Serbian Army for Aghanistan

international | anti-war / imperialism | news report

Wednesday October 08, 2003 13:12

by James McKenna

jimmymac61 at hotmail dot com

Serbian Prime Minister Zoran Zivkovic pledges 1,000 troops to Iraq and Afghanistan

US Military chiefs quickly accecpted the offer when it was made "out of the blue", according to the New York Times. Serbian and Montenegrin officials visited Washington and Central Command headquarters in Florida last week to discuss the deployment of troops and paramilitary police on the proposed oil and gas pipelines near Kandahar.

"We don't need peacekeepers," says a U.S. official involved in the deal. "It's going to be a combat mission to hunt down al-Qaeda terrorists and Taliban guerrillas."
Serbian police chief, Gen Goran Radosavljevic, a.k.a. Guri, is to take charge of the force near Kandaher. During the Kosovo war, he operated teams called Operative Posse Groups (OPG). Several human-rights organizations claim OPG committed atrocities against civilians; the 2001 Human Rights Watch report alleges, for instance, that they killed 41 ethnic Albanian civilians in the village of Cuska in western Kosovo in May 1999, though no indictment has been issued against Radosavljevic. A New York court is also considering charges that he and other police officials are responsible for the deaths of three Albanian Americans from New York City, captured and then executed in southern Serbia by Serbian police in the summer of 1999.
Radosavljevic recently told a Belgrade newspaper that he has never been implicated by the Hague war-crimes tribunal and that "I'm ready to go to court to prove my innocence if it turns out to be necessary."

ISAF News

http://www.afnorth.nato.int/ISAF/index.htm

Two ISAF soldiers killed, 3 injured in mine incident
http://www.afnorth.nato.int/ISAF/media/Press_Releases/Release%20031002.htm

Rocket attacks at ISAF base
http://www.afnorth.nato.int/ISAF/media/Press_Releases/Release%20120903a.htm

Memorial Service to honour fallen Canadian soldiers
http://www.afnorth.nato.int/ISAF/media/Press_Releases/Release%20031003.htm

No Irish sodiers have been killed as yet on service with NATO in Afghanistan.