Greek Complicity in Serb Wars

There's growing evidence that Greece helped to lubricate Milosevic's war machine

As Greece prepares to take on the mantle of the European Union presidency in January 2003, the time has come for Athens to examine the role it played in aiding the regimes of former Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic and his Bosnian Serb associates Radovan Karadic and Ratko Mladic.

Besides a general failure to confront the scale of war crimes perpetrated by Bosnian Serb and Serbian forces during the Nineties, there's mounting evidence of Greek complicity in Yugoslav sanction-busting during the conflicts.

A recent report published by the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, ICTY, covering the period 1994-2000, presents damning evidence of Greek and Cypriot involvement in the Balkan wars.

According to the report, both provided the pillars on which the Belgrade regime constructed an international financial structure to sidestep UN sanctions in operation between 1991 and 2000. The Hague investigation has revealed that transactions in excess of 1.5 billion German marks passed through this network.

Greek banking and government officials frustrated ICTY efforts to investigate the matter throughout the Nineties. For example, although the authorities originally agreed to Chief Prosecutor Carla del Ponte's probe, they excluded the central bank from follow-up enquiries in autumn 2001. The report also claimed that its investigators did not receive all the information they had asked of Athens.

In a well-publicised incident, a Greek court of appeals prosecutor refused to cooperate with the ICTY, saying he had "no intention of becoming a detective for The Hague".

The tribunal investigation concluded that eight Yugoslav "front" companies had been operating through the Popular Bank of Cyprus, the Hellenic Bank, the European Popular Bank of Cyprus and a Greek subsidiary of the Popular Bank. Some money passing through these accounts, it said, was spent on arms deals with suppliers from the United States, Russia and Israel.

When asked why money had been taken to Cyprus, former Milosevic customs chief Mikhail Kertes said, "Probably because there was a way out to the world from there."

The funds passing through the accounts are said to have come from the Yugoslav Federal Customs Administration, FCAY. They were found to have transferred large sums to a branch of Beogradska Bank in Cyprus and other Greek and Cypriot banks. The report revealed that representatives from the Beogradska Bank managed the accounts of the front companies and arranged for the transfer of funds to third parties, including arms dealers. In several cases the persons named as directors of the trading companies are said to have had no knowledge of these transactions.

"A financial structure was designed, implemented and maintained to provide funding, equipment and supplies for the army of the former Yugoslavia and the special forces of the interior ministry," the ICTY report said.

Evidence of more direct involvement in the Bosnian conflict is also mounting. Arms shipments to Bosnian Serb forces, the leaking of NATO military intelligence to General Ratko Mladic's Bosnian Serb forces and the presence of Greek paramilitaries among the latter during the Srebrenica campaign are all issues of concern.

The 7,000-page report by the Dutch authorities into the 1995 Srebrenica massacres - publication of which led to the resignation of the government - revealed that large shipments of weapons were transferred from Greece to Mladic's army in 1994 and 1995. Alleged arms consignments in the years immediately before and after could not be verified. Professor Cees Wiebes of Amsterdam University compiled the section of the report dealing with the involvement of foreign secret agencies and governments in the Bosnian conflict. It took five years to write, during which time the professor enjoyed unrestricted access to the Dutch intelligence community and various foreign and UN archives, interviewing more than 90 intelligence officials.

"Lots of weapons were transferred from Greece to the Montenegrin port of Bar, from where they would find their way to the Bosnian Serb army," Wiebes said. The weapons consisted mostly of light arms and ammunition.

At the same time, there are strong indications that Greece was leaking NATO intelligence to Mladic, especially during the period of alliance air strikes on Bosnian Serb forces in August-September 1995. "NATO officials became very reluctant to share intelligence with the Greeks due to fears over leaks to the Bosnian Serbs, and at some point they simply stopped doing so," Wiebes wrote.

In early 1994, Greece incurred the wrath of its European allies by voting against air strikes on Bosnian Serb positions. The country refused to allow NATO to use its air bases in Preveza on the Ionian Sea and declined to provide troops for the UN peacekeeping force in Bosnia.

Meanwhile, a contingent of Greek paramilitaries was formed in March 1995 at Mladic's request. The Greek Volunteer Guard, GVG, as it was known, rapidly became a regular fighting unit with its own insignia - a white double-headed eagle on a black background. In September 1995, four of its members received the White Eagle medal of honour from Bosnian Serb leader Radovan Karadzic.

The GVG had around 100 soldiers and was based in Vlasenica near Tuzla. Guard spokesman George Mouratidis said the unit was fully integrated into the army of Republika Srpska and was led by Serb officers.

From talking to veterans of the unit, it appears these soldiers were not simply mercenaries. Most cited religion as their main reason for enlisting.

"I am Orthodox and must help my Serb brethren against the Muslims," said Vagelis Koutakos in an interview at the time. His colleague Spiro Tzanopoulos claimed, "The Vatican, the Zionists, the Germans and the Americans conspire against the Orthodox nations. Their next target after Serbia will be Greece."

