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BELGRADE - The Yugoslav army has lately become the target of groundless and tendentious criticism and accusations that are evidently aimed at compromising its unity, high morale and combat readiness demonstrated in the heroic defence of the fatherland, the Yugoslav army general staff said Friday.
All that NATO, led by the United States, the world's major superpower, and assisted by the ethnic Albanian terrorist organisation calling itself Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), terrorist gangs from Albania and mercenaries from all over the world, failed to achieve during its nearly three-month-old aggression on Yugoslavia, various groups and individuals are trying to achieve now. Regrettably, former chief of the Yugoslav army general staff General Momcilo Perisic has joined their ranks, said a statement issued by the Yugoslav army general staff.
Gen. Perisic, who held the office until recently, is now attacking the Yugoslav army and maliciously accusing its top officials of obeying blindly the state leadership, showing political and party inconsistency and especially of failing to prevent NATO's aggression on Yugoslavia, the statement said.
In doing so, Gen. Perisic has completely failed to condemn NATO's aggression on a sovereign country faced with internal problems arising from the activity of ethnic Albanian separatists and terrorists, a country whose sovereign right is to solve these issues by itself.
He has failed to, or does not want to, praise people who were his officers and troops until recently for their high degree of training, outstanding commanding skills, and patriotism and heroism they demonstrated in the defence of their fatherland. He has failed to praise them for merits for which even the enemy as well as the entire peace-loving world has paid them tribute, the statement said.
We therefore once again point out and remind ill-intentioned and tendentious individuals that the Yugoslav army's state function and social status are specified under the Yugoslav constitution and that its popular character and nature have been determined by our peoples' centuries-old military tradition and achievements resulting from their freedom-loving spirit, the statement said.
The Yugoslav army is a single armed force of the people and citizens of Yugoslavia, which has been consistently freed of any party influence and which does not at all aspire to act as an arbiter in the country's political life. It answers for the fulfilment of its constitutional obligations and tasks to its citizens, its state and Supreme Command that alone has the authority under the constitution to set tasks to the army.
Apart from ethnic Albanian separatists and terrorists in Kosovo and Metohija, no one in this country has provoked or wanted war against the most powerful alliance nor has taken part in that war recklessly and dangerously, as claimed by Gen. Perisic. NATO launched aggression on Yugoslavia in violation of all relevant international conventions and the U.N. Charter, without a declaration of war and engaging the most powerful and most sophisticated aircraft and missiles.
Taking into account and respecting the people's will, as was the case at the beginning of the century, the state and the army had no right to bow to ultimatums in order to possibly avoid war. This would have been tantamount to capitulation, which is impermissible, to cowardly retreat, disgraceful trampling on military honour and the people's dignity. The aggression and the war were brutally imposed so that the state, the army and the people had no choice but to defend their country. The heroic defence of the fatherland and the army and the people's strong unity in the struggle against the aggression confirm this honourable commitment, the statement said.
It is strange that Gen. Perisic should object to the unity and success of the people, the state leadership and the army in the defence of the fatherland. It seems that he would have been happy if it had been otherwise.
Positions that Gen. Perisic voiced in his statements are disgraceful because he did not blame the aggressor for the war, but the country's leadership, the army and its top officials that could not and did not have the right to accept shameful capitulation. Perisic, one-time verbally belligerent general, became a peacemaker at the point when his country was attacked, which is beyond comprehension, joining the ranks of those minor personalities that campaign in the country in the interests of the aggressor.
His positions and positions by some former Yugoslav army members will not and cannot make the army violate its constitutional authority and tasks - the army will always be ready to fulfil them consistently, the statement said.