Repeating the allegations doesn’t make them true

Chuck Sudetic, whom I know and respect, in his Washington Post op/ed Saturday repeats Dick Marty’s allegations about high-level criminal activity in Kosovo in 1999-2000, this time without the important reservation that no forensic investigation has been conducted and no claims of guilt or innocence can be made.  This is pretty rich, coming from the co-author of Carla Del Ponte’s memoir.  Carla was the Hague Tribunal prosecutor who failed herself to mount a serious investigation of these allegations but nevertheless saw fit to include them, briefly, in the memoir.

Marty’s report, Chuck says, does not attack Kosovo’s legitimacy, but as is now well known Marty himself took a strong stand against Kosovo independence, on legal grounds that have now been vitiated in their entirety by the advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice.  Are we to believe, as Chuck claims, that the Marty report “draws upon Albanian eyewitnesses and insiders as well as Western intelligence and police agencies, and not upon the Albanians’ foe, the government of Serbia”?  There are clear signs in the Marty report of information coming from Serbia, whether directly or through those Western intelligence and police agencies.

I repeat what I have said previously:  I do not know the truth or falsity of the allegations, precisely because no serious forensic investigation has been conducted.  That is what is needed, complete with the latest scientific techniques as well as witness protection, which Chuck rightly calls for.

He is also correct in one other important respect:  these allegations, even if true, are no grounds for calling into question Kosovo’s legitimacy as an independent state.  Does anyone think Croatia less legitimate as a state because its former prime minister now stands accused of corruption?  Or that Serbia should not be independent because it was led for many years by a president accused of war crimes and crimes against humanity?  Those who have tried to open up this line of attack are doing their own cause a serious disservice, and making it difficult for both Pristina and Tirana to do what they should, namely cooperate fully with a serious investigation.

Chuck exaggerates American responsibility in this matter, referring repeatedly to the United States and its diplomats as if only what they say goes.  But Washington and Brussels together can and should exert the pressure needed to get a serious investigation under way, with full cooperation from Pristina, Tirana and Belgrade.