The GVG's part in the assault on Srebrenica was reported in the media at home and abroad, and the Dutch government's report describes how the unit hoisted the Greek flag in the town after the takeover. It also cited video footage of the event and excerpts taken from intercepted Bosnian Serb army telephone conversations provided by Bosnian intelligence services.

"One of the intercepted messages was from General Mladic, who asked for the Greek flag to be hoisted in the city," said Wiebes.

The presence of the Greek paramilitaries in Srebrenica appeared to be welcomed by many back home, where their antics were widely reported. The public seemed mesmerised by tales of hardship and danger, their young men fighting the "insidious" Muslims and the bravery of their Serb "brethren". When the Ethnos newspaper ran a two-page spread in August 1995 on the "heroic" exploits of the GVG in Srebrenica, the response was overwhelming. The paper's phone lines were jammed by youths desperate for information on the force.

Despite the widespread media reports, the authorities consistently ignored the open and public recruitment of paramilitaries in Greece and denied that Greek nationals were fighting in Bosnia.

The efforts to lend economic and military aid stemmed from Athens' official policy. Identification of Greece with Milosevic's policies in Belgrade and those of Karadzic in Pale was total and unconditional.

Before, during and after its 1994 presidency of the EU, Greece was the only country to support claims that Serb forces had entered Bosnian territory in response to provocation. In December 1994, after talks with Milosevic in Athens, Papandreou reiterated there was little difference between the Serbian and Greek positions on the Bosnian situation. Athens' criticism of the violence unfolding in Bosnia was almost exclusively directed against NATO air strikes. Even as late as April 1994, when human rights violations by Bosnian Serb forces had been established beyond any reasonable doubt, the then Greek premier Andreas Papandreou blamed only NATO.

"Greece showed indifference to Serb crimes and failed to condemn the merciless bombing of civilian populations [in Vukovar and Sarajevo] or the practice of ethnic cleansing, simply because those acts happened to be committed by Bosnian Serbs," said Alexis Heraclides, now a senior lecturer at Panteion University in Athens, but at the time an official in the Greek foreign ministry.

That indifference also resonated through the Greek media. The assault on Srebrenica was reported by some in Greece as an example of the "heroic advance of Serb forces". The involvement of Bosnian Serb forces in the massacres that followed the seizure of the town was underplayed. To this day, not one of Greece's ten or more television stations has broadcast a documentary on these events.

A few days after the ICTY announced its indictments against Mladic and Karadzic, the Greek-Serb Friendship Society claimed to have collected over two million signatures on a petition calling on the tribunal to drop the charges.

"We collected signatures everywhere," said society treasurer Lykourgos Chazakos. "In factories, offices and on the streets, the reaction was overwhelming. We met representatives from all political parties, who showed tremendous understanding. The people at the ministry of foreign affairs were especially encouraging."

The Greek Orthodox Church was one of the staunchest supporters of Milosevic's policy. It invited Karadzic to a rally in his honour at Piraeus in 1993, which was attended by leading politicians from all political parties and prominent trade unions.

In a 1994 comment, Papandreou said the Balkan wars had "brought to the surface the resonance of Orthodox ties" between Athens, Sofia and Belgrade.

Renowned literary critic Zoran Mutic, famed for his translations of Ancient Greek classics into Serbo-Croat, is bewildered by the extent of support for the Bosnian Serbs.

"When I hear so many journalists, academics, intellectuals and politicians expressing admiration for Karadzic, what can I say? How can they consider him a hero when he bombed hospitals and sent snipers to kill children on the streets?" he asked.

Another effect of this backing for the Bosnian Serb cause was the failure to acknowledge - let alone lend support to - the hard-pressed Serbian opposition parties and non-government media.

Sasa Mircovic of B-92 said the Greek government refused to recognise the role of independent media in Serbia. "They did not know and they did not want to know what was happening in our country," he told IWPR.

Efforts were even made to undermine the Serbian opposition. In the early Nineties, a Greek weekly, closely linked to the foreign ministry, published EC documents listing Serbian opposition organisations in receipt of funds from Brussels.

"This act constituted one of the most serious and dangerous attempts at undermining the efforts of the Serb opposition by presenting its members as being in the payroll of foreign powers," said Mircovic.

A few years before the death in 1997 of prominent left-wing thinker Corenliums Castoriadis, he told how Serb war crimes were being "covered up" in Greece through a campaign of misinformation and lies.

"In my eyes," he said, "Greek politicians, journalists, people who work in the media and the others responsible for this campaign of disinformation are moral accomplices in the cover-up of Serb crimes in Croatia and Bosnia."

Greek foreign office officials have repeatedly denounced the ICTY as partial and anti-Serb. In 1996, then foreign minister Theodor Pangalos asked the tribunal to "stop demonising the Serbs". Again in 1998, during a visit by then Bosnian Serb prime minister, Milorad Dodik, to Athens, Pangalos said the tribunal had "fallen under political influence".

