[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 145 (1999), Part 4]
[House]
[Pages 4708-4709]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                   KOSOVA KILLINGS CALLED A MASSACRE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from New York (Mr. Engel) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. ENGEL. Mr. Speaker, last Thursday the House very wisely passed a 
resolution giving the President the authority to send U.S. troops to 
Kosova as a part of NATO, and at the time many of us arguing in favor 
of the resolution said that it was necessary for the United States to 
be a leader of NATO and to show that we are the leader and to have 4000 
of our troops, if necessary, participate in the NATO peacekeeping force 
which would only be 15 percent of the total and which would in essence 
be a poster child for burden sharing. When I got up to the floor, as 
did many of my colleagues, we talked about genocide and ethnic 
cleansing and said that it was important for NATO to have a presence in 
Kosova in order to prevent ethnic cleansing.
  Today in the front page of the Washington Post there is unfortunately 
an article which says ``Kosovo Killings Called a Massacre,'' and I just 
wanted to read some of the article and then ask to have the entire 
article put into the Record, but the article starts off by saying:
  An independent forensic report into the killings of 40 ethnic 
Albanians in the Kosovo village of Racak in January has found that the 
victims were unarmed civilians executed in an organized massacre, some 
of them forced to kneel before being sprayed with bullets according to 
western sources familiar with the report. The findings by Finnish 
forensic experts set to be released Wednesday in Pristina, the Kosovo 
capital, contradicts claims by officials of the Serb led Yugoslav 
government that the dead were armed ethnic Albanian separatists or 
civilians accidentally caught in a cross-fire between government 
security forces and separatist rebels. Western officials have blamed 
the killings on government police.
  It has been apparent for many years now, but especially during the 
past several months, that ethnic cleansing and genocide has been going 
on in Kosova, and by the way I say ``Kosova'' because that is the way 
92 percent of the people who live there who are ethnic Albanians 
pronounce it. They pronounce it ``Kosova'' and in my estimation, if 
that is what the people who live there call their land, that is what I 
call it. We have said that ethnic cleansing and genocide has been going 
on, and that is why it is just so important for NATO to be there. 
People who say that it is not in our vital interests, I would argue 
that it is in our vital interests to stop genocide and also in the U.S. 
vital interest to prevent a larger outbreak of the war which would 
surely, if given a chance, suck in many neighboring countries, 
including the potential to suck in NATO allies of Turkey and Greece and 
Bulgaria and other countries as well. And so that is why the U.S. has a 
vital interest.
  But I wanted to come to the floor today to point out the ethnic 
cleansing and the genocide and to say that when the United States has 
the ability to help prevent these kinds of atrocities we ought to do 
it.
  Again this is an independent panel. This is not some panel that is 
hired by one side or another. This is an independent panel, independent 
forensic report, and it is what we said all along, that these are 
innocent civilians, unarmed civilians, men, women and children who are 
being ethnically cleansed who are being killed by the Serbian led 
forces under Slobodan Milosevic, who in my opinion is a war criminal 
and should be prosecuted by the International Tribunal at the Hague.
  Mr. Speaker, I place the entire article into the Congressional Record 
at this time:

               [From the Washington Post, March 17, 1999]

  Kosovo Killings Called a Massacre--Some Victims Shot While on Their 
                                 Knees

                         (By R. Jeffrey Smith)

