Interview with Marko Grasic,
Reporter: Jim Waley

"We all would want the bombing to stop, but NATO doesn't want to stop because NATO is out of control."

PRESENTER:
For Serbs, the NATO attack is a crime against their sovereignty.  They regard Kosovo as a sacred part of Serb territory.  The Serb dominated Yugoslav government denies that it's carrying out ethnic cleansing against the local Albanian population, but as you've just heard, many of the refugees pouring into neighbouring countries say they would have been killed had they stayed.  For Serbia's view of the war and the human disaster the director of the Serbian Information Centre, Marko Grasic, is speaking to us from London.
Mr Grasic, even if we accept that the NATO bombing is wrong, how can that justify what Serbs are now doing to ethnic Albanians in Kosovo?

MARKO GRASIC - SERBIAN INFORMATION CENTRE:
I think we need to first of all establish what's going on in Kosovo and in Yugoslavia as a whole.  NATO's come in, ostensibly to solve a local problem and created a wider war, a war in Europe and an intercontinental war at the same time.  What that means for Kosovo is that the NATO bombing is severest in Kosovo.  You have all-out war from the air by NATO.  NATO's effective ground troops, the terrorist KLA, are waging all-out war on the ground in Kosovo and the KLA leadership have ordered all Albanians to leave Kosovo.
These are the factors which are creating the movement of people that we've been seeing on our screens.

PRESENTER:
Okay, but I still want you to justify to me what Serbs are now doing to ethnic Albanians in Kosovo.

GRASIC:
Certainly.  At the moment, Serbians are looking after ethnic Albanians in Belgrade who are fleeing as well from the NATO bombardment and the KLA activity and the ...

PRESENTER:
How are you looking after them?

GRASIC:
... NATO bombing has created.  Well, they've been put in refugee centres wherever they can, put up with families.  And it's not just the Albanians and Serbians who are fleeing Kosovo at the moment.  You have Turks, a hundred thousand of those, the Roma, a hundred and fifty thousand of those, all communities who support the Yugoslavian governments on this one, and who oppose NATO murder.

PRESENTER:
But there is clear evidence of Serb forces emptying whole cities of their Albanian population, Mitrovica in the north and Pec in the west, and now focussing on Pristina.  Serbs have been packing masses of ethnic Albanians into refugee trains so tightly that some have died.  Why is this being done?

GRASIC:
It's simply not the case.  What's happening here is, these people are desperate to get out.  You've mentioned Pristina, Pristina is the epicentre of the NATO bombing operation.  It was bound to create the two hundred thousand refugees that it is creating right now.  And we have to ask ourselves, why has NATO concentrated its bombing on the Kosovo region?  I would say that NATO's strategy is to deliberately displace hundreds of thousands of people from Kosovo in order to have an excuse to expand into Kosovo.  And this is really an expansion that isn't just limited to Kosovo because under the NATO ultimatum given to Yugoslavia, NATO would have a right to move around all of Yugoslavia as well as to occupy Kosovo.
Those are worse terms than Hitler gave the Yugoslavs in 1941.

PRESENTER:
Do you deny there's been any ethnic cleansing in Kosovo?

GRASIC:
I would say there's been definitely been ethnic cleansing in Kosovo.
Ethnic cleansing is when one nationality is murdered and bombed because of its nationality.  That's what's been happening to the Serbians and ... at the hands of US, Britain, France and Germany, the new butchers of the Balkans.
But it's not just been happening to the Serbians.  It's been happening to the Albanians and, as I say, the Turks, the Romanies (ph.sp.) all the twenty-seven nationalities who make up multi-ethnic state of Yugoslavia, currently under attack by NATO, an attack which is currently being defended by the NATO media and their supporters abroad.

PRESENTER:
Have the Serbs got clean hands over Kosovo?  Simple question.

GRASIC:
They certainly have.  They're in their own sovereign states, on their own sovereign soil.  They want to give the communities of Kosovo autonomy and self-government.  All the communities and real self-government.  They don't want to see a foreign military alliance trying to break up their country, trying to decide how they solve their constitutional questions.
It's legitimate for foreigners to care about human rights.  It's not legitimate for foreigners, not even American foreigners, to decide to dictate to give you ultimatums about the future of your country.  You wouldn't accept it in Australia.  Why should we accept it in Yugoslavia?