The country's judicial system has been equally unwilling to investigate allegations of serious breaches of international law by Greek nationals and government officials. "In any European country with respect for the rule of law such serious allegations would immediately cause the intervention of the public prosecutor's office," said former trade and industry minister Andreas Andrianopoulos.

Greek premier Costas Simitis and his government have so far failed to condemn the policies of previous administrations. Nor have the authorities shown the slightest willingness to set up a parliamentary investigation into the allegations of complicity in war crimes in Bosnia. Instead, they persist with staunch denials of any wrongdoing.

Last summer, Greek EU commissioner Anna Diamantopoulou told an Athens conference a bright future awaited Greece in Europe. When asked if this future would include those politicians and institutions implicated in the Bosnian, Croatian and Kosovar atrocities, Diamantopoulou said only, "History has proven that Greek policies were correct".

Takis Michas writes for the Greek daily Eleftherotypia. His book "Unholy Alliance: Greece and Milosevic's Serbia" was published in May by Texas A&M University Press.

Says Hoplite:
"Al Quaeda has only been "linked" with organizations in the Balkans, whether in Bosnia or Kosovo, by Slobodan Milosevic and his followers, and then never with any supporting evidence"

There is a wealth of evidence refuting this claim, mostly in the case of Bosnia. Besides links by swarthyguy and Destro above, one of the best articles in the mainstream press was published in the LA Times, titled: Terrorists Use Bosnia as Base and Sanctuary.

Unfortunately, one cannot reprint an LAT article and now cannot even read the original without a (free) subscription. So I reprint here the first 3 paragraphs:

----------------

LA Times, October 7, 2001

Terrorists Use Bosnia as Base and Sanctuary

U.S. sees possible threat from militants who came to help Muslims fight Serbs, Croats in '90s, then became citizens. Some have ties to Bin Laden.

By CRAIG PYES, JOSH MEYER and WILLIAM C. REMPEL, Times Staff Writers

ZENICA, Bosnia--Herzegovina -- Hundreds of foreign Islamic extremists who became Bosnian citizens after battling Serbian and Croatian forces present a potential terrorist threat to Europe and the United States, according to a classified U.S. State Department report and interviews with international military and intelligence sources.

The extremists include hard-core terrorists, some with ties to Osama bin Laden, protected by militant elements of the former Sarajevo government. Bosnia-Herzegovina is "a staging area and safe haven" for terrorists, said one former senior State Department official.

The secret report, prepared late last year for the Clinton administration, warned of problem passport-holders in Bosnia in numbers that "shocked everyone," he said. The White House leaned on Bosnia and its then-president, Alija Izetbegovic, to do something about the matter, "but nothing happened," the former official said.

It seems unlikely that Serbia would receive weapons from Greece, unless they were free. Serbia was far better armed than any of its neighbors, and the BSA was more than sufficient to deal with the Croats or Muslims. They had more weapons than they knew what to do with, why would they buy more weapons from Greece? Besides, Yugoslavia has its own arms industry and builds everything from machine guns to main battle tanks to fighter jets. It would be much cheaper to produce what they need domestically than to buy from Greece.

Do you have more specific information regarding what exactly they bought from Greece and who paid for it? To my knowledge the only weapons Yugoslavia bought since its breakup were SA-16 and SA-18 sams from Kazakhstan, and some S-300s from Russia which were never delivered. The BSA uses only weapons left over from the JNA and has not received any new weapons from anyone other than Serbia.

Why bother with the LA Times when STARS & STRIPES reports the same thing (with some attempt at br-ass saving)?

West feeling the fallout of efforts to aid Bosnian Muslims a decade ago

Of special interest to Tropoljac is the Stars & Stripes' quoting of a former colonel with the Bosnian army's military intelligence unit that told the Stars and Stripes that:

"Al-Qaida trained Mujahedeen to go and fight in Bosnia during the early ’90s, and bin Laden’s Services Office also maintained an office in neighboring Croatia’s capital, Zagreb." The Mujahedeen came into Bosnia from Croatia, the colonel said. "They came into Croatia at the ports of Split and Rijeka. Those were big centers."

Why bother with the LA Times when STARS & STRIPES reports the same thing (with some attempt at br-ass saving)?

West feeling the fallout of efforts to aid Bosnian Muslims a decade ago

Of special interest to Tropoljac is the Stars & Stripes' quoting of a former colonel with the Bosnian army's military intelligence unit that told the Stars and Stripes that:

Symantics baby. The USA is represented by the presidents in power and their organs of power like the State Dept. If Bush does not change Clinton policy is he not responsible for it as well in some part?

How dare you disrespect the office of the presidency of the USA which according to the constitution is the only branch of the US govt. that has the power over foreign policy by saying the president does not represent America!

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