TRIBUNAL'S MOVE TO SEVER KOSOVO INDICTMENT COULD BE INTENDED TO INFLUENCE UP-COMING KOSOVO STATUS NEGOTIATIONS
www.slobodan-milosevic.org - November 24, 2005

Written by: Andy Wilcoxson

On Tuesday, November 22nd the trial chamber handed down an order to schedule a hearing on Tuesday, November 29th.

The purpose of the hearing is to allow the parties to make further submissions in relation to the medical condition of Milosevic, and to consider the trial chamber's latest initiative to sever the Kosovo indictment.

Severance of the indictment would mean that the charges relating to Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo would be cut into two or three separate indictments. Such a move would allow the tribunal to quickly hand down a verdict on Kosovo before hearing any defense evidence about Bosnia and Croatia.

If the indictment is severed then we could easily see a verdict on Kosovo within the next couple of months. Anybody who has been reading the trial transcripts or watching the trial on TV or the Internet knows that Milosevic is innocent.

Unfortunately, being innocent will not save him from the Hague Tribunal. He will be convicted in spite of the evidence. After all, NATO isn't financing the tribunal just to see Milosevic get acquitted.

We must consider the political consequences of Milosevic's inevitable conviction. When the tribunal hands down the "guilty verdict" we can look forward to at least a month of journalistic masturbation in the West.

Western Journalists will dredge-up all the lies they've reported over the years and repeat them. They will revel in the fact that the Hague Tribunal corroborates their lies, and they will use that as a justification to praise their own journalistic abilities. Milosevic will be affixed with the label "convicted war criminal." Massacres and killings will no longer be referred to as "alleged" such allegations will be reported as if they were a proven fact (many journalists are already doing that anyway).

The fact that the Hague Tribunal's verdict will be refuted by the evidence actually heard in court will not be reported by these journalists. Nor will they mention the fact that the Hague Tribunal was illegally established, and therefore has no legal jurisdiction to render judgments in the first place.

The reason why the Hague Tribunal wants to sever the indictment and render an early verdict on Kosovo is because they want the Albanians to be able to use the verdict as a propaganda tool in Kosovo's up-coming "final status" negotiations.

Serbia is entering the negotiations with the rule of law on its side. The term "final status" was first coined by the International Crisis Group, it is a political trick intended to obfuscate the fact that Kosovo's status has already been determined by Resolution 1244.

Resolution 1244 guarantees substantial autonomy for Kosovo, not independence. Kosovo's independence is explicitly ruled out by Resolution 1244. That resolution guarantees Serbia's territorial integrity, and envisions the eventual return of Serbian military and police forces to the province.

In addition to Resolution 1244, a whole host of international agreements including, the UN Charter, and The Helsinki Final act of 1975 guarantee Serbia's territorial integrity. Legally, nobody can take Kosovo away from Serbia. The only avenue for those who want to re-draw Serbia's borders is political, or possibly military, force.

Political force can be created by handing down Milosevic's Kosovo verdict during the so-called "final status negotiations". A guilty verdict against Milosevic will make the Albanian demands for independence seem justified, even if they are illegal. People will argue, "How can you force the Kosovo-Albanians to live within Serbia's borders after the horrible crimes that Milosevic was convicted of committing against them?"

It should be interesting to see how things play-out at The Hague Tribunal next Tuesday. In August of 2004, both the defense and the prosecution opposed any severance of the indictments. It should be interesting to see if the prosecution has changed its mind now that such a move would have serious political consequences.

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