U.S. accuses Milosevic forces of mass burnings of bodies in Kosovo
By BARRY SCHWEID
AP Diplomatic Writer
January 26, 2001
WASHINGTON (AP) - Former Yugoslav President Slobodan Milosevic's
forces burned bodies of victims of Serbian atrocities in Kosovo in
a campaign to destroy the evidence of crimes, the State Department
said Friday.
Information obtained by the U.S. government beginning in 1999
confirms there were massive killings "and there were attempts to
burn bodies and otherwise cover up evidence at places throughout
Kosovo," spokesman Richard Boucher said.
In a documentary aired Thursday that used interviews from men
who said they were involved, Minnesota Public Radio and National
Public Radio news reported up to 1,500 bodies were burned at a lead
refinery in Trepca. That would account for about half of the ethnic
Albanians in Kosovo still missing more than a year and a half after
Milosevic pulled out of the province under U.S. and NATO pressure.
"The information that we had and continue to have corroborates
the broad outline of the campaign by Milosevic's forces to destroy
evidence of their crimes," Boucher said.
Asked specifically about Trepca, Boucher said, "We knew that
this was one of the places that we were concentrating on, where
there was activity going on. But if we were actually able to say in
our report, `They burned bodies at this site,' I don't know."
Earlier, a spokeswoman for the Organization for Security and
Cooperation in Europe said investigators had found no evidence that
would substantiate the report that elite forces loyal to Milosevic
burned the bodies in a blast furnace at Trepca.
"Our people have had a report of this, but they found no
evidence to substantiate it," OSCE spokeswoman Claire Trevena
said.
Along with the United Nations and NATO, the 55-nation
Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe plays a key
role in running the Serbian province of Kosovo.
Trevena said a French forensic team with sophisticated equipment
that was called to search for remains of any bodies at Trepca found
nothing there.
Boucher said the United States, in May and June 1999, briefed
the international war crimes tribunal for Yugoslavia in The Hague,
The Netherlands, "on the Serb campaign to destroy the evidence."
Boucher added: "It's a fact that we know of and that we've
reported on in the past."
On Thursday, the Bush administration said through Boucher that
it was disappointed Yugoslavia did not work out an agreement with
the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor to put Milosevic on trial for
war crimes.
"These things need to be worked out, and the obligation flows
from the government to the tribunal," he said.
Chief prosecutor Carla Del Ponte rejected Yugoslavia's position.
Still, she said in Belgrade she remains "cautiously optimistic"
that Milosevic would be extradited to the Netherlands for trial on
charges of involvement in atrocities by Serbian troops against
ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.
He was indicted nearly two years ago, but like several other
Serb leaders accused of war crimes in the Balkans, he has not faced
trial.
In 1999, senior French police officials in Kosovo said the
furnace at Trepca stopped operating shortly after the start of the
crackdown on Kosovo's ethnic Albanians in late March 1999 and
remained unused after Milosevic's forces pulled out.
Ashes at the site examined by the team also showed no traces
that would back up the report, they said.
In Thursday's radio report, the men, identified only by their
first names, said bodies were unearthed from freshly dug graves
that were identified by NATO satellites after the French study was
done.
At The Hague, Graham Blewitt, the U.N. tribunal's deputy
prosecutor, said tribunal investigations at the Trepca mine
"couldn't confirm" bodies had been disposed of by burning but
suggested it was extremely difficult to arrive at a definite
conclusion.
(Copyright 2001 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
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