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The bombing of Yugoslavia had little to do with defending a repressed ethnic minority and much to do with NATO flexing its muscles, says a woman who has written extensively on eastern Europe and is speaking in the Twin Cities this week.
Diana Johnstone, former press officer for the Green members of the European Parliament, contends that Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic is "a bad leader like so many others" but that he was elected by Yugoslav voters and isn't a dictator as portrayed by the United States.
Johnstone, 68, who is based in Paris but received her undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of Minnesota, is speaking at 10 a.m. today at Sabathani Community Center, 310 E. 38th St., Minneapolis. Her appearance is sponsored by of Women Against Military Madness.
"The whole version of the events in Yugoslavia have been extremely distorted," she said. "The NATO war has, in fact, not been a humanitarian adventure at all. The war was waged for the benefit of NATO -- to prove its new mission."
She said that after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact, companies that sell defense systems to NATO countries wanted to see the alliance continue. She said new NATO members, such as Poland, the Czech Republic and Hungary, must make their armed forces compatible with NATO, which means purchasing jet fighters and other equipment.
The plan is to make NATO "a strike force anywhere in the world," she said, so NATO needed a "humanitarian mission" prior to its 50th anniversary celebration earlier this year. So instead of negotiating with Milosevic, she said, NATO presented him with an ultimatum he could not accept, creating an excuse to bomb.
Johnstone contends that it was more like a civil war in Yugoslavia in which "an armed band" -- the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) -- was "assassinating policemen and civilians." She said Milosevic had no choice but to respond. "You attack a police force, the police force is going to retaliate," she said. "Can you imagine, if some armed rebels were shooting at police in the United States, that the government would not do anything about it?"
Milosevic's crackdown on ethnic Albanians in Kosovo led to a 78-day NATO bombing campaign that ended with the withdrawal of Yugoslav troops from the province.
Johnstone said that there weren't many incidents of Serbian atrocities prior to the NATO bombing and those that were reported were questionable and orchestrated by forces pressing for intervention.
"The media has been used," she said.