yugoslavias implosion

war. Not until 1999, as nato brought to a close its military campaign
against Serbian forces in Kosovo, did an American president explicitly
articulate the West’s opinion of who was to blame for the violence
of the 1990s. “We should remember,” said President Clinton,
“that the violence we responded to in Kosovo was the culmination
of a ten-year campaign by Slobodan Milošević, the leader of Serbia,
to exploit ethnic and religious differences in order to impose his will
on the lands of the former Yugoslavia. That’s what he tried to do in
Croatia and Bosnia, and now in Kosovo. When our diplomatic efforts
to avert this horror were rebuffed and the violence mounted, we
and our allies chose to act. Nineteen democracies came together and
stayed together through the stiffest military challenge posed to nato
in its 50-year history. Finally, we have averted the wider war this
conflict may well have sparked.” 539 Javier Solana, nato’s secretary
general, justified the intervention by saying that “we must stop an
authoritarian regime from oppressing its own people in Europe.” 540
The failure to communicate to the public also characterized the
activity of the International Tribunal, leading to its demonization in
Serbia as an instrument designed to slander Serbia and prosecute its
leaders unjustly. The icty has entered the last stage of its life. During
its fifteen-year long existence it has produced an immense investigation
and court record. To date, it has concluded proceedings against
120 persons out of a total of 161 indicted, leaving behind millions of
pages of trial transcripts; tens, or probably hundreds, of thousands
of documents used as evidence; a monumental library of written
pre-trial and trial motions and Trial Chamber and Appeals Chamber
decisions on very many legal issues; a record of the judgements for
all the cases in which the guilt or innocence of the accused individuals
have been tested to conclusion, all according to high international
539 www.softmakers.com/fry/docs/Mclaughin.
540 http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/jan-june99/solana_3–23.html
325
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