       Rome, March 16--An independent forensic report into the 
     killings of 40 ethnic Albanians in the Kosovo village of 
     Racak in January has found that the victims were unarmed 
     civilians executed in an organized massacre, some of them 
     forced to kneel before being sprayed with bullets, according 
     to Western sources familiar with the report.
       The findings by Finnish forensic experts, set to be 
     released Wednesday in Pristina, the Kosovo capital, 
     contradict claims by officials of the Serb-led Yugoslav 
     government that the dead were armed ethnic Albanian 
     separatists or civilians accidentally caught in a cross-fire 
     between government security forces and separatist rebels. 
     Western officials have blamed the killings on government 
     police.
       Because of the extreme sensitivity of the case, leaders of 
     the European Union, which sponsored the probe, have asked the 
     forensic team to withhold some of its most potentially 
     inflammatory findings when its members appear at a news 
     conference Wednesday, officials said.
       The request, they say, was made out of concern that the 
     results will further polarize the two sides in the Kosovo 
     conflict and impede the Belgrade government's acceptance of a 
     peace agreement for the Serbian province at talks underway in 
     France.
       One Western official said the German government, which 
     holds the rotating chairmanship of the European Union, had 
     ordered the Finnish team not to release a summary of its 
     probe, which includes details about how some of the victims 
     appeared to have died. Instead, at Bonn's request, the team 
     agreed to release only the voluminous summaries of autopsies 
     it helped conduct on bodies of the victims.
       The killings on Jan. 15 at Racak, an ethnic Albanian 
     village southwest of Pristina, outraged the world and became 
     a turning point in the year-long conflict between security 
     forces and the Kosovo Liberation Army, the main ethnic 
     Albanian rebel group fighting for Kosovo's independence from 
     Serbia, the dominant republic in the Yugoslav federation.
       NATO leaders condemned the killings at the time and renewed 
     their threat to carry out punitive airstrikes against 
     Yugoslav military targets. Days later, both sides in the 
     conflict agreed to take part in peace talks in France 
     sponsored by the United States, Russia and four west European 
     nations.
       On Monday, ethnic Albanian negotiators pledged to sign a 
     draft peace agreement that would provide substantial autonomy 
     to Kosovo, while Belgrade officials have continued to object 
     not only to the language of the proposed political 
     settlement, but also to a provision mandating deployment of 
     28,000 NATO-led troops in Kosovo to enforce its terms.
       The forensic team's investigation, based on an examination 
     of evidence at the site and autopsies conducted jointly with 
     Yugoslav government pathologists, determined that 22 of the 
     victims were slain in a gully on the outskirts of Racak, 
     precisely where their bodies were found on the morning of 
     Jan. 16. The gully is so narrow that these victims could only 
     have been shot deliberately at close range, the sources said.
       Although the bodies of some other victims in the village 
     were moved into homes or a mosque before international 
     observers arrived, the forensic experts were able to 
     determine where all but four of the 40 victims had died. From 
     the pattern of the bullet wounds on their bodies and other 
     evidence--such as their civilian clothing and possessions--
     the team found no reason to conclude they were killed 
     accidentally or were members of the Kosovo Liberation Army, 
     said the sources, who asked not to be identified.
       Western officials say the team found that the angle of the 
     bullet wounds in the victims' bodies was consistent with a 
     scenario in which some of them were forced to kneel before 
     being sprayed with gunfire from automatic weapons. This 
     ``spray pattern'' finding is among the sensitive details that 
     officials said may be withheld at Wednesday's news 
     conference. Wounds on the bodies of some other victims 
     evidently suggest they were shot while running away, the 
     sources said.
       On Jan. 16, U.S. special envoy William Walker, head of an 
     international monitoring mission in Kosovo, described the 
     killings as a massacre by government forces, and Yugoslav 
     officials ordered him out of the country. The order was later 
     suspended after the West threatened punitive action.
       Western sources subsequently disclosed that telephone 
     conversations between top Yugoslav and Serbian officials 
     about the slayings showed that the officials explicitly 
     sought to contrive an explanation for the killings that would 
     shift blame away from security forces.

[[Page 4709]]

       The Yugoslav government invited the Finnish forensic team 
     to conduct the investigation at a time when many countries 
     were demanding an inquiry by the International War Crimes 
     Tribunal in The Hague. Yugoslavia has refused to cooperate 
     with the tribunal or recognize the legitimacy of its mandate 
     over matters of Yugoslav territory, so the Finns were 
     accepted as compromise.
       Officials in Belgrade, aware of the potential impact the 
     forensic report might have on foreign sentiment about the 
     conduct of its army and paramilitary forces, have mounted 
     sustained propaganda campaign to cast the forensic team's 
     conclusions in a favorable, and, according to the sources, 
     highly misleading light.
       An article in today's editions of Politika, a Belgrade 
     newspaper connected to the government, claimed for example 
     that the team had established that all the victims all had 
     fired weapons before their deaths and that the bodies of all 
     of them had been moved. The chief public prosecutor for 
     Serbia, Dragisa Krsmanovic, alleged similarly last week that 
     forensic tests showed the victims all had been shot from a 
     distance. As a result, he said, government troops could not 
     be prosecuted for their actions in Racak.
       The forensic team searched but found no evidence to support 
     these claims. On the other hand, its findings cast doubt on 
     the assertion of some Western officials, including Walker, 
     that the bodies has been deliberately mutilated by government 
     troops.
       Although 45 people reportedly were slain at Racak, the 
     Finnish team was given access to only 40 bodies. The 
     investigators learned that at least five more bodies, 
     including those of at least two women, were removed from the 
     area and presumably were buried in a cemetery south of Racak, 
     along with as many as seven others who apparently were 
     wounded during the assault and died later.

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