As Belgrade does its best to block an independent probe into the
massacre of more than 40 ethnic Albanian villagers in the separatist
province of Kosovo, foreign monitors are hinting that they have damning
evidence from the killers' own mouths.
Information gleaned from eavesdropping on Serbian police radio
conversations may be the ace up the sleeve of U.S. diplomat William
Walker in his high-stakes confrontation with the Yugoslav government.
On Monday, Belgrade had ordered Walker, who leads an international
monitoring team in Kosovo, to leave the country within 48 hours after he
accused Serbian police of mass murder in the village of Racak, but on
Tuesday the Yugoslav government extended the deadline by 24 hours.
The North Atlantic Treaty Organization's two top generals kept up the
pressure Tuesday by warning Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic to
rescind the expulsion order altogether and restrain his security forces
or else brace for airstrikes.
U.S. Gen. Wesley Clark, NATO's supreme commander, and German Gen.
Klaus Naumann, the chairman of NATO's military committee, met with
Milosevic for several hours and delivered what Clark called a "very
blunt" warning that the alliance is prepared to attack.
The generals also discussed Belgrade's refusal to allow Louise Arbour,
the Canadian chief prosecutor for the International Criminal Tribunal for
the Former Yugoslavia, to enter Kosovo and investigate the massacre
allegations.
But after the talks in Belgrade with the generals, there was no
immediate sign that Milosevic is about to back away from the brink, as he
did when NATO first issued its threat of airstrikes last fall.
In Washington, State Department spokesman James P. Rubin said the
results of the Belgrade talks were "not encouraging."
Rubin supplied no details but said Clark and Naumann returned to
Brussels after a day of apparently fruitless meetings. He said the
generals will report to NATO ambassadors today and discuss the alliance's
next move with them.
The U.N. Security Council late Tuesday condemned the massacre and
called for an immediate investigation into the killings. It also told
Belgrade to rescind its decision to expel Walker.
Serbian police and separatist Kosovo Liberation Army guerrillas
clashed in Racak again Tuesday, the Serb-run Media Center said. A local
deputy police chief was killed and two other police officers were
wounded, the center said. They were guarding Yugoslav authorities who are
investigating Friday's killings in Racak, which Walker called an
"unspeakable atrocity."
In explaining the massacre, Yugoslav authorities insist that police
were fighting terrorists who had killed a police officer five days
earlier, and Serbian leaders have labeled Walker a guerrilla supporter
and protector.
Walker heads the team of more than 700 unarmed monitors that the
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe set up last fall to
verify a cease-fire in Kosovo, a Serbian province where 90% of the
population is ethnic Albanian.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, in Washington, demanded Tuesday
that Walker be allowed to resume his duties, and she warned Milosevic
that NATO's "activation order" authorizing force, issued last fall,
remains in effect.
"It is essential for Ambassador Walker to be able to do his job,"
Albright told reporters after she and other national security officials
briefed key members of Congress.
"The activation order is on the table, it is effective," she said.
"And I think that the main point here is for President Milosevic to get
the message that the actions that have been taken in Kosovo, the
atrocities that were committed, must be investigated by the war crimes
tribunal" or another independent panel.
Albright, who has conferred with a lengthening list of other foreign
ministers, said she has found "unanimous" support for Walker and the
monitoring mission.
If Walker is forced to leave Kosovo, his observer mission might go
with him, all but eliminating hope of averting a return to all-out war in
Kosovo.
At such a critical moment, neither Walker nor his monitors will say
publicly what he meant when he told reporters that the victims' bodies
and eyewitness accounts weren't his only evidence.
But Walker wouldn't have made such an explosive allegation of mass
murder without proof--beyond the horrific scene of so many corpses or the
accounts of villagers who say they saw what happened, mission spokesman
Sandy Blyth said.
"This is an experienced guy," he said. "He doesn't come out with an
open, clear statement like that unless he is sure of his facts."
In interviews, survivors said the killers gave and received orders
over walkie-talkies as they rounded up victims. Walker's monitors confide
they are able to eavesdrop on police communications.
Although Walker is a career foreign service officer, his resume
doesn't suggest a cocktails-and-canapes diplomat.
His postings include a stint in Honduras from 1980 to 1982, when the
Central American country was Washington's secret conduit for weapons and
other support to right-wing Contras fighting to overthrow the Sandinistas
in neighboring Nicaragua.
He also served as chief of the U.S. Embassy's political section in El
Salvador, another Central American hot spot, from 1974 to 1977, and later
as the country's U.S. ambassador from 1988 to 1992.
As a diplomat in countries so high on Washington's national security
agenda, Walker couldn't help knowing something about spying, said John
Pike, a defense analyst at Washington's Federation of American
Scientists.
"Those are front-line postings where he would have unavoidably
developed an acquaintance with the capabilities and limitations of
intelligence sources and methods," Pike said from Washington.
And it would be surprising if Walker's team of ex-military and other
experts came to verify Kosovo's cease-fire without equipment to listen in
on radio communications, Pike said. "Put it this way: They would be
idiots if they weren't doing that," he added. "What are they going to do,
read about it in the paper the next day?"
It doesn't take "rocket science" to eavesdrop on basic police
walkie-talkies, or even more advanced military models that encrypt voice
transmissions or hop from frequency to frequency, Pike said.
It could be as simple as listening to a hobby shop radio scanner or as
sophisticated as intercepting radio transmissions with spy planes and
satellites, he added.
That's probably no secret to the Serbian police, who see Walker's
monitors watching them through binoculars or shadowing their convoys
every day.
The Serbian police have suspected that foreigners were eavesdropping
on them before.
In early January, police accused the relief agency Doctors Without
Borders of listening in on police radio communications, a charge the
organization denied.
Some of Walker's monitors were near Racak when the villagers were
killed Friday, Walker confirmed the next day.
The monitors watched Serbian paramilitary police shelling the village
and firing antiaircraft guns at farmhouses, and they tried to persuade
the attackers to stop, Walker told reporters.
"Did they witness the massacre? No, they did not," Walker said.
But if it turns out that his monitors heard enough of what the police
were saying to use it as evidence against them, the next question is
likely to be: Why didn't they stop the killings?
The next day, when Walker saw the victims' bodies for himself and then
held a news conference to accuse the Serbian police of "a crime against
humanity," a reporter put a similar question to him.
"As you well know, my people are unarmed," Walker replied. "They
cannot go up against artillery and antiaircraft weapons. And we do what
we can. Obviously, in this case, we were not enough to prevent this sort
of atrocity."
Times staff writer Norman Kempster in Washington contributed to this
report.
Copyright 1999 Los Angeles Times. All Rights Reserved
|
NEWSLETTER
|
|
Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list
|
|
|
