Serbia signed a deal in 1998 with a Greek mining company, Mytilinaois SA, to obtain hundreds of millions of dollars against profits from the Trepca mines for a five-year period. Especially because Greece is a member of NATO, its role as a principal financier of Milosevic's war against Kosova should become the subject of an international inquiry.

The Creation of a False Parity between Albanians and Serbs Must Be Ended

From the time that Serbia attacked Drenice at the end of February 1998, until NATO was forced to launch a bombing campaign against Serbia after the Rambouillet peace talks failed a year later, policy makers in the United States and Europe attempted to establish a false parity between the Serbian military and paramilitary forces, engaged in state-sponsored terrorism, and the Kosova Liberation Army, a grassroots self-defense force surviving on money and arms from the Albanian diaspora. Their purpose was to adhere to a policy of appeasement and containment in Kosova, no matter what the cost to Albanian life, in order to maintain Serbian sovereignty over Kosova and Western control of the region.

In postwar Kosova, the effort to establish a false parity between Albanians and Serbs continues, but now in the guise of creating a "multicultural" Kosova. The Albanian American Civic League opposes the UN administration's effort to create a socalled multicultural Kosova and to recast the aim of the NATO bombing campaign as a fight for a multiethnic Kosova. This effort is transparent on the face of it, as yet another way to prevent the independence of Kosova from Serbia.

Unlike Bosnia, which was a multiethnic state until Slobodan Milosevic destroyed it, Kosova was and is more than 90 percent Albanian. Kosova was an autonomous region with near republic status until Serbia destroyed its autonomy and subjected its people to state-sponsored terrorism. Until Milosevic attacked Kosova in 1998, Albanians lived peacefully with the minority populations of Serbs, Turks, Roma, and Muslim Slavs. Interethnic strife became a reality only after Serb civilians and Roma collaborated with the Serbian military and paramilitary forces in the expulsion and extermination of Kosovar Albanians.

Anti-Albanian Racism and Ultranationalism in Serbia Must Be Overcome

The overwhelming majority of the Serbian people are guilty of supporting a decade-long, systematic campaign to murder and expel Kosovar Albanians. Slobodan Milosevic rose to power in 1987 on a platform of anti-Albanian racism, which has been endemic to Serbian culture for more than one hundred years. Like the German people who were forced to visit the death camps as part of a "de-Nazification" program in the aftermath of World War II, Serbs must confront the truth about their government's war against the Albanians of Kosova and acknowledge their complicity in it. Until the Serbian people
publicly denounce the crimes against Kosovar Albanians and make a serious attempt to bring war criminals to justice, Albanians cannot be expected to live in peace with Serbs in Kosova and the international community cannot expect an end to violence in the Balkans.

Although there are a small number of courageous Serbs who opposed the destruction of Kosovar Albanians and Bosnian Muslims before them by their government, the majority of Serbian opposition figures are ultranationalists who supported the racist and expansionist aims of Slobodan Milosevic. The Albanian American Civic League believes that the U.S. effort to consolidate the existing opposition against Milosevic is premature, and that the $10 million pledged this year to support democratic opposition in Serbia should be used to finance the independent media and to initiate a nationwide educational campaign against racism and genocide.

The Quest for Greater Serbia Must Be Terminated

Throughout Serbia's brutal ten-year occupation of Kosova, until the eruption of war in the spring of 1998, the West has justified its inaction in the face of Milosevic's destruction of Kosovar Albanians by hiding behind the threat of "Greater Albania." In reality, the only genuine drive for hegemony in the Balkans has been the drive for Greater Serbia. Spearheaded by Belgrade and supported by Russia, the conquest for Greater Serbia began with the invasion of Kosova in 1989 and was followed by the invasion of Vojvodina, Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia, resulting in the deaths of more than 350,000 civilians and the creation of two million refugees.

In July 1999, Serbian army and paramilitary units began expelling Albanians from southern Serbia (Presheve, Medvegje, and Bujanovc) and the Muslim population of the Sandzak region and repressing the Hungarian majority in Vojvodina with barely an outcry from the international community. Steps must be taken immediately to determine the fate of these communities and to ensure their welfare.

On August 5, 1999, Montenegrin President Milo Djukanovic proposed that the Serbian-Montenegrin federation be abolished in favor of establishing a "commonwealth of the states of Serbia and Montenegro." With Belgrade's wholesale rejection of this proposal, Montenegro's referendum calling for independence is in the offing and the prospect of a Serbian invasion looms large. The Albanian American Civic League calls on the international community to support the democratic aspirations of the people of Montenegro and the outcome of the referendum.

Kosovar Reprisals Are a Result of Western Indifference and Inaction

The Albanian American Civic League agrees with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and British Prime Minister Tony Blair that Albanians are in danger of losing the support that they deserve and urgently need if they persist in taking the law into their own (continued on next page)

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