Fraser calls NATO an organisation of liars

Ex-PM hits West's role in Kosovo

by Michael Madigan

Herald Sun, 09 March 2000

Former Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser has labelled NATO an organisation of liars, comparing its role in Yugoslavia to the Spanish Inquisition.

In his strongest attack on the West's involvement in the Balkans, Mr Fraser said the war was illegal and immoral.

Mr Fraser, chairman of international aid agency Care Australia, said the Serbs now regarded US President Bill Clinton and British leader Tony Blair as the modern embodiments of Adolf Hitler. Care employees Steve Pratt and Peter Wallace were jailed for months as alleged spies by Serbia. Mr Fraser likened NATO's actions to those of the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusaders, who killed millions in the name of Christianity.

'They all thought they were doing the right thing,' he said.

A 'bunch of foreigners' had invaded the Balkans thinking they could get rid of all the enmity and hatred. 'When people with no humility seek to impose by force their moral standards on other people there will always be trouble,' he said.

He accused Americans of collaborating with terrorists within the Kosovo Liberation Army and said NATO had no legal standing to attack.

Addressing the Parliamentary Amnesty International Group in Canberra, Mr Fraser said the Americans wanted war. They had prompted it by offering the Serbs an unacceptable solution to the Balkans at talks in Rambouillet in France.

Part of the plan was to take Kosovo out of Yugoslavia, which no Serb leader could ever accept. 'Whether it is right or whether it is wrong, Kosovo is as important [to the Serbs] as Jerusalem is to a great many Jews,' he said.

Mr Fraser referred to the values his father's generation held as part of the British Commonwealth. 'We were brought up to believe that your own people, more often than not, would try and tell the truth,' he said.

'The more I saw of NATO's briefings, the more I believed that NATO was just as capable of lying in this war as anyone else.'

Mr Fraser said the war had solved nothing, and that the KLA, coupled with Albanian organised crime, now dominated Kosovo.

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