Hi everyone,
The full text is on the NATO website,
http://www.nato.int/kosovo/press/p990525b.htm
Regards,
Craig
> NATO HQ
> Brussels
>
> 25 May 1999
>
> Press Conference
>
> by Mr Jamie Shea, NATO Spokesman
> and Major General Walter Jertz, SHAPE
>
> (Presentation )
>
> Jamie Shea : Ladies and Gentlemen, good afternoon.
> Welcome to our 3.00 p.m. briefing on Operation Allied
> Force.
>
[...]
I must say it was a depressing weekend, wasn't it?
> Pentecost, I think, is the time when the Apostles went out
> to spread the word of peace, and tolerance and
> reconciliation after the death and resurrection of Christ.
> But that certainly wasn't the message that was being spread
> in Kosovo this past weekend. In fact, I think that on the
> humanitarian Richter Scale of suffering, we hit a nine over
> the weekend. We had, first of all, a major upsurge in
> refugees heading towards the borders, particularly to the
> South, to the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia,
> 18,000 alone crossed at the weekend with the refugee
> agencies telling us that another 20,000 - 30,000 are well
> en route to cross as well. This brings the total of
refugees
> in that country now to nearly 240,000 and that is
> notwithstanding the ongoing efforts to take refugees out on
> a temporary basis to other countries. Over 60,000 refugees
> have been evacuated so you can imagine that there would
> be nearly 300,000 there by now if that temporary
> evacuation programme had not been done.
>
> And, as we have seen, not only do we have lots of people,
> but we have lots of people in bad shape as well
> compounding the problem still further. Most of the
> refugees coming out are desperate, both psychologically
> and physically. They say that they no longer can buy food
> or get medical attention in Kosovo.
>
> The overall security situation has deteriorated to the
> degree that they are even frightened to leave their homes.
> And not only, therefore, do we have a difficulty with
> refugees, but we also as you know also have seen over the
> weekend the terrible spectre of about 1,000 young men,
> old men, men apparently of military age, but not showing
> signs of having done any military service, certainly not in
> the Kosovo Liberation Army, being released from a prison
> near Mitrovica. People I've called the living dead and
> certainly these are the kind of images which we have
> become used to seeing on our movie screens recollecting
> former days of European history, but certainly not live on
> our TV screens, reflecting the reality of the present. The
> prisoners say they have been packed into small cells with
> 40 to 60 people in each, they have been given crusts of
> bread or soup made of dirty drinking water, many have
> been beaten on the hands, kidneys and knees while in
> prison, others have been forced to fight each other,
> sometimes fathers have been pitted against sons for the
> amusement of the Serb guards. Others have tried to commit
> suicide while in that jail by opening up their veins.
Nearly
> all of them crossing the border have been emaciated, again
> evoking images of past wars, not the ones that we are
> accustomed to today.
>
> And of course although 1,000 have been able to cross and
> be cared for, this still does not explain what has happened
> to the other 220 odd thousand men of military age that we
> believe have if not disappeared, are at least unaccounted
> for. It's very good if the Serbs want to demonstrate that
> these abducted males are still alive, although barely, by
> allowing 1,000 to leave, but it still begs the question of
> what is the fate and the precise physical condition of all
> the others. We have had, at the same time, almost the end
> now of the UN humanitarian mission under the Under
> Secretary General of Humanitarian Affairs, Sergio Vieira
> de Mello, reporting, I quote, that the situation is even
> worse than we had ever feared in Kosovo today. And then
> today, to add to the depressing tableau, a report from the
> United Nations Population Fund on rapes, including gang
> rapes in three different cities in Kosovo, and reports of
> the
> physical examination of a number of women showing
> lacerations and evidence of beatings to the arms and to the
> legs.
>
> Again, these reports simply reinforce NATO's
> determination to continue with Operation Allied Force
> until justice has been done to those poor people. At the
> same time, today in Albania, AFOR, that is to say the
> NATO forces there, are beginning with the UNHCR a
> programme of evacuations to other cities and other places
> in Albania to get the refugees away from Kukes. 30,000
> have been identified in this way for immediate evacuation,
> and AFOR will provide the usual transport and logistic
> support to help those refugees to be transported to safer
> areas.
>
[...]
> Neil: NATO is obviously at pains to accentuate both its
> successes and the misery of the people within Kosovo. But
> I am wondering to what extent the two go together. On
> Sunday you were saying Jamie that it was for the refugees
> and the displaced people that we began this intervention
> and it is for their benefit that we will end this
operation.
> And then later you used one of your many analogies,
> saying we started this on 24 March and within a few days
> we had won the game, at the moment we are taking the first
> set and in the next couple of days and weeks we are going
> to conclude the match. If it is the case that, as you said,
> this
> last weekend, to use yet another analogy, registered a 9 on
> the humanitarian Richter scale, how can you claim to have
> even won the first point much less the first game or the
> first set?
