SERBIA/FILE: Ten Years after NATO launched its air war against Serbia and Yugoslavia, its grim reminders still stand in Belgrade

Record ID: 746736

  • Title: SERBIA/FILE: Ten Years after NATO launched its air war against Serbia and Yugoslavia, its grim reminders still stand in Belgrade
  • Date: 23rd March 2009
  • Summary: BELGRADE, SERBIA (FILE-MAY 8, 1999) (REUTERS) CHINESE EMBASSY BUILDING PLAQUE WITH SIGN READING;"Embassy of People's republic of China" TWO FIREMEN SPRAYING EMBASSY WITH WATER
  • Embargoed: 7th April 2009 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Defence / Military
  • Reuters ID: LVA4SCHLH5GZYJ3I1YHLODZKTT5D
  • Story Text: The remnants of the buildings in Belgrade are now almost an attraction for foreign tourists but for Belgraders they are painful reminders about recent history and to the the sacrifices and losses during the bombings.
    In Belgrade sirens went off in the early evening hours on March 24.
    NATO bombing, of the then Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, lasted until the June 10 armistice. For the first time in over 50 years the European powers had attacked another European country. It was the biggest military conflict on Serbian and Montenegrin soil since the end of WWII.
    Western powers justified their military action as an attempt to prevent the humanitarian catastrophe in Kosovo. The move also came after the United Nations Security Council demanded that the Belgrade authorities end their repression against civilians in Kosovo that followed the counterinsurgency against ethnic Albanian rebels.
    During the abortive peace talks in Paris, France, the then Serbia's President Slobodan Milosevic had been warned that NATO military action will follow his refusal to accept an international peace plan already signed by the Kosovo Albanians.
    After initial attacks on military targets throughout Serbia and Montenegro, NATO later expanded air strikes against industrial and economic facilities, hitting civilian targets in the process.
    During the 78 days of relentless bombing Serbian and Montenegrin infrastructure, commercial buildings, schools, health facilities, media, cultural monuments, churches and monasteries were destroyed or heavily damaged. Several thousand homes were also destroyed and damaged throughout the country, mainly in Belgrade. The southern city of Nis as well as in towns of Cuprija, Aleksinac and Cacak were also affected. Kosovo's capital Pristina was also heavily hit.
    Serbian Defense Minister Dragan Sutanovac said he hasn't changed his mind about the bombing, he thinks that the NATO operation was unnecessary.
    "I must say that my opinion then and now hasn't changed. Then and now I think it was a great mistake of the NATO and that the bombing shouldn't have happened. I believe that at the crossroads of two millenniums and two centuries it was absolutely unnatural that one nation, and when I say nation I think about all the citizens at of the then Yugoslavia to be bombed and I think that goals which NATO wanted to achieve could have been done with less energy and citizens could be spared from what have happened," Dragan Sutanovac said.
    One of the biggest mysteries of the NATO air war was the attack on the Chinese embassy in Belgrade.
    Outdated maps were cited as the reason for the bombing of the embassy's compound. NATO said it was a mistake. One of the cameramen who arrived at the scene minutes after the airstrike was Veljko Djurovic.
    "When two bombs fell on the embassy, I even think that one did not went off, a lot of journalists came, it was shortly after midnight, we were milling around in the dark, trying to film something, we then heard some terrible noise, we recognize it was a sound of a Tomahawk (cruise missile), it makes such noise, and we did not know whether it would hit the building once again or somewhere else, so there was a panic, a stampede," Veljko Djurovic said.
    Nis, Serbia's second largest city, some 200 kilometres south of Belgrade was also heavily bombed with cluster bombs. Many from Nis will never forget that day. As a grim reminder, Mirko Smiljkovic refused to repair the gate of his yard which still bear holes from cluster bomb splinters.
    "I did not repeat the gate, that gate still has holes from splinters, and this gate is a memory on that terrible day". Marko Smiljkovic said.
    NATO also experienced some losses. For the first time, the so-called "invisible" stealth fighter F-117 was gunned down some 30 kilometres west of Belgrade, just hours later, citizens of Belgrade started to wear badges with a sarcastic slogan "Sorry we did not know it was invisible".
    The armistice came into power on June 10, after Serbian and NATO military commanders signed the so-called military-technical agreement that stipulated withdrawal of Yugoslav military and police from Kosovo.
    When the Yugoslav army started its withdrawal many Serbs also left Kosovo, fleeing from reprisal attacks by their ethnic Albanian neighbors.
    Trucks and tractors were packed with people who did not even have enough time to take pack their belongings. One of the refugees was Milivoje Mihajlovic, Pristina-based journalist.
    "That's terrible feeling, when you have couple of hours to decide what to do and where to go and how to break the so called barricades, what you will take from home in a plastic bag, the only thing you can take, terrible experience that I wouldn't like anybody to have," Milivoje Mihajlovic said.
    Since 2000 international judges of the UN war crimes court in The Hague, handed down long prison sentences to five senior political, military and police officials loyal to the former strongman Slobodan Milosevic for their roles in the 1999 war in Kosovo.
    But the court acquitted Milan Milutinovic , the wartime Serbian president, who had the highest rank of the men in the dock, but who was effectively a figurehead.
    Seven years after the end of the 78-day war, Serbia has joined NATO's Partnership for Peace program. However, its full membership in the Western Alliance is still questionable. Wounds are still fresh and the bombing is not forgotten.
    NATO has no special plans to mark the 10th anniversary of the war against Yugoslavia, which in the meantime disintegrated completely when Montenegro seceded from Serbia in 2006.
    A year ago, Kosovo, which was administered by the UN administration since serbia's defeat in June 1999, unilaterally declared independence from Serbia.
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