[Marcus Marulus]

This article is teeming with factual errors.

When the Axis powers invaded and dismembered Yugoslavia in 1941, they attached Kosovo and Albanian-speaking regions of Montenegro, Macedonia, and Greece to Albania to form a greater Albania under the rule of a fascist dictator.

Actually, Albania was at that time protectorate of the fascist Italy.

When the Croatian Communist dictator Tito came to power in Yugoslavia in 1945

He was not Croatian, to begin with.

An upsurge of Albanian Kosovo violence in 1969-1974 caused another 200,000 Serbs and Montenegrins to leave Kosovo and gave Tito an excuse to separate Kosovo from Serbia. He made it an autonomous province under the total control of the now Albanian majority.

Kosovo was made autonomous province inside Serbia already in 1945. Serbia was officially one of the republics of the Yugoslav Federation and she (Serbia) consisted of Serbia proper, Autonomous Province of Kosovo and Autonomous Province of Vojvodina. So Kosovo was never entirely separated from Serbia.

The Kosovar Albanians required mandatory instruction in Albanian for all inhabitants of Kosovo, and they imported history and social science texts books from Albania for use in the schools. These taught Albanian nationalism rather than Yugoslav citizenship and praised the era of Turkish control over the Balkans. There were continuing incidents of violence against Serbs and frequent attacks on Orthodox churches, shrines, and monasteries. More Serbs and Montenegrins left. Ignoring Yugoslav immigration laws, the Albanian Kosovars permitted more illegal aliens to immigrate from Albania. By the early 80s, the province was three-fourths Albanian, large numbers of them born in Albania.

I am not able to verify the veracity of all of these claims, some of which may be exaggerated, but there is one basic fact that has to be pointed out in connection with this: a great deal of what was happening in Kosovo was approved by the Serbian Communists. They didn't oppose much any of these things.

The fact that author (intentionally?) omitted to mention is that Yugoslavia was ruled by a megalomaniac clique which indulged in wild dreams of power and influence in the international arena, in plans that vastly surpassed the real resources and possibilities of the country. One of these plans was to rule the whole Balkans, even propositions of a confederation with Bulgaria and Albania were at table. Fostering Kosovan-Albanian identity was one of the ways by which they wanted to absorb Albania into Yugoslavia's orbit.

Mrs. Albright's and Mr. Clinton's have manipulated the ethnic diversity issue to suit their immediate purposes. In the case of Slovenia and Croatia, they accepted and actively promoted societies whose sole reason for seeking independence from an already multiethnic Yugoslavia was ethnic exclusivism.

At the time when Slovenia and Croatia became independent (1991), neither Clinton nor Albright were in charge, but Bush senior was the US President and James Baker Secretary of State. Bush's administration was strongly opposed to Croatian and Slovenian independence and favoured the preservation of Yugoslavia.

During World War II, when Serbia was occupied by the Germans, the Serbs refused to cooperate in killing Jews and Gypsies.

Untrue. Serbia had its puppet government under the leadership of the colonel Milan Nedić. The police of Nedić's Serbia assisted Germans in everything...it doesn't mean that Serbian population didn't suffer, it suffered very much indeed, but German occupying forces had their accomplices.

The suspicion among many in the world is that Mrs. Albright's real reason for the war was to establish total U.S. hegemony over the Balkans

That's correct.

Active Western collusion, initially led by Germany, in the breakup of Yugoslavia

The good old myth, with no base in reality, that the West destroyed the lovely Yugoslavia.

has converted Slovenia, Croatia, and the Muslim-Croat Confederation in Bosnia into client states of the U.S.

Croatia became client state of the USA only in 2000. (unfortunately)

Only Yugoslavia stands in the way of total U.S. domination of the region, which Rambouillet would have achieved. This was part of Mr. Clinton's New World Order.

Yes, and Milošević became villain in the eyes of the "international community" only after he declined (rightfully) to let the international forces into his country. Previously he was considered a "peace-maker of the Balkans".

