Massacre ordered at top level in Belgrade, says US

By Raymond Whitaker in Pristina and Andrew Marshall in Washington

The Independent 29 January 1999

THE MASSACRE of Albanian villagers in the village of Racak in Kosovo this month was ordered at the highest level of the Serbian government, according to leaked Western intelligence that may provide the final trigger for Nato bombing.

The transcripts are of telephone conversations between Nikola Sainovic, a deputy prime minister, and General Sreten Lukic of the Serbian Interior Ministry special forces, and were obtained from intelligence sources by The Washington Post. Serbia has been accused of sending "hit squads" of ski-masked special forces into Kosovo to terrorise the local population.

The transcripts show Serbian security forces were ordered to "go in heavy" at Racak, the village in southern Kosovo where 45 people were killed on 15 January. Mr Sainovic is said to have called General Lukic as the bloody assault was going on, and asked how many people had been killed.

The massacre at Racak was the worst in nearly two years of bitter conflict between the Serbian authorities and guerrillas of the Kosovo Liberation Army. Amid international outrage and demands that Nato should carry out its threats of military action, the two men discussed several times how to deflect blame for the bloodshed, according to the transcripts.

The newspaper did not say how it obtained the transcripts. But experts in US signals intelligence say there are many ways Washington could have come by the telephone messages. The US maintains an extensive range of intelligence facilities across Europe, and if the message had at any time used a microwave or satellite signal, it could have been intercepted.

The National Security Agency, based near Washington, runs the US signals intelligence programme worldwide. The very secretive Special Collection Service also gathers signals intelligence, and has been reported to run some of its operations from US embassies. "It is extremely unusual for sensitive intelligence, particularly of this sort, to be publicly available," said John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists. One suggestion was that the US considered the diplomatic benefit to be greater than the loss of a possible source of intelligence.

The leaked US revelations will add pressure on Europe to take action against Serbia.

In Brussels yesterday, Nato's Secretary-General, Javier Solana, said the alliance "stands ready to act and rules out no option" at this "a critical turning point in the Kosovo crisis". Nato diplomats said the six-nation Contact Group, which meets today in London, would call on the parties to agree to talks within four days. The Nato Council is to meet tomorrow to back up that initiative with a military ultimatum.

Kofi Annan, Secretary- General of the UN, also said the military threat was needed in order to back up the diplomatic initiative. "I am pushing very hard for a political settlement," Mr Annan said in Brussels.

In Kosovo, the violence continued in the west of the province yesterday with Serb troops killing five Kosovo Liberation Army fighters in two clashes. The clashes took place south of Prizren and near Djakovica, 12 miles south-west of Prizren.