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Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who has died aged 101, was respected around the world as one of the wisest diplomats of the 20th century.
Source: Tanjug
During his rich career, he also spoke a lot about the Western Balkans, judging that Kosovo and Metohija is a “national temple” for the Serbs.
Kissinger thus questioned American policy in the Balkans, asserting that “there is no clear definition of American interests in the Balkans.”
“Europeans should manage events in their own backyard,” Kissinger said, the Guardian recalls.
Kissinger, who served as U.S. secretary of state from 1973 to 1977, said he “didn’t understand what America was trying to achieve in the Balkans.”
“There is something very wrong about our military operation in Kosovo. So wrong that one has to wonder how Washington convinced the allies to create some kind of peace agreement in the Balkans between the suffering Serbs and the Albanians of strain, although neither side wants it,” Kissinger said. said.
He added that “this conflict has been going on for 600 years.”
“Now we say we have solutions, and if you don’t accept our solution, we’re going to bomb you. I have a problem with that,” Kissinger said in 1999.
He also said the U.S. administration’s policy toward Kosovo was wrong because an independent or autonomous Kosovo would destabilize the region, the Washington Post earlier wrote.
“This is because Kosovo Albanians are seeking to integrate neighboring Albanian minorities, mainly in Macedonia, and perhaps in Albania itself,” Kissinger told the Washington newspaper. He added that it was not a well-considered approach, “not at all”.
“The administration’s plan does not provide options – what will happen if the bombings fail, and what if they do not force Yugoslav leader Milošević to accept the peace terms he has already rejected repeatedly,” Kissinger emphasized.
Regarding Bosnia and Herzegovina, he said that it was an artificial creation and that Slobodan Milošević “is not Hitler, but a Balkan scoundrel.”
“Neither Milošević, nor any Balkan leader, is capable of posing a global threat, as President Clinton assessed,” Kissinger noted.
Kissinger supported American policy in Bosnia and Herzegovina.
“Milošević bears the main responsibility for the brutalities in Bosnia, I strongly support the American deployment there. But unlike Bosnia, the war in Kosovo is due to territory that the Serbs consider sacred at the national level”, declared the former American diplomat.
Regarding Rambouillet, Kissinger believes that the Serbs rejected the peace agreement because they saw it as an opening for Kosovo’s independence.
“Serbs also view the presence of NATO troops as the type of foreign occupation that Serbia has fought against throughout its history, including against the Ottoman and Austro-Hungarian empires, Hitler and Stalin. Although “You bomb them to get them to capitulate, you can hardly expect them to do that. Accept that outcome,” Kissinger told Newsweek in 1999.
He said Bosnia never existed as a country and is an artificial creation.
“We could have done something at the beginning of the war, when the Serbs were accused of massive human rights violations. Today, however, we behave as if we were trying to forcefully return the Serbs to a sort of mythical Bosnia, which has never existed in history. There is no Bosnian language, there is no Bosnian culture. Bosnia is an administrative unit made up of Croats, Muslims and of Serbs, and it was artificially created in the former Yugoslavia and stupidly recognized as a state by Western powers,” Kissinger said, reports RTRS.
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