Milosevic trial told of killings

The Racak killings shocked the West

THE HAGUE, Netherlands -- The trial of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic has heard its first evidence on a Serb attack in Kosovo widely credited with stiffening NATO'S resolve to launch air strikes that year against Yugoslavia.

The Yugoslav government has said the 45 Albanians killed in the village of Racak were separatist guerrillas killed in combat. Kosovo Albanians call Racak a massacre.

Retired British Gen. Karel Drewienkiewicz, testifying before the U.N. War Crimes Tribunal, went to Kosovo in the autumn of 1998 with the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) after Milosevic, under growing international pressure, agreed to a cease-fire in the province.

But hostilities by Yugoslav government forces and the rebel Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) continued.

The OSCE mission met obstruction and antagonism from Serbian authorities when it arrived in Kosovo, Drewienkiewicz said. "We were dealt with as enemy forces, not as friendly forces."

Milosevic has been on trial at the Hague war crimes tribunal for alleged atrocities in Kosovo, Bosnia and Croatia in the 1990s. The court is dealing with the Kosovo indictment before turning to the other two conflicts.

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The January 1999 killings in Racak sparked an outcry, and Western governments began consulting on how to back up diplomacy with force. NATO increased its threat of military action if attacks on civilians did not stop.

NATO eventually launched air strikes in March 1999.

Drewienkiewicz told how reports began trickling in to him of Racak in the days after the deaths. In response he told a Yugoslav general, Dusan Loncar: "This sort of behavior is how people end up in The Hague."

When Drewienkiewicz visited Racak soon after the killings, he saw in a gully 24 men aged 40-plus shot in the head, with no weapons, nothing to indicate there had been fighting, and wearing footwear such as slippers.

Drewienkiewicz said his Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) had problems getting visas, vehicles and accommodation when it arrived in 1998. Meetings with Serbian officials "had a lot of people, went on for a very long time and had no result."

The antagonism began even as the OSCE delegation drove through Serbian towns toward Kosovo in October 1998. "The local population were quite hostile to us and made gestures to us as we sat at traffic lights," he told the court.

At times Milosevic, who is defending himself and has refused to plead, yawned during the detailed testimony.

The accused has used his vigorous cross-examination of prosecution witnesses to press his case that not the Serbs but KLA and NATO were the true aggressors in the province.