[PEN-L:4670] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: War & 'Public Relations,' or, 'Kuwaiti Babi

["J. Barkley Rosser, Jr." <rosserjb@xxxxxxx>]

Paul,
     Your point is well taken as is Yoshie's regarding
jumbled and biased reporting of what is going on
with the various refugees.  We really don't know what
is happening on the ground in Kosovo, but probably
will some day, more or less.
      I have no doubt that Milosevic and the Serbs do
not trust NATO or the US and that the Brcko decision
aggravated things.  OTOH, I may be wrong, but it is
my understanding that no decision had been made in
the Dayton Accords regarding the ultimate disposition
of Brcko.  This was to be determined by later negotiations
although the Serbs may have felt that certain promises had
been made to them, or perhaps more specifically that how
the decision was made was "insufficiently" or inappropriately
negotiated (or not negotiated as the case may be).
     Certainly the media reports in the US, for better or worse,
accurately or inaccurately, have suggested that a major
factor in the Brcko decision was the anger at Milosevic for
his having violated the cease fire agreement that was made
last fall for Kosovo.  Would you argue that he did not violate
that ceasefire agreement?  That (reported) violation is
supposedly one of the reasons for the surprising degree of
support by so many normally pro-Serb NATO countries of the
current NATO offensive.
Barkley Rosser
-----Original Message-----
From: phillp2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <phillp2@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <pen-l@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Tuesday, March 30, 1999 4:30 PM
>Subject: [PEN-L:4665] Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: War & 'Public Relations,' or,
'Kuwaiti Babi


Barkley,

I have deleted all the previous posts in this reply because they
were getting impossibly long, but I did want to respond to one
point.  The Serbs, whatever their faults, have just reason to suspect
that NATO will not live up to any agreement that Yugoslavia agreed
to.  The proof of that is the recent moves by NATO to remove the
elected government of Serb Bosnia and to take away a key town
from Serb control and give it effectively to the Muslim-Croat
coalition.  This is a clear violation of the Dayton agreement and is
living proof that the US and NATO have no interest in saving the
ethnic balance in Bosnia but only in destroying ethnic Serbia.  This
was just one more instance to prove that NATO and western
powers can not be trusted, guaranteeing that the only recourse
Serbia has to prevent its own genocide from the US, NATO, Croatia
and Albania is to militarily defeat the invading forces.  It is difficult
to argue with their conclusion given the behaviour of NATO.

Paul

Paul Phillips,
Economics,
University of Manitoba