VZCZCXRO8831
PP RUEHAG RUEHAST RUEHDA RUEHDF RUEHFL RUEHIK RUEHKW RUEHLA RUEHLN
RUEHLZ RUEHNP RUEHPOD RUEHROV RUEHSK RUEHSR RUEHVK RUEHYG
DE RUEHBW #0049/01 0161202
ZNR UUUUU ZZH
P 161202Z JAN 09
FM AMEMBASSY BELGRADE
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC PRIORITY 0880
INFO RUEHZL/EUROPEAN POLITICAL COLLECTIVE
RUEHZG/NATO EU COLLECTIVE
RUEHPS/AMEMBASSY PRISTINA 0020
RUCNDT/USMISSION USUN NEW YORK 0040
RHEHNS/NSC WASHDC
RUZEJAA/JAC MOLESWORTH RAF MOLESWORTH UK
RHMFISS/HQ USEUCOM VAIHINGEN GE

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 BELGRADE 000049 
 
SENSITIVE 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O.12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV PREL KV SR
SUBJECT: SERBS REWRITE HISTORY: MEDIA CAMPAIGN GEARS UP AS NATO 
BOMBING ANNIVERSARY APPROACHES 
 
Summary 
------- 
 
¶1.  (SBU) March 24th will mark the tenth anniversary of the start of 
the NATO bombing campaign against the Socialist Republic of 
Yugoslavia.  With two articles published in widely-read dailies on 
January 15, the Serbian media continues with its "Serbs as victims" 
theme, casting the Albanians as the aggressors and NATO as aiding 
and abetting them.  This revision of history in advance of the 
anniversary and the first hearings before the International Court of 
Justice on Serbia's case challenging the legality of Kosovo's 
independence will only accelerate in coming weeks.  End Summary. 
 
Albanian Atrocities in June 1999 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (SBU) On January 15, Belgrade daily Vecernje Novosti published 
an article entitled "Albanians Killed, NATO Covered Up," which 
alleged that Albanians committed war crimes, including ethnic 
cleansing, after NATO forces entered Kosovo in June 1999.  The 
article was based on a December 18 article in the Italian weekly 
magazine Panorama, titled "The Hidden Truth: Massacres of Serbs," 
which makes no mention of a NATO role in a cover-up, according to 
the Italian Embassy. The Panorama article did quote (retired) 
Italian General Mauro del Vecchio, in command of an Italian KFOR 
brigade posted in Kosovo in 1999, and Peruvian diplomat Pablo Jose 
Baraibar, who headed the UNMIK Missing Persons office, and also 
included pictures reportedly taken by Italian soldiers, which 
allegedly show bodies of Serbian civilians.  (Comment:  Serb media 
has a history of showing photographs of victims and claiming them as 
Serbs.  While the international press was showing the horrors of 
Serb-run Omarska Prison Camp during the war in Bosnia, for example, 
Serb media used the same images claiming the detainees were Serbs. 
End Comment.) 
 
¶3.  (U) The Vecernje Novosti article, which reprinted two of the 
Panorama pictures, reported that del Vecchio, currently an 
opposition politician in the Italian parliament, stated that during 
his first 20 days in Kosovo he received daily reports of Serb and 
Roma corpses left along the roads and that "the smell of death was 
omnipresent."  He also is quoted as saying that Albanians burned 
Serb houses and destroyed Serb churches and monasteries. 
 
¶4.  (U) Baraibar in turn talked about an investigation that he 
carried out in 2005 into the July 1998 kidnapping of Serb civilians 
near Orahovac.  Citing a female survivor of the kidnapping, he 
implicated current Kosovo Assembly chairman Jakup Krasniqi, a Kosovo 
Liberation Army (KLA) officer at the time, and former Kosovo Prime 
Minister Agim Ceku in the crimes.  Baribar further claimed that 
neither the International Criminal Tribunal for the former 
Yugoslavia (ICTY) nor the Kosovo judicial system was interested in 
the evidence that he collected. 
 
Racak False Pretense for Bombing 
-------------------------------- 
 
¶5.  (U) In its January 15 article, the daily Politika focused on 
events that occurred 10 years earlier in the southwestern Kosovo 
village of Racak when bodies of Albanians, whom the Serbs insisted 
were KLA members, not civilians, were found.  The article argued 
that efforts to soften the court of public opinion for the NATO 
bombing began that day when then-OSCE Kosovo Verification Mission 
head William Walker characterized the deaths as a "massacre" in the 
presence of foreign and Albanian journalists. 
 
¶6.  (U) Declaring that the past ten years have proven that Walker's 
conclusions are far from indisputable, the article heavily cited 
statements made by Finnish forensic dentist Helena Ranta in her 
autobiography in 2008 and in a Russian documentary film.  In these 
statements, Ranta alleged that Walker and Finnish Foreign Ministry 
officials pressured her to conclude as she told the media in 1999 
that Racak was a "crime against humanity."  In the film, she 
reportedly stated that the bodies discovered in Racak were 
"terrorists, Serb soldiers, and local inhabitants." 
 
Comment 
------- 
 
¶7.  (SBU) As the March anniversary of the 1999 NATO bombing campaign 
approaches and with initial briefs due before the ICJ in April, we 
can expect the Serbian media to continue to distort the NATO 
intervention and its casus belli.  Contacts close to the government 
have told us that the MFA is pushing this effort along.  Though the 
intent is mostly for domestic consumption, comments of 
 
BELGRADE 00000049  002 OF 002 
 
 
"internationals" such as del Vecchio, Baraibar, and Ranta lend 
credibility to Serbia's growing argument that Serb actions in Kosovo 
were self-defense and that the NATO bombing further victimized 
Serbs.  End Comment. 
 
MUNTER