PRESENTER:
And Serbs are not responsible for any human rights violations in Kosovo at all?  Is that what you're really telling us?

GRASIC:
It may surprise you to know that Serbs are human beings as well.  It means that they are no better and no worse as individuals than anyone else, but they are no worse, and let's ... if you are going to single out one people for abuse then you really have to ask yourself, where does your position come from?  What is the stereotype or one racial group that you have?  And does that actually have a word to describe that attitude?  With respect.

PRESENTER:
So what's happening in Kosovo is sheer accident?  Is that what you're saying?

GRASIC:
No.  It's ... no, it's deliberate strategy.  NATO's deliberate strategy to force the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of people in order to have an excuse to expand itself into Kosovo.  It went into Poland, Hungary and Czechoslovakia by consent. Here in Yugoslavia, in Serbia, there is no consent, so it goes in without consent.  It rapes Yugoslavia.  It abuses Yugoslavia. It murders Yugoslavians of all nationalities, and it looks to its media to give it media cover.  I don't think we should be in the business of doing that, do you?

PRESENTER:
Mr Grasic, do you think it's possible for Serbs and ethnic Albanians to live side by side, peacefully?

GRASIC:
Yes.  We're coming now to Easter, and Easter ...

PRESENTER:
Why can't they now?

GRASIC:
... is the time ...

PRESENTER:
Why can't they now, then?

GRASIC:
Easter is the t... because NATO doesn't want to stop bombing them.  Mr Rugova, the political leader of the Kosovo Albanians, has called for the bombing to stop ...

PRESENTER:
Well, what are the cultural differences between Serbs and ...

GRASIC:
... has called for the bombing to stop.  We all would want the bombing to stop, but NATO doesn't want to stop because NATO is out of control, and that's not a problem just for Yugoslavia.  It's a problem for the world.
And finally, Jim, when we open Pandora's box, when we say that a group of countries can attack another country that they fancy attacking, what's the safety for any small country in the world with its neighbours around it?  What's the safety for your country, or the countries of Asia or Europe or Africa?  This is the end of international law.  This is the end of the UN charter.  What we're seeing here is its national anarchy, and do we really want that from NATO?

PRESENTER:
What are the cultural differences between Serbs and ethnic Albanians?

GRASIC:
The ... they are various, though there are orthodox Albanians as well as Muslim Albanians.  The majority of Albanians are Muslims.  The ma... Serbians are Christian orthodox.  And they have different histories, though throughout history they have generally been on the same side.
It's really only under ... in this century and under occupation by foreign empires that those nationalities have been polarised.

PRESENTER:
Very quickly ...

GRASIC:
Now, they don't ... there's no reason why they shouldn't live together again.  But remember, under Nazis we had Greater Albanian all over Kosovo and the expulsion of Serbs.  Under Tito, that was not redressed.
We're seeing the remainder of a fascist demand for an ethnically pure Kosovo Albania in the demands of the KLA, and the western world and the civilised world should not support that.

PRESENTER:
Very quickly, would you like to see Russia give military assistance to Serbia?  Weapons, troops?

GRASIC:
Russia is in a very difficult situation.  Here, it knows that we ... that the u, United Nations Security Council, where it has power, is being deliberately sidelined by half the Security Council.  There's a challenge the authority of the United Nations Security Council as a supreme arbiter of what goes on in the world.  The Russian knows that what's ... the agenda is NATO expansion around Russia.
If NATO's allowed to do that it will continue to do that, and Russia knows that this is being done at Russia's expense. Therefore Russia is going to defend Russia in Yugoslavia because it has no choice.  We are seeing now in NATO's murderous campaign the reigniting of a cold war we thought was over.

PRESENTER:
And if NATO decides to send in troops?

GRASIC:
If ... no ... the NATO pact send in troops it will be following in the footsteps of another pact, which also gave an ultimatum, also bombed, also invaded, and also occupied.  The Nazi pact fifty-eight years ago were bombing Yugoslavia for saying no.  The Serbs said no to the Nazis then, they will say no to NATO now.
The issues are the same and the answer will be the same and the Serbians are a brave people, a small people, they fought with Australia in two world wars, they don't expect to see Australia or its allies in the West condemning them and bombing them for no reason.  They want peace, they want stability in their own country and they do not want to be murdered in their beds or their hospitals by the NATO Alliance.

PRESENTER:
Mr Grasic, thanks for your time.  I look forward to talking to you again.