In our propaganda to get rid of Milosevich, we fail to note that he was elected President in an open election in which his own party controls only 35 percent of the seats in the Yugoslav parliament. In the last election, the U. S. preferred him because his principal opponent was considered an ultranationalist.

Last Milošević's government consisted of the coalition of his party and the party of the ultranationalist in question (Šešelj-Serbian Radical Party).

The assistance that Milosevich provided the Serbs of Croatia and Bosnia when Yugoslavia was breaking up must be understood in the context of what was in effect a civil war within Yugoslavia, where Serbs had justifiable reasons to fear a recrudescence of the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the 1940s by Croats and Bosnian Muslims, who massacred more than 600,000 Serbian non-combatants during World War II.

The Holocaust that once happened and might happen again some day, against which we should be constantly on guard. Hmmm...sounds familiar, as if it were coming from another ethnic group, you-know-which...

In fact, the author is recycling the old claim of 700 000 victims of the concentration camp Jasenovac (reducing it to 600 000, according to the official figure of the Yad Vashem). It was physically impossible and the figure was discredited long ago.

Franjo Tudjman, the current president of Croatia, has resurrected the flag, other national symbols, and even the uniforms and arm bands of the Croatian fascists of World War II.

Absolute nonsense. The flag of the so-called Independent State of Croatia was quite different from the present day Croatian flag.

The flag of the Independent State of Croatia (the Ustaša state):



The coat of arms of the Indpendent State of Croatia:



The flag of today's Republic of Croatia:



Coat of arms of the present day Republic of Croatia:

He declared a few years ago that the Jewish Holocaust was a fabrication, and he destroyed all records of the notorious Croatian concentration camp at Jasenovac in Bosnia, where tens of thousand of Jews, Gypsies, and Serbs perished in the 1940s.

He never said that Holocaust was fabrication. He even less destroyed the memorial centre at the place of the former camp Jasenovac. The center is standing there, with its records. And Jasenovac isn't in Bosnia...

In 1995, with the assistance of the CIA and American military advisers, he drove several hundred thousand Serbs from their ancestral homes in Croatia where they had lived since the fifteenth century.

They left on their own will, with the assistance of their leaders.

Militarily, the air war was a debacle for NATO. The Yugoslavs had great success in preserving their anti-aircraft capabilities throughout. Many of their fixed sites were destroyed early, but they retained mobile sites and were strong in their ability to target lower flying aircraft. They set up dummy tanks, trucks, and SAM sites for NATO planes to attack, regularly moved and carefully concealed AAA and SAM sites, confused NATO aircraft with fake radar signals, and were highly successful in targeting the UAVs that NATO had to rely on to get real time surveillance over moving targets. Though they lost about half of their few MIG 29's, their most advanced aircraft, their pilots also shot down a number of NATO aircraft, including a Stealth fighter. The great bulk of their air force remained intact in underground hangars. Already, other nations in the world who assume they too might one day face a bomb-happy NATO are studying Yugoslav defensive tactics.

This would be interesting to study...

In 1941, the Serbs rejected a German ultimatum to let German troops move through their country to help Mussolini's beleaguered forces in Greece. The subsequent German invasion delayed the planned invasion of the Soviet Union by six weeks and prevented a knockout blow before the Russian winter came.

The reason for Germany's attack on Yugoslavia in 1941 was that the country had stepped out from the Triple Alliance. The coup that overthrew the previous government, which had signed accession in to the Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, Japan) and substituted it with a new, pro-British government, was in fact the ruse of the British secret services. The aim of the Brits was to delay Germany's attack on USSR as much as they can. They Brits succeeded in their scheme, but Yugoslavia and Greece paid the price.

The map of Central and Eastern Europe was redrawn.

In the case of Yugoslavia the map wasn't redrawn, because the country that was part of the pre-war system in Europe was reestablished.