Date: Fri, 4 Jun 1999 15:42:25 GMT0BST
Subject: AUT: (Fwd) YU: Was Rambouillet Another Tonkin Gulf? 


Hi
Interesting stuff below - the suggestion is that the US generated a 
peace plan that they knew Milosevic would refuse.
Cheers
Rowan




FAIR  Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting     130 W. 25th Street   New York, NY
10001 

Media Advisory: 
WHAT REPORTERS KNEW ABOUT KOSOVO TALKS -- BUT DIDN'T TELL 
Was Rambouillet Another Tonkin Gulf? 

June 2, 1999 

New evidence has emerged confirming that the U.S. deliberately set out to thwart
the
Rambouillet peace talks in France in order to provide a "trigger" for NATO's
bombing of
Yugoslavia. 

Furthermore, correspondents from major American news organizations reportedly
knew about
this plan to stymie the Kosovo peace talks, but did not inform their readers or
viewers. 

FAIR's May 14 media advisory, "Forgotten Coverage of Rambouillet Negotiations,"
asked
whether the media had given the full story on Rambouillet. News reports almost
universally
blamed the failure of negotiations on Serbian intransigence. The headline over a
New York
Times dispatch from Belgrade on March 24--the first day of the bombing--read
"U.S.
Negotiators Depart, Frustrated By Milosevic's Hard Line." 

But the evidence presented in "Forgotten Coverage" suggested that it was U.S.
negotiators,
not the Serbs, who blocked an agreement. 

Now, in the June 14 issue of the Nation, George Kenney, a former State
Department
Yugoslavia desk officer, reports: 

     An unimpeachable press source who regularly travels with Secretary of State
     Madeleine Albright told this [writer] that, swearing reporters to
deep-background
     confidentiality at the Rambouillet talks, a senior State Department
official had
     bragged that the United States "deliberately set the bar higher than the
Serbs
     could accept." The Serbs needed, according to the official, a little
bombing to see
     reason. 

In other words, the plan for Kosovo autonomy drafted by State Department
officials was
intentionally crafted to provoke a rejection from Serb negotiators. In his
Nation article, Kenney
compares this plan to the Gulf of Tonkin incident. 

Providing further confirmation of Kenney's account, Jim Jatras, a foreign policy
aide to Senate
Republicans, reported in a May 18 speech at the Cato Institute in Washington
that he had it
"on good authority" that a "senior Administration official told media at
Rambouillet, under
embargo" the following: 

     "We intentionally set the bar too high for the Serbs to comply. They need
some
     bombing, and that's what they are going to get." 

In interviews with FAIR, both Kenney and Jatras asserted that these are actual
quotes
transcribed by reporters who spoke with a U.S. official. They declined to give
the names or
affiliations of the reporters. 

The revelation that American reporters knew about a U.S. strategy to create a
pretext for
NATO's war on Yugoslavia--but did not report on it--raises serious questions
about the
independence of mainstream news organizations. 

More reporting is needed on the origins of this war, as well as the
opportunities for peace that
may have been overlooked. 

This release will be updated as new information becomes available. 


This media advisory was written by FAIR media analyst Seth Ackerman.


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