>
> Jamie Shea : I think Neil because we are creating the
> circumstances which are going to enable us to reverse that,
> and this will be quite rare, because it is very rare in
> history that you are able to reverse a geo-political
> earthquake such as we have seen in the last few years in
> Kosovo, and that is what we are going to do, not just
> reverse it but stabilise the region as well. I am confident
> of success because all of those conditions for the defeat
of
> the Belgrade regime are now in place, I suppose we could
> say that it is not yet the end, it perhaps is not yet the
> beginning of the end, but it is certainly the end of the
> beginning, there is no doubt about this, and I think that
> that
> decisive turning point is being reached.
>
> Why do I say this? I think first of all we really have now
> got the Yugoslav forces pinned down in Kosovo, their
> losses are mounting, and I think the signs of that are
> increasingly obvious, the fact that as General Jertz has
> said, they are forced now to go and look high and low in
> villages and towns for reservists, for people who would
> not normally be called up into the army, even for people
> well over the age of 50 because they need extra personnel.
> That is a sign that they are taking I think a lot of damage
> in
> that campaign. Secondly, we have got the economic noose
> around Belgrade now, we have also got the neighbouring
> countries firmly tied in with us to isolate still further
> Belgrade. We have managed to stabilise the refugee
> situation, despite the incredible numbers there has been no
> political collapse either in the Former Yugoslav Republic
> of Macedonia, nor in Albania, quite the reverse with that
> situation, despite the enormous numbers becomes more
> and more stable as the international effort is created.
>
> So I think Milosevic knows by now that this is not one in
> which we are simply going to allow him to present with a
> series of fait accomplis. Even if it takes a little bit
more
> time, then again as we have seen in previous occasions we
> have reached the stage where the end now is not in doubt,
> it is simply a question of how long it is going to take. We
> have never claimed, Bill, that we would be able to stop
> every human rights breach, every refugee being thrown
> across the border, that is not something that we could have
> done given the fact that (a) Milosevic wanted to do this
> and was determined enough to use any method; secondly,
> he has always been the person with the tanks in the
> villages, with the soldiers in the streets, he has been the
> one on the ground. We have had to bring force to the
> region, build it up and make it count.
>
> But what we can do, and that is no secondary achievement,
> believe me, is to reverse that, not to allow it to stand,
> and
> there aren't many other examples in human history - try to
> find me some - of where any group of democracies has
> been able to reverse a humanitarian tragedy rather than
> simply learn to manage its consequences.
>
> [...]
>
>
> Pierre: On a pu voir hier dans plusieurs reportages
> télévisés des médecins et ....... yougoslaves confrontés à
> des énormes difficultés liées à leurs générateurs dans
leurs
> hopitaux et qui donc finalement accusent l'Alliance de
> prendre en hôtage la population civile, donc de prendre en
> hôtage des innocents par le fait même de bombarder des
> centrales électriques, des transformateurs ou alors des
> canalisations d'eau potable.
>
> Jamie Shea : Pierre, excuse me if I reply to this in
English
> but this is an important point and therefore I would like
to
> get my message across universally here to everybody in
> this room.
>
> Let us not lose sight of proportions in this debate.
> President Milosevic has got plenty of back-up generators.
> His armed forces have hundreds of them. He can either use
> these back-up generators to supply his hospitals, his
> schools, or he can use them to supply his military. His
> choice. If he has a big headache over this, then that is
> exactly what we want him to have and I am not going to
> make any apology for that.
>
> Secondly, I don't know if anybody realises this. It's not
> often remembered but over 50% of the refugees in Albania
> and the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia are under
> 18 years of age. Children, or at least adolescents. 40% are
> under 14 years of age. 20,000 are under one year old and
> at least 100,000 babies have been born since this crisis in
> March in those refugee camps, without incubators, without
> electricity, without medical support, without water,
> without a roof over their heads, with absolutely nothing.
> And therefore they are still considerably less fortunate
> than those babies in Belgrade. NATO doesn't wish any
> harm to any baby but let's make it clear here, the
> suffering,
> the real suffering, not the TV images, but the real
> suffering
> is in this business overwhelmingly on the side of the
> Kosovar Albanians who don't have the choice,
> unfortunately, between an incubator with electricity
> supplied by President Milosevic or an incubator without
> electricity. They simply have no incubator because they
> have been forced out of their homes and into fields.
>
> I also could tell you that there are 60,000 children under
> the age of six in the camps in Albania alone being cared
> for at the moment by the International Relief
organisations.
> This is not a few babies, no matter how precious, this is
an
> entire lost generation. We are dealing with the Pied Piper
> of Hamlin here. In other words the government which has
> literally taken away from their homes a whole community
> of children, enormous numbers depriving them of their
> health, causing great psychological harm, you have seen
> this in terms of the pictures that they have painted which
> have been exposed at Segrabe, depriving them of their
> schooling, depriving them of their families in terms of
> separation and I think that this again is what we should
> focus on. Otherwise I just acknowledge that perhaps we
> have lost all sense of proportion in this matter.
>
> [...]
|
