recently it has been confirmed that there was a whole team of American intelligence agents at work - against the OSCE and peace. The Sunday Times (London March 12, 2000) provided the following information:

"AMERICAN intelligence agents have admitted they helped to train the Kosovo Liberation Army before NATO´s bombing of Yugoslavia. The disclosure angered some European diplomats, who said this had undermined moves for a political solution to the conflict between Serbs and Albanians.

Central Intelligence Agency officers were cease-fire monitors in Kosovo in 1998 and 1999, developing ties with the KLA and giving American military training manuals and field advice on fighting the Yugoslav army and Serbian police.

When the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), which coordinated the monitoring, left Kosovo a week before air strikes began a year ago, many of its satellite telephones and global positioning systems were secretly handed to the KLA, ensuring that guerrilla commanders could stay in touch with NATO and Washington. Several KLA leaders had the mobile phone number of General Wesley Clark, the NATO commander.

European diplomats then working for the OSCE claim it was betrayed by an American policy that made air strikes inevitable. Some have questioned the motives and loyalties of William Walker, the American OSCE head of mission.

"The American agenda consisted of their diplomatic observers, aka the CIA, operating on completely different terms to the rest of Europe and the OSCE," said a European envoy. (...)

Walker, who was nominated by Madeleine Albright, the American secretary of state, was intensely disliked by Belgrade. He had worked briefly for the United Nations in Croatia. Ten years earlier he was the American ambassador to El Salvador when Washington was helping the government there to suppress leftist rebels while supporting the contra guerrillas against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Some European diplomats in Pristina, Kosovo´s capital, concluded from Walker´s background that he was inextricably linked with the CIA. The picture was muddied by the continued separation of American "diplomatic observers" from the mission. The CIA sources who have now broken their silence say the diplomatic observers were more closely connected to the agency.

"It was a CIA front, gathering intelligence on the KLA´s arms and leadership," said one. (...)

The KLA has admitted its long-standing links with American and European intelligence organizations. Shaban Shala, a KLA commander now involved in attempts to destabilise majority Albanian villages beyond Kosovo´s border in Serbia proper, claimed he had met British, American and Swiss agents in northern Albania in 1996."

Overcoming hesitations in Washington:

In the Clinton Administration, it was Madeleine Albright, who crusaded for war against Yugoslavia, and finally won. Preceding the Racak incident, the recognized US government policy had been formulated in the classified strategy paper, known as the Status Quo Plus proposal:

"promote regional stability and protect our investment in Bosnia; prevent resumption of hostilities in Kosovo and renewed humanitarian crisis; preserve U.S. and NATO credibility,"

Racak changed that. With Racak, the policy of attempting to "promote regional stability" was replaced with a promotion of regional chaos through support for ethnic warfare. The "Washington Post" (18.4.1999),sheds light on developments leading up to this change of policy in the US administration:

Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright was pressing -- and losing, for the moment -- a campaign to scale up U.S. and NATO intervention in Kosovo. (...) Albright said muddling through was not working, and the time had come to tie the threat of force to a comprehensive settlement between Serbia, the dominant Yugoslav republic, and Kosovo, its secessionist province. (...) Albright, who used her seat at the Cabinet table as U.N. ambassador to press unsuccessfully during Clinton´s first term for earlier intervention in Bosnia, saw Kosovo as a chance to right historical wrongs. (...) By the first days of March 1998, the secretary of state had begun a conscious effort, as one aide put it, "to lead through rhetoric." Her targets were European allies, U.S. public opinion and her own government. (...)

In Washington, a defense policy official said Albright´s [threats against Serbia made in talks with West European allies] reverberated with some anxiety in the Pentagon. "Let´s not get too far ahead of ourselves in terms of making threats," he said of the atmosphere. Berger, at the White House, was described by colleagues as worried about damaging U.S. credibility by appearing to promise more in Kosovo than the president was prepared to deliver. (...)

But the period between [June - September 1998] saw a furious internal debate [in NATO] on whether the alliance could act militarily without explicit authority from the Security Council. On Sept. 24, a day after a carefully ambiguous Security Council resolution, Washington finally persuaded its allies to issue an ultimatum to Milosevic to pull back. Oct. 13 brought the first "activation order" in NATO´s history, a formal agreement to authorize the bombing of Yugoslavia. (...) Warnings to the rebel leaders from Washington restrained them somewhat, but they assassinated a small-town Serb mayor near Pristina and were believed responsible for the slaying of six Serb youths at the Panda Cafe in Pec on Dec. 14. (...) One U.S. official said, "one of our difficulties, particularly with the Europeans . . . was getting them to accept the proposition that the root of the problem is Belgrade." (Barton Gellman, "Washington Post" 18.4.1999)

To "draw NATO into its fight for independence" the KLA, like its Bosnian and Croatian predecessors, uses the famous atrocity provocation scenario. Racak is but the last of a series leading up to the war.

According to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (March 28, 2000) Western diplomats confided to the KLA, that for less than 5,000 civilian casualties, there would be no western presence in Kosovo. "Promptly the Albanians intensified their attacks against the Serbian police, to get them to retaliate against civilians. Simultaneously they put pictures of massacres in the internet and sent children before the cameras to tell stories about [war] crimes".

Gen. Loquai notes a change in developments:

Beginning in December (1998) the armed altercations became more often. The Yugoslavian side called repeatedly for a swifter stationing of the OSCE verifiers, accusing the international community of working hand in hand with "Albanian terrorists". The Albanian leaders continued to proclaim that their objective was the independence of Kosovo and to call for the military intervention of NATO. Better commanded and armed, they intensified their struggle with a "hit and run" tactic. The Serbs struck back - often disproportionately hard and went over onto the offensive. The October accords were being respected less and less from both sides.

Yugoslavia, frustrated with the attitude of the OSCE mission, began to reinforce the troops on the ground - in violation of the accords. The "Washington Post" (Apr. 18, 1999) reported that Clinton´s advisors saw no possibility of using this fact to mobilize the allies. "You´re not going to get people to bomb over the specific number of troops."

The mood for bombing had to be created. The New York Times (Jan. 19, 1999) exposes clairvoyant capacities of Mme. Albright:

According to an Administration official Secretary of State Madeleine K. Albright warned on Friday, a day before the massacre [in Racak] became public, that the fragile Kosovo agreement brokered last fall by an American envoy, Richard C. Holbrooke, was about to fall apart. Ms. Albright told the White House, the Pentagon and other agencies that the Administration faced a "decision point" in Kosovo, the official said. (...) She told others in the Administration that Mr. Milosevic needed to realize that he faced a real potential for NATO action, if he did not get that message, he would not make any concessions, she argued.

The "Washington Post" explains that Ms. Albright realized that the galvanizing force of the atrocity would not last long. "Whatever threat of force you don´t get in the next two weeks you´re never getting," one adviser told her, "at least until the next Racak."

Madeleine Albright got what she wanted. The consequences will be felt for generations to come.

The scepticism concerning the "massacre" version became irrelevant in the rapidly changing events leading to a war, long since planned and prepared. Even though it should have been clear that Racak was needed to justify this aggression, there was no one on the political level willing to publicly demand a closer investigation. The Walker/KLA version was allowed to predominate. This version prepared the next stage: the Rambouillet ultimatum.