Word: nato
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...widespread in Yugoslavia as it is here, but it is the most formidable obstacle any propagandist has ever faced. Tanjug's news stories, thinly veiled propaganda bulletins, now have to compete with the real thing from independent news sources--or at the very least with the NATO version of events...
During the Cold War, Radio Free Europe tried to fill the same role as the Internet is playing now, and NATO has set up a similar radio station to broadcast to Yugoslavia. But winning the war--and this is a war, despite the semantic contortions of NATO and the Clinton administration--will take more than that. Suppression of the independent media is a crucial element of Milosevic's grip on power, and as long as Serb citizens are unaware of what their army is doing in Kosovo, there is little chance they will stop supporting Milosevic...
...poses a real threat to Milosevic. It would be naive to think that if the free press returned to Yugoslavia, the Serbian people would suddenly turn against their president and his genocidal campaign in Kosovo; the situation is far more complicated than that. But especially in a war that NATO has made clear it wants to end not with a military victory but with a negotiated settlement, free access to independent media might be part of the solution...
...This is so open-ended that it allows NATO to say it's brought the Russians on board behind its demands, while the Russians can say they've won enough concessions from NATO to cut a deal acceptable to Milosevic," says TIME Central Europe reporter Dejan Anastasijevic. The key sticking point to a peace deal -- as at the Rambouillet talks in February -- has been the scope and nature of an international peacekeeping force in Kosovo, and Thursday's accord in Bonn is vague enough on that issue to be sold to both sides. Fudging the contentious issues, of course, allows...
Peace in Kosovo will be all things to all people -- or, more specifically, the deal designed to end hostilities will allow all sides to claim victory. That much was clear from the peace plan agreed to by leading NATO countries and Russia at a summit of foreign ministers in Germany on Thursday. The agreement provides for an end to violence and repression in Kosovo; the withdrawal of Serb security forces; the deployment of ill-defined "international civil and security presences" under mandate from the United Nations; the safe return of refugees under the auspices of a U.N. interim administration...