Russia's top diplomat
recalled that in 2010, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty published a report with
"horrifying information about the crimes of Kosovo Liberation Army
militants".
MOSCOW, March 22.
/TASS/. Western countries are covering up the crimes their agents committed
during NATO’s military operation in Yugoslavia in 1999, Russian Foreign
Minister Sergey Lavrov said in an interview for NTV’s "U-Turn Above the
Atlantic" documentary.
"I think the
West has been and will continue doing everything possible to prevent it from
happening," Lavrov said when speaking about the possibility of an
international investigation into NATO representatives being responsible for
civilian deaths, strikes on civilian facilities and the use of depleted uranium
munitions during bombing raids on Yugoslavia.
"As for the
banned munitions, the Serbs are conducting an investigation. Once it is over,
we will see what can be done to make sure that this crime doesn’t go
unpunished," the Russian top diplomat noted. "I would like to
reiterate, I don’t see any chance that international agencies that involve the
West and where Western votes count will go for it. They will make every
possible effort to prevent it," Lavrov said.
He pointed out that
in 2010, Swiss lawmaker Dick Marty had published a report, "which contained
horrifying information about the crimes of the Kosovo Liberation Army
militants, who abducted people for human trafficking purposes." The West
had to make the Kosovo authorities give their consent to establish a special
court to investigate the crimes mentioned in the report. An American national
was appointed as the court’s prosecutor. However, the court stopped operating
several years ago, the Russian foreign minister pointed out.
"Since then, new
prosecutors have been appointed twice, the incumbent one is American, but not a
single charge has been brought. I doubt there is any clear investigation
underway. So Western countries will continue to sweep those facts under the rug
that prove they and their underlings are involved in crimes against humanity,"
Lavrov emphasized.
War against media
According to the
Russian foreign minister, NATO’s bombing campaign was a flagrant violation of
international humanitarian law. "One time NATO airstrikes hit a passenger
train crossing a bridge. And its attack on a television center is entirely
unacceptable," he said.
Lavrov stressed that
the consequences of the West’s war against Yugoslav media were still there.
"They try to use the experience they gained then designating some media
outlets as propaganda tools. This is what RT and Sputnik are called in France,
they are banned from attending events for which other media outlets are
accredited," he explained. "This is when certain news outlets began
to accuse journalists of being propaganda tools, this is how they justified
attacks on Belgrade’s television center," Lavrov noted.
Artificial excuse
When speaking about
the 1999 massacre in Kosovo’s Racak village, which prompted NATO to start
talking about the need to use force in Yugoslavia, the Russian top diplomat
said it had been a deliberate provocation.
"It was not a
reason but an artificial excuse. It has long been known that it was a
provocation," he said. "The killed civilians turned out to be
militants from the Albanian liberation army, the so-called Kosovo Liberation
Army, who had been told to wear civilian clothes," Lavrov pointed out.
"Unfortunately, then OSCE mission chief William Walker was the one who
organized that provocation. When he arrived at the scene and saw dead bodies in
civilian clothes, he said right away that an act of genocide had taken place
there," he added.
"He [Walker] did
the same that the so-called White Helmets are doing in Syria, staging incidents
to provide the West with excuses to attack a sovereign state," Lavrov
emphasized.
The Russian Foreign
Minister also said that the International Criminal Tribunal for the former
Yugoslavia had failed to release the full report of a Finnish forensic team
that had tried to determine the circumstances of the Racak deaths. "I
demanded - with the support of my colleagues - at a UN Security Council meeting
that the report be published, but it never happened. Then International
Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia Prosecutor Carla Del Ponte provided
the UN Security Council with a brief, which had been watered down to the
maximum extent and sounded neutral," Lavrov said.
Source: ITAR-TASS
22-03-2019
